British Gas demanding £600 to "flush" my heating system

[fedupwasherwoman]

I have a homecare policy and called BG as a radiator is leaking.
We had one radiator replaced last year as it too was leaking and they implied that with the age of the whole system, any other radiator in the house could start leaking at any time due to rusting from the inside out and need to be replaced in the future too so I thought nothing of calling them out again this year.

Will they be replacing the radiator for free under our homecare policy ? Oh no they won't!
They say that we must pay £600+ to have some sort of flush carried out as some back up of something or other in the system will cause all of the system to fail in due course.

They tried to sell me a powerflush last year but I was advised by an independent plumber not to have it as it is debatable as to the effect it has and it can damage aged systems.

I am being held to ransom as it would be cheaper to pay to replace the radiator than to have the powerflush at £600 before they'll replace the leaking radiator under the homecare policy.

Is anyone's other half a plumber ?

Do I really need this flush thingy and how will it stop my aged radiators from rusting and leaking (all except one of the radiators are 25 years old)

bump

can't you just bleed the radiators?

If I were you, I would get that independent plumber back in to give a written quote for the replacement of the radiator and also a summary in writing of why a powerflush would not be necessary.

Then I would write to BG stating that unless they honoured their homecare agreement to replace the radiator, you would be complaining to [insert name of appropriate watchdog organisation, is it Ofsomething?] that they keep trying to blackmail you into carrying out a more expensive procedure where it is not necessary. Also, tell them that where they refuse to carry out the replacement as per your agreement, you expect a refund of the last year's worth of payments since they have breached their contract with you.

Personally I think their homecare agreement is a rip-off. We signed up a couple of years ago and when they sent an engineer round to do a routine inspection some 3 months after we signed up, he insisted that we carry out the "powerflush". I called and cancelled the agreement and had to fight for nearly a year to have those 3 months' payments refunded.

I had a new boiler and one plumber said I had to have my entire system flushed out for a cost of £300 (that didn't include the £2500 for the boiler and some other work)

The plumber who did the job in the end said that the flush was debatable and just drained the system.

I would definitely get a second opinion.

Thanks guys

Has anyone else actually had a powerflush and if so what were the costs/results or benefits ?

Yes I used to have that british gas homecare , its making me cross remembering! I paid in for about 10years ,then when our rads started leaking they said most of the system was too old for them to get spares for and we would have to buy a whole new heating system . it was only about 17 years old too so not out of the ark or anything.

Anyway we did get the new heating but through a local guy ,not british gas!
We had to have a powerflush because the boiler manufacturers insist on it ,otherwise they wont guarantee the boiler. Also our system had been running with no inhibitor in it so it was all clogged up
I cant really tell any difference ,except that now I have nice new non-rusty rads with trv's on them.
sorry but I'm not sure how much the flush alone cost ,the whole bill was just under 4k for everything , £600 sounds v expensive though because it only took about 2 or 3 hours for the flush

We were quoted £250 for a powerfush by an independent plumber (who we've used before and trust). No way would I consider paying £600, unless I had a house with many many radiators in.