Would you consider boiler rental ?

Richie-from-the-Boro

tallguy0550 wrote: »

Although you are signing a 14yr contract with ASG, you can buy out of it if you move. Up to five years, its around £2000 but it drops to only about £800 after year seven. Its all laid out in their contract and you have the right to cancel before they install the boiler.

- DUP Company Title and more sales pitch

Richie-from-the-Boro

tallguy0550 wrote: »

Please point out in my posts where I have mentioned any company name? You seem to be here all the time knocking everybody. I am beginning to believe that you are a mole for BG waiting to attack anyone who has an alternative idea. Have the moderators checked your i.p. address to see if it leads back to BG headquarters?
It says Richie-from-the-boro, which boro, Kensington and Chelsea, maybe?

- happy to indicate where you used your Company Title - see #40
- to help your understanding I live in the very posh end of Kensington and Chelsea, its called Middlesbrough
- I'm assuming the head of customer relations Sarah Lucy Dyson will wonder which one of her employees started spamming MSE .. .. again ..

southcoastrgi

£4k for a boiler change over 7 yrs & for at least 5 of those yrs you will get free cover from the boiler manifacturer.

Richie-from-the-Boro

southcoastrgi wrote: »

£4k for a boiler change over 7 yrs & for at least 5 of those years you will get free cover from the boiler manufacturer.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhush !, oh - ok - go on then - good point - bringing up the 'goldfish' payback sales economics of a deal

pandapaws

Not used this site for ages, but thought I'd see what people were saying about Everlasting Boilers before we get one fitted by ASG on Friday!

Whilst I'm sure that if you have the money available, there may be better options for some people, the main benefits we see FOR US PERSONALLY are as follows:

1. Obvious simplicity of no upfront cost, no credit agreement (or searches), fixed cost for the term, no extra interest charges if a loan or finance was taken out.
2. Full boiler cover for the next 14 years. I know it doesn't cover the full system, only the boiler, but it's the boiler that is the expensive bit to fix and the bit that's most likely to go wrong. I'm not really bothered about the thermostat or radiators, as they don't generally break and if they do then it's not normally an expensive repair. You can't insure against every eventuality.
3. If it breaks and they can't fix it, we get a new boiler... British Gas will only fix it if they can - if they can't then we'd have been wasting £20 a month and end up with no boiler at all.
4. In the event of breakdown, no need to wait for parts as they are only fitting one type of boiler so will have everything in stock for immediate repair/replacement.
5. Option to upgrade after 9 years...however you are not forced to do this. We plan to remain on the existing contract for the 14 years, and continue to pay the £38 a month. By that time, with inflation, rising costs etc I don't think £38 will be a million miles away from the cost of a similar package from BG or others, however in the more elderly years of our boiler (Yr 9-14) we'll have the assurance that if the boiler breaks completely, they'll have to replace it under the contract that we have. So if it goes kaput in Yr 13, we get a new boiler, and no further contract! Not sure they've totally thought that one through at ASG to be honest. I'm sure that it will encourage them to keep the 9yr renewal prices fairly low as well, or they'll end up with lots of people realising that it might not be worth renewing.
6. Decent quality and powerful boiler. I see other people complaining about the brand name... I don't think it would be in ASG's interest to fit cheap and nasty boilers, as they're going to be responsible for repairing them for the next 14 years, so I'd guess they'll fit something that's durable.
7. The overall cost after 14 years is quite high - about £7k. However my parents paid £2500 for a new boiler a couple of years ago, which only had a 2 year warranty, and they still pay BG £21 on top (£3500 over 14yrs roughly). Factor in inflation on those prices, AND the massive disadvantage they've got with BG of no replacement if it dies, and potential delays waiting for parts, and the already-virtually-non-existent cost saving, or minor additonal benefit they have of having a service package on the thermostat and radiators, and I think that £7k isn't actually too excessive an amount.
8. Combi boiler means we gain a large cupboard and half a loft that are currently full of tanks. We've got a fairly large house, so there aren't many combis powerful enough, and it would have been something at the more expensive end of the market we would have needed.
9. And we'll save quite a bit of the extra cost because of the energy saving we'll gain. I'm not blindly believing all the claims of £300 a year, but we spend £105 a month on gas at the moment, so if the new boiler is 90% efficient instead of 70% then I'd hope that would equate to £10 to £20 a month in savings. Therefore half-way to paying for itself, for however long it might have taken us to buy a new boiler by another method, assuming it continued to work that long!


The only significant disadvantage that I can see, which shouldn't be a problem for us, is that it could cause problems if we were to sell the house in the next few years - at worst we'd have to pay ourselves out of the contract, but I'd have a bit of equity to do that with, and so not too worried about it.

It might sound like I'm working for them (I'm definitely not!) as I think it's a great scheme, but I can genuinely say that it has solved a problem for us (assuming all goes well on Friday!) as we were worried our old boiler wouldn't last the winter and don't have much spare cash around to replace it the conventional way. Sorry for the ramble... I've just remembered why I stopped posting on these forums now ... but I thought I'd put all those points in because it might highlight something that someone else who's considering the scheme hasn't thought of.

cheesedoffwithdebt

beerbellybrian wrote: »

Everlasting boilers are a part of a shade greener who do the solar panels and have a good reputation so they are probably okay. According to their chat line they do not charge for upgrading supply pipes to suit modern boilers so that is good BUT totally misleading to double their charges and not make mention of it on the website. £4.44 a week for ten years would be pretty much the same as a boiler installation by a Gas Safe engineer so would be very good value but twice that isn't unless you take into account the service costs and call-out guarantee but then a new boiler can have a five year guarantee and servicing is as little as £60 a year. I am pretty sure that the costs WILL be fixed at an agreed rate, though. These boilers cost about £600 retail so if they are massive bulk buying them £300-400 I would say, so there is plenty of room for profit even at £4.44 a week. I have a call-back coming from them so will let you know any more info I get.

I looked at them and phoned- the details all seem less than transparent. You are stuck in a ten year contract and if anything adverse happened they could pop round and take back the boiler. They must be making masses of money with this as the advertising is relentless, very sceptical I'm afraid

cheesedoffwithdebt

As far as I can see asg are doing this on the back of more government grants.. Mse readers might want to look up the grants on offer particularly the new warm front scheme, much cheaper long term to research and do it yourself, just a thought...

mrbilbs

We have just ours sorted out on Sunday - mind you I say Sunday but ours took two sundays as it was a very big job removing the old boiler from one room and a new one put in a different room.
As with pandapaws our brain and thought process went through all the same reasoning. The fact that we also have had relentless problems with our old boiler and a lack of funds to buy and install a new one helped! Average prices we were getting were £2-£3k without any repositioning it and that was keeping it in the exact same room where it originally was.
All I can say were the guys who installed it were very good and nothing was too much trouble and they did a very good and tidy job.
The contract I have does run for 14yrs but you can leave before that (with a buyout) similar if you plan to move (we dont) you can transfer it or again buy it out.
Yes we are probably paying a little more but when you factor in all the things pandapaws has said I dont think it will be that much.
We are very happy - and no I dont work for them!

pandapaws

Just to update... we had our boiler installed a week ago, and quite happy. They were good to their word and arrived at 8am, and worked through until the job was finished (9pm!), and they even helped us with a radiator installation which we've been waiting for a plumber to fix. We noticed a massive difference in the heat we're getting from the radiators (mostly how long the house is taking to heat up), which I think might be from all the black sludge being cleared out of the system. The water is piping hot and powers our shower better than it was before with a pump on it. The fitters seemed impressed with the kit, and like me, agreed that whether it's Ravenheat or whoever else that are making the boiler, ASG aren't going to fit cack as they'll be the ones responsible for maintaining it for the next 14 years!

The only downside is that because they're only doing a standard 'one size fits all' installation, the finish outside the house isn't the best. They only have one type of brick, which doesn't match our house bricks, so the hole that they've closed up from the larger old vent looks awful - if we'd known they would need bricks, we could have sourced them ourselves before the install. They're all a bit higgledy-piggledy too, but I suppose it was dark when they finished. Also, they only have one type of external vent, which is white plastic. We previously had a stainless steel one which looked ok, but this sticks out like a sore thumb as everything else is dark wood. Again, if they'd given us the opportunity to pay to upgrade to something better, or to buy a vent ourselves, then this would have been a million times better. It won't matter for a lot of people, but ours is right beside the main door and very noticeable. We'll have to look into getting the finish sorted one way or another, but it'll be after Christmas when we've got time. Internally the boiler sits much lower, so we'll have to get a new cupboard as there are pipes everywhere, whereas the old one was completely concealed and just looked like a kitchen wall cabinet. All very minor though, and I'm sure that we'd have had small issues like this whatever system we chose.

Customer service good so far - we had the electrician the following day after the install as promised just to do the small wiring job that was necessary, and we had a tiny leak (single drip every few hours) from a pipe below the boiler, for which they sent a 3 man team within a few hours of us reporting it! They said that they're just starting the refer-a-friend scheme for the boilers, which they did on the solar panels... if it's the same, then it's in the interest of anybody thinking of applying for one of these to find a friend to refer them, as both parties get £50 (as opposed to nowt you'd get if you just apply without referral), so put down the name and address of a friend who already has one fitted!

I agree with some of the points made above about the advertising, and if ASG read this then PLEASE sort it out! The 'from £4.44 a week' is simply not true... it's not possible to get one of your boilers for £4.44 a week because that's only for the second 3-month period - it's £38 a month for the remainder of the 14 years. That alone would normally be enough for me to scrap plans to use a particular company because I don't like misleading adverts... in this case I already have their panels so went with it anyway, but other people think it's a con, and deliberately trying to hide the price doesn't help the case there. Similarly, the 'everlasting boiler' and 'a new boiler every 9 years' (or 10 as it said in an email) isn't clear enough - they still haven't been able to tell me what the cost of the upgrade would be. And I had a very weak marketing email from them the other day using the old 'hurry, limited stocks available, offer ends soon' DFS type marketing....please!! We're not all stupid!! I can therefore see why many people are put off. Marketing is meant to be positive, not turn people away before they even start!

Happy to answer any questions anybody has from an entirely neutral viewpoint - feel free to PM me

pandapaws

cheesedoffwithdebt wrote: »

I looked at them and phoned- the details all seem less than transparent. You are stuck in a ten year contract and if anything adverse happened they could pop round and take back the boiler. They must be making masses of money with this as the advertising is relentless, very sceptical I'm afraid

It's a 14 year contract, but once I'd got beyond the initial poor adverts and spoken to someone the costs were all very transparent. You can upgrade after 10 years, but they're not yet saying how much that'll cost. If you don't, though, you get to keep the existing boiler and they'll continue to service/replace it if required for the 14 years.

And they're NOT going to come and take the boiler away over a minor misunderstanding - if something adverse happened, then this would be an essential payment, like rent, gas, electricity and therefore have priority over debts, sky tv etc when it came to debt collection, if that's what you're referring to. A second hand boiler would be virtually worthless to them, and it would cost them money to remove it, so it would take a LOT of missed payments in my opinion for things to ever get to that stage. The odd mix-up over direct debits with the bank that may happen from time to time isn't going to see someone ripping the boiler out of the house!! I'm sure there are laws against that anyway - they'd need warrants or something, I'm sure.