Recommend me emergency boiler cover

HellsBells

HellsBells

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Contributor
Currently have “emergency” boiler cover and recently upgraded it to include heating.

Hot water went off on Friday, so bloke came out Saturday morning and said he needed to get a part, would be back Monday. Not the end of the world, as we can stick the immersion on, so no rush.

Except since he’s been, we now have no heating either. He’s adamant it wasn’t working when he turned up on Saturday at 11, but I know fine well we had heating that morning so it’s a huge coincidence if the heating stopped working literally minutes before he turned up. He left the offending part hanging off the hot water tank, so we are incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, Scottish Power Boiler cover say the “emergency” part of our cover is a “helpline” that does nothing more than book appointments Mon-Fri. The house was freezing this morning, and will be overnight again tonight, and I’m just glad it’s not winter, or I’m a vulnerable 80 year old.

There’s a mis-selling complaint going in on Monday but in the meantime, can anyone recommend me decent emergency boiler and heating cover so I’m not left with nee heating or water in mid winter please?
 


We used British Gas years ago and I'm sure there was none of this Monday to Friday thing. We're now using a local lad who i would highly recommend, Andrew Halse, although I think he limits himself to Baxi. Obviously, that's not much use to you but you might want to check out BG (it wasn't cheap but you Londoners are dripping with money).
 
HellsBells said:
Currently have “emergency” boiler cover and recently upgraded it to include heating.

Hot water went off on Friday, so bloke came out Saturday morning and said he needed to get a part, would be back Monday. Not the end of the world, as we can stick the immersion on, so no rush.

Except since he’s been, we now have no heating either. He’s adamant it wasn’t working when he turned up on Saturday at 11, but I know fine well we had heating that morning so it’s a huge coincidence if the heating stopped working literally minutes before he turned up. He left the offending part hanging off the hot water tank, so we are incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, Scottish Power Boiler cover say the “emergency” part of our cover is a “helpline” that does nothing more than book appointments Mon-Fri. The house was freezing this morning, and will be overnight again tonight, and I’m just glad it’s not winter, or I’m a vulnerable 80 year old.

There’s a mis-selling complaint going in on Monday but in the meantime, can anyone recommend me decent emergency boiler and heating cover so I’m not left with nee heating or water in mid winter please?
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Scottish power are a joke.

cancelled mine with them for this very kind of reason
 
Don’t have it currently as got a new boiler not that long ago, but had British Gas previously and it was spot on.

we had an old boiler which would pack in every 3 months and they came and fixed it the next day every time no questions asked.

Eventually bit the bullet and got a new one, will get the cover again once it hits 5-7 years old
 
Not Homeserve.

I had home emergency cover. The pipe that feeds the bathroom sink started leaking on a Friday so I had to turn the water off at the stopcock. I called them and they sent a bloke out who had a quick look and said there was nothing he could do as the tiled floor would have to come up and he didn't have time to start ripping tiles up on a Friday afternoon. He said he would come back the following week. I said you can't leave me with no water all weekend, and he said there was nothing he could do and left.

Ended up ringing a local man who came straight out and fixed it in about an hour without having to rip the floor up.

Cancelled the cover after that and will just find a local tradesman if anything happens in the future.
 
HellsBells said:
Currently have “emergency” boiler cover and recently upgraded it to include heating.

Hot water went off on Friday, so bloke came out Saturday morning and said he needed to get a part, would be back Monday. Not the end of the world, as we can stick the immersion on, so no rush.

Except since he’s been, we now have no heating either. He’s adamant it wasn’t working when he turned up on Saturday at 11, but I know fine well we had heating that morning so it’s a huge coincidence if the heating stopped working literally minutes before he turned up. He left the offending part hanging off the hot water tank, so we are incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, Scottish Power Boiler cover say the “emergency” part of our cover is a “helpline” that does nothing more than book appointments Mon-Fri. The house was freezing this morning, and will be overnight again tonight, and I’m just glad it’s not winter, or I’m a vulnerable 80 year old.

There’s a mis-selling complaint going in on Monday but in the meantime, can anyone recommend me decent emergency boiler and heating cover so I’m not left with nee heating or water in mid winter please?
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I've got cover with British Gas. I know they don't have the best reputation but they've always been great when I've needed them. They even came out Christmas day morning the other year when the boiler started making horrific noises on Christmas eve.
 
Another vote for British Gas. They’ve always been good with us and give you an SLA which they stick to. As a family with young children, you’d be high priority for a no heating emergency.

on the downside, they do try the hard sell of the “we can’t get all of the parts” for your boiler. I had a look at the list of pets and the only one that was unavailable was the boiler cover. So if you deal with that part of it, the cover is quite good.
 
I've got British gas even though I've had a very bad experience with them as local tradesmen were even worse as they weirdly weren't interested in wanting work
 
HellsBells said:
Currently have “emergency” boiler cover and recently upgraded it to include heating.

Hot water went off on Friday, so bloke came out Saturday morning and said he needed to get a part, would be back Monday. Not the end of the world, as we can stick the immersion on, so no rush.

Except since he’s been, we now have no heating either. He’s adamant it wasn’t working when he turned up on Saturday at 11, but I know fine well we had heating that morning so it’s a huge coincidence if the heating stopped working literally minutes before he turned up. He left the offending part hanging off the hot water tank, so we are incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, Scottish Power Boiler cover say the “emergency” part of our cover is a “helpline” that does nothing more than book appointments Mon-Fri. The house was freezing this morning, and will be overnight again tonight, and I’m just glad it’s not winter, or I’m a vulnerable 80 year old.

There’s a mis-selling complaint going in on Monday but in the meantime, can anyone recommend me decent emergency boiler and heating cover so I’m not left with nee heating or water in mid winter please?
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I've had this issue with "emergency" cover for home insurance although the emergency was not boiler related.Complained and got £200 in compensation.
 
MackemBob said:
Another vote for British Gas. They’ve always been good with us and give you an SLA which they stick to. As a family with young children, you’d be high priority for a no heating emergency.

on the downside, they do try the hard sell of the “we can’t get all of the parts” for your boiler. I had a look at the list of pets and the only one that was unavailable was the boiler cover. So if you deal with that part of it, the cover is quite good.
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We had that with them too. We had a Vaillant boiler and he gave us the old "parts for these are becoming harder to source" patter (although they had all the parts to get us going again). I think we had a subsequent fault and mentioned this; the lad was puzzled as he reckoned they had tons of parts... obviously hadn't been on the "hard sell" course. They still never let us down though.
 
No problem with British Gas engineers for speedy emergency call outs though you have to call them to haggle after every renewal as they keep trying to put the price up.

Trouble with local independent plumbers is finding one that is available when you need them or having to pay a big call out charge.
 
MackemBob said:
Another vote for British Gas. They’ve always been good with us and give you an SLA which they stick to. As a family with young children, you’d be high priority for a no heating emergency.

on the downside, they do try the hard sell of the “we can’t get all of the parts” for your boiler. I had a look at the list of pets and the only one that was unavailable was the boiler cover. So if you deal with that part of it, the cover is quite good.
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Funnily enough I was told by Scottish Power that I was on the priority list with them, but I’d i am I feel sorry for the the poor bastards that aren’t.
Billericay Dichio said:
Given British Gas' recent treatment of its engineers I would hope no one would be using them.

Insurance companies like Direct Line offer cover. Must be many more.
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I was told that all the insurers do is to send out local engineers that they have on contracts anyway. I have the phone number of the engineers that Scottish Power sent me - the bloke who I reckon has knacked my heating. I would have thought Direct Line do the same kind of thing?

What’s the British Gas engineers treatment issue?
 
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We had ours with Baxi. Had been great for years until we got a problem this year with the boiler leaking. 2 weeks before someone could get round. He couldn’t fix it as he needed a part. We had to wait another week. Then two weeks later it broke again. Got someone in over the Easter weekend.

This has been the only time they’ve not been upto expectations. We get a service and the cover. Over the last ten years almost every part has been replaced.
 
HellsBells said:
Currently have “emergency” boiler cover and recently upgraded it to include heating.

Hot water went off on Friday, so bloke came out Saturday morning and said he needed to get a part, would be back Monday. Not the end of the world, as we can stick the immersion on, so no rush.

Except since he’s been, we now have no heating either. He’s adamant it wasn’t working when he turned up on Saturday at 11, but I know fine well we had heating that morning so it’s a huge coincidence if the heating stopped working literally minutes before he turned up. He left the offending part hanging off the hot water tank, so we are incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, Scottish Power Boiler cover say the “emergency” part of our cover is a “helpline” that does nothing more than book appointments Mon-Fri. The house was freezing this morning, and will be overnight again tonight, and I’m just glad it’s not winter, or I’m a vulnerable 80 year old.

There’s a mis-selling complaint going in on Monday but in the meantime, can anyone recommend me decent emergency boiler and heating cover so I’m not left with nee heating or water in mid winter please?
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You sure you not got any cover with ur bank account?
I with Lloyds and get emergency domestic breakdown as well as mobile phone, travel insurance & car breakdown recovery
Have used them for my boiler they were spot on
 
I had a new Baxi boiler fitted 4 years ago..came with a 7 year warranty..the boiler went off when we had the ‘beast from the east’ in 2018..i phoned them and they said it’d be nearly 3 weeks before they could get someone out..middle of winter bastard freezing 3 weeks..turned out to be nowt..condensate pipe frozen which i sorted..if I’d phoned someone out and they hadn’t been Baxi authorised and they’d replaced a part to get my boiler fixed..this would have negated the warranty..but they’ll let you sit and freeze for 3 weeks.
 
MackemBob said:
Another vote for British Gas. They’ve always been good with us and give you an SLA which they stick to. As a family with young children, you’d be high priority for a no heating emergency.

on the downside, they do try the hard sell of the “we can’t get all of the parts” for your boiler. I had a look at the list of pets and the only one that was unavailable was the boiler cover. So if you deal with that part of it, the cover is quite good.
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I haven't had any really hard sell from BG. They are clearly incentivised to push additional services so I occasionally allow them to price me up a job and then throw it away. For non-emergency routine work you are almost certainly better off going for a local plumber.
 

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