Boiler - ideal vs Worcester Bosch?

ChillyB · 2022-03-22T21:57:19+00:00

As it says on the tin really any pros or cons for an Ideal boiler vs a Worcester Bosch? The Worcester Bosch is coming out at £500 more. Plumber suggests we’d be paying that just for the Worcester Bosch brand name.

CorsicaDreaming · 23/03/2022 07:39

We have a Worcester Bosch now. Just fitted a year ago.

We had a Worcester Bosch fitted before that in our old house. Twelve years and (bar the annual servicing) it didn't need anything and worked perfectly

Before that we had an Ideal - it was utterly terrible and went wrong multiple times and I had many call outs. Really was as far from ideal as you can imagine.

When we had the last boiler fitted the plumber was really keen to fit an Ideal and said they used to be terrible at reliability but had now completely changed and were really good...

We still paid the extra and went for a Worcester Bosch. It's working fine no issues and house is toasty.

I think they actually may have really improved in recent years, but given our old experiences I would never get one personally.

40Jem · 23/03/2022 08:21

Just to throw something else in the mix, I had a Vaillant in my last property, brilliant boiler , serviced it every year and no problems ever , was still going strong at 15 years old when we left it. The new house has a Worcester Bosch , already had 3 call outs for it and haven't lived here a year yet. I'm replacing it with a Vaillant . Gas engineer I spoke to said Vaillant is better than Worcester Bosch in his opinion as well.

CasperGutman · 23/03/2022 08:59

We have a Worcester Bosch. They still seem fairly good, and I would consider getting another, but don't seem to sit at the top of the quality tree as they did a few years ago. I hear very good things about both Vaillant and Viessmann boilers.

Original poster

ChillyB · 23/03/2022 10:03

Thank you everyone, this is a bit of a minefield isn’t it! I think our current boiler is a baxi…it dates back to the 90’s and still works (but likely very inefficiently given it’s age and it’s a back boiler not a combi).

OP posts:

whoruntheworldgirls · 23/03/2022 10:06

I have an Ideal one, came with the house, it's about 4yrs old, works great, no issues so far, boiler service guy says it's a mid range kinda boiler.
Old house had Worcester Bosch which was annoying as had to be their parts which made it much more expensive when it needed work, but that was 13yr old boiler so maybe newer ones are better.

dementedpixie · 23/03/2022 10:07

The boiler we had replaced recently was an Ideal one and was over 20 years old. Replaced with Vaillant

nancy75 · 23/03/2022 10:08

@40Jem

Just to throw something else in the mix, I had a Vaillant in my last property, brilliant boiler , serviced it every year and no problems ever , was still going strong at 15 years old when we left it. The new house has a Worcester Bosch , already had 3 call outs for it and haven't lived here a year yet. I'm replacing it with a Vaillant . Gas engineer I spoke to said Vaillant is better than Worcester Bosch in his opinion as well.

I had a vailant boiler fitted 10 months ago, this month I have had 9 visits from British Gas and 1 from Vailant all unable to find the fault and fix it. Last week they had to put a new one in! I think you can get a dodgy one whatever the make.

Hugasauras · 23/03/2022 10:43

We have a Worcester Bosch and the customer service has been excellent. I called about an issue at 4pm on a Monday, the woman on the phone actually apologised they couldn't get someone out that day(!) and an engineer was at the door at 9am the next morning.

Our old boiler was a Worcester Bosch too and no problems with it.

ChocolateDeficitDisorder · 23/03/2022 12:59

We got a new central heating system under a Scottish Govt grant nearly 3 years ago (due to a disabled person living in the house). We had an elderly Worcester Bosch which was failing after 12 years and the boiler on offer was an Ideal.

We did our research and have found the Ideal to be perfectly equal in all measures to the previous boiler. It's not caused any problems and keeps our house and water toasty.

drpet49 · 23/03/2022 13:00

I’ve had an Ideal for last 8 years. No issues at all

Rebuildingconfidence · 23/03/2022 13:50

I had an Ideal boiler for four years in my last place. It worked perfectly. I've now moved and had a new Ideal boiler fitted yesterday.

My previous Ideal boiler replaced a Worcester bosch which developed a fault after seven years and was not able to be repaired.