Acorn stairlift service costs

alastair_1954

My late father had an Acorn stairlift installed a number of years ago. In October last year he paid over £800 for his annual service and breakdown cover for the following 12 months. Within a few days (less than a week) he was admitted to hospital and sadly died 10 days later.
Acorn insisted that the £800 was not refundable, not even pro-rata, as he had had the benefit of the annual service. Nor was the product transferable to a new purchaser. This, in my opinion, is shocking behaviour. How can they justify their actions?
On a related topic, they could not offer a buy back service but would, as a gesture of goodwill, remove and scrap the stairlift free of charge. Sorry, but the cynic in me refuses to believe that stairlift would not be recycled internally by Acorn as spare parts, so now a perfectly good stairlift is being ripped out by myself and going directly to landfill. Just wrong on so many levels!

Laz123

We had a stair lift for my mum years ago, not Acorn but Stannah. After she passed I expected a fair amount because it was still in good nick and the original costs was thousands, but they dismantled it and took it away for £100. These companies are IMHO parasites.

alastair_1954

As well as the stairlift contract, we discovered he had been paying huge sums over the years for product breakdown insurances. He was 92 when he passed and had not replaced any of his white goods, televisions etc in decades and had never made a claim. One example of many: £90 a year to insure his Sky box, even though he no longer had Sky. These companies know exactly what they are doing, they auto- renew the policy every year at an ever increasing cost until the payments eventually cease, usually at death. Even then, in my dad’s case we still had to fight for payments taken immediately after his death to be refunded. In my mind this miss-selling scandal is far bigger than PPI ever was and should be outlawed.

cymruchris

In terms of buy-back or value - it would depend on the type of lift you had installed - if it had any curves in it (they are the ones that usually cost a few thousand) it would be scrapped, as it was designed bespoke for your stairs. The chances of it being the right shape and size for another set of stairs would be remote. There are spare parts involved you're right - and certain things that can be re-used - but not to the value of what you'd paid by a long way. I had some long discussions with several local independent stair lift installers (which I didn't proceed with as my dad passed away) but learnt quite a lot about how the big boys work, and it wasn't in a good way. 

Slinky

Are the neighbouring houses the same design as your father's? Any chance of flogging it to a neighbour for even a nominal sum, so that you know at least it would be denying a stairlift company the chance to ripoff somebody else?

Our try putting on Facebook marketplace and see if somebody else is interested.

DB1904

alastair_1954 said:

As well as the stairlift contract, we discovered he had been paying huge sums over the years for product breakdown insurances. He was 92 when he passed and had not replaced any of his white goods, televisions etc in decades and had never made a claim. One example of many: £90 a year to insure his Sky box, even though he no longer had Sky. These companies know exactly what they are doing, they auto- renew the policy every year at an ever increasing cost until the payments eventually cease, usually at death. Even then, in my dad’s case we still had to fight for payments taken immediately after his death to be refunded. In my mind this miss-selling scandal is far bigger than PPI ever was and should be outlawed.

Maybe you should have paid more of an interest in your dad's finance. How would the company insuring the sky box know he no longer had sky?

alastair_1954

Yes, I agree. However, getting an elderly relative to discuss money issues is easier said than done. The real issue though is with the automatic renewal of these policies. It cannot be in the consumers best interest to have policies auto-renewing year on year without any contact with the customer. The Sky box insurance was only one example, he had about a dozen or so of these policies, some covering the same risks, but as far as I know, the payment mandates just never expired. Perhaps there should be a cap on the number of automatic renewals before the contract has to be actively renewed?

DB1904

If only you could opt out of or cancel auto renew. 

cymruchris

alastair_1954 said:

Yes, I agree. However, getting an elderly relative to discuss money issues is easier said than done. The real issue though is with the automatic renewal of these policies. It cannot be in the consumers best interest to have policies auto-renewing year on year without any contact with the customer. The Sky box insurance was only one example, he had about a dozen or so of these policies, some covering the same risks, but as far as I know, the payment mandates just never expired. Perhaps there should be a cap on the number of automatic renewals before the contract has to be actively renewed?

Sadly then you'd get into the territory of 'Sorry sir you can't claim as your policy lapsed last year after 3 years of auto-renewal as per the (imaginary) law'' - 'but I didn't know' - 'sorry sir, we emailed you' - 'but now I'm out of pocket' - 'tough'....

It works both ways.... I can see where you're coming from, but it would also catch a few people out the other way too... (Although for most things realistically I'm not sure why you need these policies in the first place - as often over a couple of years you could afford a new one anyway - but that's another story).

alastair_1954

Legally correct perhaps, but morally wrong. Perhaps it is consumer law on unfair practices that needs to be tightened up here? Taking payments indefinitely on a maintenance contract for a domestic product with, at best, a five year lifespan has to be questionable. The small print will invariably say that the cost of any repair is limited to no more than market value anyway, so any claim after a relatively short period of time just would not be worth the effort. But they would still take the premiums until actively cancelled. In my dad's case this only happened after he died.