emergency cover

aoleks

hi all. now that we've settled in our new house, I'd like to think about some peace of mind. while the house has been renovated and the gas installation is brand new, there's always something that can go wrong. a burst pipe, a clogged toilet, a leak etc. I'm talking about major issues, btw, as I can easily fix a leaking tap or unclog a toilet.

what's the best way to handle this? I'm not the type who would insure everything, we have very high amounts of disposable cash every month, so an unexpected bill of £2000 would never be an issue, for example. I can't imagine a regular emergency costing that kind of money. do I insure? if yes, with who and what level? do I just leave it as is and pay if and when something happens? if yes, how do I go about creating a list of 24/7 emergency contacts I can call in case of emergency?

homeserve has some 50p / month insurance for the first 12 months, is it worth it?

thanks

neilmcl

I've never bothered as I think they're a bit of a ripoff, but then it's like any extended warranty/insurance cover. I've always made sure there's enough in the bank for an emergency and ensured my house insurance covers most mishaps. In my 30 years of home ownership I've never had to call out anyone for an emergency and I'm sure I've just been lucky but for a lot of people I'm sure they could count on one hand when they've had to use their cover, if at all.

BTW, that 50p a month cover from Homeserve is very limited and only really covers the stuff you said you were competent at doing yourself.

ashe

You can add home emergency cover to your home insurance, we've done that the last 4 years and had them out for all sorts

we originally had homeserve, and had them out a few times too, but prefer having it on the home insurance. Getting someone out within 24h in winter when your hearing goes off is invaluable. We have disposable cash as well but doesn't mean we want to be forking it out. The cover is fairly cheap and no excess 

FreeBear

Looked at "emergency" cover and the long list of exclusion clauses. As I am quite capable of fixing leaks & unblocking toilets (along with most other things), the insurance is of no use to me. The big ticket items such as losing the roof in a storm would be covered by the building insurance, as would damage caused by a major leak..

If you are good at DIY & general maintenance, your tool box will provide a much faster response than any insurance policy. That in its self will limit the damage and cost of repair.

TELLIT01

You need to check very, very carefully what is covered by emergency cover policies.  We had a neighbour's roof tile come through the roof of our conservatory in a storm.  I called the emergency number of our insurer who informed me that wasn't covered, it was for electrical, plumbing emergencies and similar.  That number was the only number on the policy documents for out of hours issues and the problem had occurred on a Saturday evening.  The person I spoke to was totally disinterested and just said phone back on Monday!  I was fortunate in knowing somebody who could apply temporary protection until I could get the insurers on Monday.

donemedosh

As others have said These insurance home cover policies have a lot of clauses & I know relatives who have had boiler cover / electrics & drains etc, but when things have gone wrong the insurance send in any old tradesperson to "fix it". Best thing is to get a list of local reliable people who you trust (not easy to do) & use them. Just put the money in an account (or a jar) & use that for repairs if you do not spend it on repairs then you can spend it on a holiday once the pot is big enough.

Bendy_House

When renewing our house insurance recently, the one that 'won' had emergency home cover and £100k's worth of LP at a price that would have been churlish not to...

No idea how useful the EHC will be, as like most on here I can tackle the majority of these jobs myself, but if something were to 'go' and cause a big mess, then it would be nice to have. It is limited to £500 per case, tho'...

(Ageas, in case anyone is interested.)

[Deleted User]

I was with Your Repair but decided not to renew it due to reading their T&C's and finding out they exclude more than they cover. Plus they kept changing the engineer who was going to come and do our annual boiler service 3 times. I could find no record online of the engineer they were finally going to send. No website, no reviews, no social media. Nothing. Y.R also couldn't tell me his Gas safe registration so I was not going to have an unknown person in the house.

Paying a monthly amount is good for YR as then they have your money but can hold you to ransom over who they send to do any repairs.

Section62

[Deleted User] said:

I could find no record online of the engineer they were finally going to send. No website, no reviews, no social media. Nothing.

That in itself isn't necessarily bad or sinister.

Someone who gets all the work they can handle from an insurer or service company, doesn't need to advertise themselves to get more work.

If anything, keeping a low online profile might help reduce enquiries from people that the trader is contractually bound not to work for directly (e.g. 'customers' of the insurer or service company).

Managing a website and SM presence takes time and money... no point doing it if it doesn't generate business that you need.

fenwick458

don't bother.
if you really want some sort of piece of mind then put some money into a jar every month.

all of the home emergency covers are the same script, they just take your money every month until something goes wrong. then you ring their call centre to report an emergency and an operative simply opens the yellow pages, finds a tradesman in your area willing to go to the job , bearing in mind that cost is important to them and time is not so for example they ring 3 plumbers and two are expensive and can do it tomorrow and one is cheap and can do it in 3 days, guess what you will get the cheap one! also they will instruct them to do the absolute bare minimum to make it safe, which in most cases is just to isolate the affected item which is quite basic
they also don't like to pay the trades, I used to do a few jobs now and then as it seemed to be easy money, but after the amount of follow up calls and e-mails to the accounting department to actually get paid, I have decided it's not worth the hassle.
 
Also, a lot of people often say "yeah but I want to know I'm getting a proper tradesman, I can't just phone around myself I have no idea who is a proper tradesman etc..."
well neither do they! every time I got called for a job nobody did any checks on my scheme registrations or qualifications. all they say is "can you go to a fault at XXX address and make it safe as cheaply as possible"

TELLIT01

Section62 said:

[Deleted User] said:

I could find no record online of the engineer they were finally going to send. No website, no reviews, no social media. Nothing.

That in itself isn't necessarily bad or sinister.

Someone who gets all the work they can handle from an insurer or service company, doesn't need to advertise themselves to get more work.

If anything, keeping a low online profile might help reduce enquiries from people that the trader is contractually bound not to work for directly (e.g. 'customers' of the insurer or service company).

Managing a website and SM presence takes time and money... no point doing it if it doesn't generate business that you need.

I agree.  My brother-in-law and his brothers and nephew are all builders.  None of them advertise and all have to turn work away.  All their work comes from recommendations from previous customers.