Boiler and heating cover

[TheFoldOx]

I'm good at shopping around for all sorts of insurance policies, but for some reason have always let the boiler and central hearting cover roll over. I'm with British Gas, and for cover, including an annual service (which is rarely actually every 12 months) I'm now paying £484 per year (plus another £97 for cover for a single electric oven).

Unfortunately there's no comparison site for this cover. So I wondered roughly what others are paying, and who you're using? Would you recommend your provider?

Thanks!

Sorry, I know it's not what you asked but I don't pay anything for boiler and heating cover. I pay for the annual service each year (roughly £80) and touch wood, have never needed anything else but if I did, would just pay for it as and when. Save your £484 in your own account and use when required!

And £97 per year seems a bit of a rip off for a single electric oven. Have you ever actually needed to use the insurance for it?

£97 per year for an electric oven... It might break once in say 10 years? You could set aside say £50 a year and have £500 handy for paying for a repair or indeed replacing it outright.

I'd be interested to know what other insurance policies you have because if you have similar cover for other appliances and household furniture honestly you are getting ripped off when you could set aside a bit every month to cover any potential repairs or indeed complete replacement when needed. The policies are rarely good value for money.

I absolutely agree with other posters who've said what poor value it is - that's why I'm making a change. As I said upthread, I'm normally very hot on comparing costs and maximising value, but this one slipped through.

I have considered just using a savings account, but I wondered if anyone has good experience with other cover/insurance products? While the savings account idea is good for most things, the risk of a boiler failure and need for replacement before the account gets a decent sum in it cannot be excluded. I'd be willing to pay a little more for the peace of mind, especially given the age of my boiler, but in those circumstances I'd would want to be confident I was taking out a quality product/policy.

Hi Op. Just to note - Most boiler insurance cover policies will not pay to replace the boiler. You will find there is also a maximum amount they will cover for each repair.

We paid 75p a month for boiler cover as an introductory offer for twelve months with SSE (we did already have gas and electric with them) and upon renewal were quoted around £10 a month, shopped around and ended up paying something like £6.50 a month - call out charge of £35 and excess of £75 so it's not an all in policy but hopefully limits the potential bill of we do have an issue and boiler is five years old so hopefully not likely to need replacing for a few years yet but now old enough that the chances of an issue are probably higher. Have very few other insurance policies though aside from car and home

my boiler and heating cover is £15 a month from a local company.

With no call out fee

Something to check would be the age of your boiler and how that affects the cost/availability of cover, if it's old, it might not really be worth it from any provider.

Also consider your financial circumstances and ability to self insure - if your boiler did need replacing could you afford it/get credit to pay for it? If it's a like for like combi swap, it's likely to cost around £2k, so even if you don't have that amount of cash, unless you're on a very tight budget or already in debt, you'd almost certainly be able to pay for it on interest free credit or use a 0% credit card, so manageable if the worst happened.

Have a look at www.boxt.co.uk/. I've not used them, but they offer fixed price boiler replacement - you can get a quote on the website, 0% credit to pay for it over 1 or 2 years and also home cover, so you could also get a quote for that from them.

We've never had insurance products for anything like this, and even though our boiler has needed a few repairs over the years, it's probably still been cheaper than paying for insurance. Many repairs aren't that much more than the excess quoted above and even when our (15 YO) boiler needed a fairly major repair a few months back, it was 'only' around £350 and that included the annual service too.

I pay £18 per month for boiler and heating cover with a local company. It includes an annual service of the boiler, repairs of the boiler, heating and hotwater - but not boiler replacement. When the heating or hot water has broken down, I haven't had to wait more than a day or two for them to come out to fix it. There is no call out charge.

I pay about £40 a month for British Gas. Our boiler broke down when we had all that snow (was it December?) and we had no hot water or heating, unfortunately they were short staffed and couldn't get anyone out for THREE weeks!! They ended up telling us to find someone local and they would foot the bill. We couldn't find anyone and ended up for 12 days with no hot water or heating - it was absolutely awful 😢