Advice needed on baxi boiler repair and cover!

phil_b_2

Hi All,

I have a leak from what seems to be the Heat exchanger in my baxi solo boiler, and a heating guy confirmed this. The boiler is only approx 3 years old.

A new exchanger and the cost to take the boiler to bits, reassemble and re-fit probably makes a new one not a whole lot more expensive. I could get a replacement for £600, then £150 for the labour to do the swap.

I rang baxi and they have a repair and cover plan, which is £24.99 per month. A guy will comes out asap and repair the fault, then I'm tied in for 12 months at the above cost which is about £300 for the year. All parts and labour are covered. If he cant fix it and a new boiler is needed then there is no cost and I'm back to square one.

So it seems my options are this:

A) spend money to get the fault investigated and hopefully fixed. This will likely cost a lot and there are no guarentees the problem will be fixed.

get a whole new boiler at approx £750 fitted. get 2 years warranty on it

C) spread a cost of £300 over 12 months to get it fixed/working. Get 1 year parts and labour warranty on future problems.


Option C seems a little too good and one that appeals. Has anyone has a baxi repair and cover plan, or have experience with it?

Thanks in advance.

gas4you

Personally I would recommend 'C'.

Something as big as this is only financially viable through one of the manufacturer schemes.

These boilers are known for leaking HE's anyway. Usually one of the HE plugs at the back.

rustyboy21

Use the baxi service.

For the £300 over 12 months, they will service it, repair the heat exchanger and you can guarantee if anyone else does it, they will '' find'' something else wrong too, adding extra cost. For this £300, if anything else is ''found'' then it is covered uder the payment.

They will also do it a lot quicker for you, as you are paying for the service. If it was under warranty, you would wait days, if not weeks. That is Baxi's way.

Yuo could also find small minor ''faults'' over the 12 months, get them sorted under contract, then cancel it in 12 months time. Use it to your benefit ! End up with a new boiler for £300 !

phil_b_2

Thanks loads for the useful thoughts and opinions guys, really appreciate it. The boiler isnt the only thing wrong with the house at the mo so I've been stressing a bit!

Option C certainly sounds like a winner. As you say, try to play the scheme a bit end up a with a nearly-new boiler!

From what I've read the HE leaks are indeed fairly common, which is pretty shocking. Surely they should have managed to plug things together a bit better by now.

So is it unanimous in favour of not trying to sort the HE problem for some kind of one-off cost (if there is such a thing in the world of heating)?

phil_b_2

Quick bump... has anyone used a scheme like this and had good or bad experiences?

rustyboy21

Heateam ( which is Baxi) has a pretty good setup to sort your porblems out.

What will most probably happen is that the engineer will call out on the day given look at what is wrong and order the parts on his PDA. What will then happen is that the parts will be ordered straight away with Interpart ( also Baxi), They wil be picked and sent out by citylink to the engineers home ( Citylink drivers have keys to heateams vans ) the engineer will get in his van ( all being well the next morning) and find that the part is in his tote box ready for fitting. They will then contact you to arrange a time for fitting. I wouldn't expect them to do it on first call, they like to see what parts they need, they may also need other parts to complete the repair.

It does work well usually, if the part is in stock and you are not living out in the wilds of the countryside. You could then look at any minor quibbles, such as noisy pumps, etc and get them to sort it out at a later date. It works well when you are paying for the service, when it is under warranty, they seem to take longer to sort.

Even looking at buying a heat exchanger off the internet, you are looking at £200-300 and that is without fitting.

Seems no brainer to me.