Boiler/Central Heating Cover: Get better cover cheaper Discussion Area

Dusty_2

My Barclays Additions bank account covers my boiler at £13 per month as part of the Domestic Emergency cover. No annual bolier service, but the call out worked well when it broke down.

For my £13 per month I also get £10,000 of accidental death cover, 24 legal advise service, Greenflag breakdown cover including Europe and travel insurance for the family etc

You work out the cost of that lot and it beats Autoaid, British Gas etc.

Do I use the Barclays account? Don't be silly. I took their £100 gift some months ago, left enough money in the account to cover the £13 per month on going cost and departed to a better interest.

Just off to Holmes Place to use my Pru Membership. An outstanding deal (if you live in the right area.) Includes towel hire at my club and I'm fast approaching my Platinum Vitality points total, so will get medical insurance for next to nothing from 01/12.

One more thing, whilst I'm rambling. Tescos emailed me the offer of 250 points if I ordered flowers on their website. Just ordered carnations for the wife at a cost of £9 something. It's a short term offer, but 250 points x 4 makes it the cheapest expression of love I've made in a long while. No code. Not sure if folk can get the deal on the Tesco website direct.

Dave

bunking_off

I'd tend to agree with others. It's a year since I took my policy out, and at the time only one other provider had the same level for cover (see below), and they wouldn't provide service in my area.

I'd be a bit wary of Martin's statement;

It’s a question of assessing your likely problems, if you’re in a house with relatively new and reliable equipment, then a cheap policy covering the bare essentials will do.

The key here is the "and reliable". I live in a new build, and have a brand name condensing boiler (as do my neighbours). However, they go faulty with depressing frequency, and rarely with cheap issues. For example, I needed two controller cards in my warranty period (as have neighbours), which convinced me that it would be a good idea to take out a service/insurance product. Most policies cover that aspect, but I also had a descaler fail on the pressurised tank, which the manufacturers thought serious enough to warrant having the tank replaced...big expensive job, and with pretty much every policy I looked at the tank's excluded.

Point is, even if new equipment is more reliable, it's a damned site more expensive to fix when it does go wrong.

Confused_Jo

I have to reinterate an earlier message about their reliability. (janh)
My parens have been covered with them for yonks, c 30 years.
They have had their boiler parts systematically replaced when they had a problem with damp under the stairs immediatley adjacent to the kitchen wall where the boiler is.:T

It turned out to be a problem with the builder not BG, but now the boiler is still going strong. can't fault that. In some respects its a new boiler, but my mum wishes it would die so she can have a new kitchen!!!

Plus when we have done some DIY involving taking radiatiors off the wall etc to do decorating, a qucik call from the engineer and a bit of advice on the QT helped us sort out our pressure problems and it didn't affect our no call out discount.

I know they may be the old nationalised gas company but their standards as still the best in my opinion.

koru

koru wrote:

As Martin says, you should not skip the annual service, so unless you can buy a separate annual service for significantly less than £80 (which I doubt), I don't really see any significant money saving opportunity. (That is, unless you want to self-insure. I suspect Martin is right that this would be cheaper in the long run. But it depends what value you put on peace of mind.)

I followed up my own post and phoned BG and got a quote for boiler service, which is £75. Or Powergen will do it for £66. Several local companies were at least £70. So, take the £112 emergency cover, and add £66, you get £178, which is within a few quid of BG Homecare 200.

However, I think there is a way to make real savings on these contracts. I'm just renewing my house insurance and I notice that most of them include Home Emergency cover as an optional extra at very cheap prices compared with these heating contracts. For instance, with Egg, it costs £31.50 extra per year, which is way cheaper than £112.

Add £66 for Powergen boiler service and that's £97.50, which is a much closer comparison with BG Homecare 200 but is nearly £100 cheaper.

Now, the Egg Home Emergency is a bit more limited than some of the other contracts. For instance, it limits payments to £250 per emergency. But Martin's article said that the average boiler repair is £185, so it is going to have to be a pretty unusual repair to exceed the £250. As I'm saving £100 per year, I'm willing to take the risk that I might have to use some of that saving to pay for a repair if and to the extent it exceeds £250.

On the other hand, the Egg Home Emergency policy doesn't just cover boiler breakdown; it also covers leaking or blocked toilets/pipes/radiators/drains, vermin infesting the home, roof damage, broken doors or windows, and a few other things. So, arguably the comparison should be with BG Homecare 300, which is £237, which is £140 more than Egg+service.

I think that for many people this is a really viable option which will cut your payments in half, with cover that is a little better in one way and a little worse in another.

paulus6

After reading the above post's and also noticing an advert in the Sun (12/12/06) for British Gas Boiler cover, offering 33% off there normal tariff's, I felt slightly hacked off.
I have been a BGAS customer for 14 years, using there homecare 200 service (boiler,controls and radiators / £15/month) and have claimed for two call outs over that time. So I thought it was time for some payback, so I called them and qouted there offer and asked for the same discount or i would be cancelling my contract (using Martins bluff tactics :money: ).
Unfortunately BG do not discount there 'normal' customers and after a lengthy discussion and several threats of cancellation I backed down.
I got the impression that they know they are the market leaders and give a quality service, (which admittedly they have done on my two occasions, and to the posters above)
So no money to be saved here !!! Anyone else tried to batter down there prices ?

koru

They did not put up a fight when I cancelled a few weeks ago. They asked why, and I explained that they are ridiculously expensive, and we left it at that.

Clearly, they have judged that it is better to lose a few customers, rather than offering discounts to keep customers and then find that loads of customers start asking for the same discounts.

It is only if they start losing large numbers of customers that they will have to get more competitive.

happycatuk

paulus6 wrote:

After reading the above post's and also noticing an advert in the Sun (12/12/06) for British Gas Boiler cover, offering 33% off there normal tariff's, I felt slightly hacked off.
I have been a BGAS customer for 14 years, using there homecare 200 service (boiler,controls and radiators / £15/month) and have claimed for two call outs over that time. So I thought it was time for some payback, so I called them and qouted there offer and asked for the same discount or i would be cancelling my contract (using Martins bluff tactics :money: ).
Unfortunately BG do not discount there 'normal' customers and after a lengthy discussion and several threats of cancellation I backed down.
I got the impression that they know they are the market leaders and give a quality service, (which admittedly they have done on my two occasions, and to the posters above)
So no money to be saved here !!! Anyone else tried to batter down there prices ?

Is there a code in the Sun newspaper advert to get the reduction? Am about to cancel my standing order with The Beaver Company as they only answer phones between 9am and 4.30pm, and are always confused by our Flowmax hot water tank ..

frugalman_2

If you're considering buying a new boiler then my advice would be to forget about the boiler cover many companies are offering!
Whats the point?

I brought a new boiler called a Baxi Platinum from https://www.wholesaleheating.co.uk recently and it cost me a fraction of the price British Gas quoted me. (They wanted nearly 4 grand to change my existing combi!!) The Baxi Platinum I now have came with a 5 yr guarantee and it has a stainless steel heat exchanger, which I think is why they offer this.

I'd definately recommend Wholesale Heating, since they recommended I buy a discounted boiler from them and just get a installer to fit it saving money on the installers markup on the parts. I never knew but they informed me that Potterton & Baxi are the same company and the Baxi Platinum internally is virtually identical to the Potterton Gold which is cheaper with a shorter warranty, but the potterton won the which magazine best combi boiler. I went for the baxi so that I could forget about cover if my boiler breaks down and stay worry free for at least 5 years.

So overall if anyone is trying to collar you with a maintenance contract and you are buying a new boiler then forget it and buy one with a decent warranty included!!

frugalman_2

PS. It's worth noting that British Gas always try and worm their way out of maintaining an old boiler. A good friend of mine had a neatheat or something like that and it was around 10 years old. They had been covering him for years and when it broke down "It didn't fall into their normal maintenance cover". He was fuming (rightly so) and British gas were recommending he replace the boiler, so in the end he cut his losses and spent 200 quid on a few parts and a corgi man to fix it!

adam787_1

Hi guys,

I'm a little late on the discussion but just wanted to ask a quick question.

Do you think its feasible and not foolish to stock up on major parts for your boiler before they actually fail?

For example over the last couple of months I have seen brand new original parts for my boiler sell for around 30% of the actual price RRP. I reckon for £200 I could buy a new circuit board, pump, diverter valve and other bits and just keep hold of them until one of them fails.

Stupid idea or foolish?

Cheers
Adam