Acorn Stairlifts

bromide1975

Just in case you are looking at low cost stairlift options for a loved one or relative I am sharing my recent experience. Having read Acorns website claims regarding customer aftercare and the fact that they are a UK design and manufacture company with an established presence I thought they would be a good bet. My Aunt had recently died leaving a house with an Acorn stairlift installed at some time in the past. It was installed on the left hand side of the staircase, looking up the stairs, which did not suit my mum's house, where I planned to re-install it. The Acorn equipement (it's a Superglide 120) is nicely made, simply designed and easy to convert from left to right hand operation, if you are of a common sense mechanically minded with a set of spanners. The one component that does not transfer across is the plastic carriage cover. I called Acorn, who claim to have realised that customer aftercare is of paramount importance, gave the address details of my aunt's house where the stairlift had been fitted  to be told that Acorn did not have the address registered and could not supply ANY spare parts. They could however offer an engineer to call at a call out cost of £185!! to quote for fitting a plastic cover, and unable to tell me what the price of the cover might be. I can buy on the cover on ebay (when they are available) for between £25 and £50. Obviously that is the route I will now be taking but, what a shame that an established (and respected?) UK company doesn't consider the supply of non-safety critical replacement parts a good strategy for a customer-centred organisation. Maybe some of the other comments on this forum and other places on the web, regarding hard sells and over zealous (and over priced?) insurance and annual maintenance plans are not far off the mark. Do your research before swallowing Acorn's claim about customer aftercare, it probably has more to do with their profit margins than your well being?