Chair-lifts

Babshubbie

Around 12 months ago I bought a straight chair-lift from a mobility shop. It has worked perfectly, thank goodness, but recent comments in another thread has led me to think of maintenance. No maintenance agreement was offered, the installer said it was guaranteed for 12 months and he would come out if needed. Do other users think an annual maintenance agreement is necessary, and if so what is the usual charge? Do they break down often? I don't know how we would manage now. It is a Brooks chair lift. Any advice would be welcome.

Lorne

Hi there,

I don't have any experience of brooks but do have experience of stairlifts. We put maintenance contracts on all of our stairlifts, like cars they are mechanical and parts wear out and they need regular servicing. Our contacts usually cost about £130 a year including a service and all parts and 24 hour cover. It might be worth researching how much it would cost to maintain a Brookes lift, depends on whether you could afford to be without it and how much it costs.

Good luck with your research, Lorna

Babshubbie

Thank you for your reply, Lorne. I had hoped that users of stairlifts, of which there must be many, might give me the benefit of their experience regarding how often they break down, how quickly a repair is effected and whether a maintenance contract is cost effective. Ours is working sweetly at the moment, but who knows. And then we might be confined to living upstairs until it is repaired!

maemaesmummy

Hi there,

Usually depends on the age of the stairlift... usual parts to go are the consumables like rollers, switches and call stations, some of the curved lifts have battery back up and these too will go in time. I have known motors go to but usually after a lot of use... obviously these then can become expensive to repair/replace.

You can get mechanical breakdown cover (subject usually to the lift being serviced at a cost) which would cover any such breakdown including call out and labour.

Also the majority of breakdowns we dealt with turned out to be simple error
grandkids been round and switched power off or key in wrong position etc.