Home Care Cover

[Catlady2021]

Hi All,

So been paying British Gas £22 for quite a few years for homecare. For boiler cover , heating and plumbing.
To be fair they’ve always been quite good, came out and made repairs on our boiler.

We’re looking at getting a new boiler, which comes with 5 year’s warranty. I also realised that our bank , Halifax Ultimate Rewards, comes with emergency home cover. We’ve been paying for this for years.

Have I been paying British Gas hundreds of pounds a year for no reason? Our bank provides emergency home cover, although I’ve never actually called them out.

Should I ditch paying British Gas and just stick to my banks cover? The Halifax account says it cover home emergency’s including boiler failure and water leaks. Although I’m not sure how serious a leak it must be to call them. When we had a leak a few years ago under our kitchen sink, we called out British Gas who use Dyno Rod. We paid an excess charge but they did have to come back a few times so probably got our monies worth.

Have I been double covered?

I was in the same situation as you OP few years ago. I was paying British Gas home care while having Halifax rewards account as well until we decided to have our new boiler installed and now I pay £15 a month to the company plumbing , heating and boiler service every year. Even though I still have halifax rewards account.
I have called halifax few times and each I have been told it’s not covered or they will come in and tell me it’s tear and wear and they can’t fix it and I have to call the home insurance instead. The only reason I’m still pay for the account is because of the mobile insurance and break down cover for the car rather than that Halifax home emergency cover on the reward is useless

Thanks for your reply mumof3. We have the same situation as you- we only really kept having the ultimate reward account because of the overdraft, the AA cover and travel insurance. Also mobile insurance.

The AA cover is good as it covers most eventualities including homestart and just being a passenger in someone else car.

We did try to go with HomeServe for homecare including the boiler but the gas engineer said he couldn’t cover our boiler because he found too many faults- even though British Gas didn’t!

Although the Homerserve engineer was very thorough - he was here quite a long time. But the engineer didn’t say great things about Homeserve saying how many jobs they are given and he nearly didn’t turn up to ours because he would finish work very late. They apparently had to beg him to do our job !

Homeserve must be understaffed with gas engineers.

I wouldn't bother. I had the BG one years ago and they kept delaying how often they'd do the boiler service, then quibbling over what they would or wouldn't do.

Now I have a standing order for that sort of amount going into a Regular savings account each month. Same for any 'warranties' for appliances - I never pay for an extended one, just put similar amount each month into savings.

And a reliable local plumber who costs less than BG.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/boiler-insurance/

I’ve just read this message so bumping it up.

Im currently trying to cut back on bills and have quite an old boiler ( house is 22 years old, but we’ve been here 7 years).

We still have British Gas homecare and they’ve always came out when our boiler failed. They also agreed to cover our boiler when HomeServe refused to after doing an inspection.

We also still have an Ultimate Reward Account with Halifax. It says it cover loss of central heating and a boiler breakdown.

Id rather like to save myself £20 a month a ditch the homecare cover. Although they do come and service it every year.

Anyone else used Halifax home emergency for their boiler repairs?

I wouldn’t bother with anything from british gas - massive rip off - just find a really good plumber who will service your boiler every year. Should be £100-140 per year max

You'd be better off saving £20 a month into a regular savings account, using that to pay an independent plumber to service it annually and build up a savings buffer to pay for any repairs or eventual replacement.

Yeah a boiler service can cost around a £100.

When British Gas do it it only takes them 30 minutes, not much more than an hour.

Only reason I’ve kept the BG Homecare is we’ve in the past had to call them out and they’ve replaced parts etc as part of the service, probably 5 times in 7 years.

This is circuit boards and things similar to that.

Our boiler is old , not sure on its age but we’ll keep it going until it’s completely done for.

I want to reduce our outgoings, but also like to have the security of cover.

I just don’t know if Halifax Reward accounts cover boiler breakdown and loss of hot water. If they do , we’ll cancel BG home care.

Hi I've had Halifax for years and never had any other cover, it works perfectly but only emergency care and upto 250 spend.

My current boiler is new , my previous one was 20 yrs old and they kept it going.