‘Renting’ a boiler through Boxt?

[Boilingover24]

Has anyone done this? They seem to have suspiciously good reviews but most seem to be for the installation part alone. Combi boiler has gone. Only 4 years old but was very cheap and the cost to repair is as much as the boiler. Massive error and regret for buying so cheap and no guarantee that I can see. So we are currently without heating or hot water and have been for several weeks already. We can’t afford the initial outlay for a new one. Have been looking at the British Gas monthly payment thing but it doesn’t cover any repair or service costs. Our other issue is finding a good reliable heating engineer round here. It’s been a complete headache.

Discovered that you can rent a boiler from Boxt for around £40 pm and as far as I can see this covers everything. Services, repairs, replacement if necessary. You are tied in for 10 years, so whilst expensive could easily amount to roughly the same as initial outlay plus extras for buying a boiler. You don’t own the boiler and won’t after the 10yrs, but as dh says he thinks they are a liability rather than an asset and neither of us are both particularly bothered by this. We basically just want a reliable heating source with a reliable engineer without an enormous outlay. What are the downsides? Because to me this looks like a good option and I don’t get why more people don’t do it! We won’t be selling the house and no guarantee that a purchased boiler would last more than 10 yrs anyway. What am I missing?

I had a difficult experience with Boxt but was for a supply and fit not a rental.
I bought an expensive high flow bosch from them and the engineer that fitted it did something wrong, don't ask me what. The result was a new boiler that didn't work. Further Boxt engineers arrived over the next 3 days to try and resolve it. After 4 days of no heating and hot water I threw a wobbly and told them to take the new boiler away and give me a full refund. At that point they called in a proper Bosch engineer who arrived with another new boiler and fitted it working by the end of the day. He told me they had broken the first boiler by attaching wrong pipes to wrong connections. I wouldn't deal with boxt again personally.

It sounds like a good deal to me, but of course depends on the small print.

£40x12*10=£4,800.

I would have thought you could get a combi boiler installation for £2-£3k or so and with a boiler that has a 10 year guarantee. A combi boiler replacement should be pretty easy, 1 days work.

Things I would watch out for is stuff like you being "forced" to buy the boiler at a set price if you terminate the contract in 10 years, or pay for its removal. Also how does it work if you move house during that period ?

How does it stack up against a personal loan for a boiler with a 10 year warranty ?

I think 4 years for your original combi boiler is appalling. It must have been a very low cost model to fail in that amount of time.

I would google, check out trustpilot and other sites for comments on the rental agreement. generally from what I have seen of Boxt they are well thought of.

Many boiler installation companies offer interest free or low interest finance which sounds like far less of a headache - my boiler was fitted through iHeat which at the time offered the opportunity to pay interest free over three years. I bought outright so can’t comment on that part, but was very happy with their pricing and the installation.

It’s quite appealing - I didn’t know you could do it - but it could work out expensive - £4800 over 10 years - I recently had a very good Worcester installed that has a 10 year warranty and includes services for about £2800. So that’s the question I guess.

Thanks for everyone’s thoughts. I understand it will be more costly over the 10 years. Just trying to work out by how much I guess. We’ve had the most awful luck with boilers in general so it’s appealing to me to have all repair costs covered for one price, rather than pay monthly to pay off the boiler plus repair and service costs. I think that’s clouding my judgement. Last combi boiler was incredibly cheap. A £600 biasi yet the guy who fitted it swore they were decent and he’d never had any problem with them, and he used them in his own home. He wasn’t affiliated in any way so we trusted him. Lesson learned!

A family member had one fitted last year and they didn't connect 2 of the pipes together tight enough causing a ceiling to come down when they were installing it. The fitters knew there was a major leak somewhere but it was too late for the ceiling by the time they got the water switched off. 18 months later and the repair still isn't totally finished.

We bought a boiler via Warmzilla-a top of range one with 10 year guarantee. Ongoing cost 90 pa for service. They start much cheaper than ours with decent warranties and interest free credit ours costs 115 pm for 2 years but then it’s ours-no further payment apart from servicing.

I had a Worcester Bosch installed by Boxt a couple of years ago and it was great. It was a fairly large one and cost £2100 inc installation. I also use their £8 per month cover, which includes an annual service. That has been more of a mixed bag - the first engineer had an accident that took out the boiler and electrics for a few hours - he just went to his next appointment and I had to get Boxt to send someone else. But they did sort it out very quickly.

i wouldn’t want to spend £5k on renting something that costs £2k to buy (plus £864 for 9 years servicing), and if I was buying your house, I’d want a reduction if it didn’t have a boiler - I’d count it as not having heating and hot water. I wonder if it would also make it unmortgageable?

I think getting a low interest loan would be better.

Sorry, just saw you won’t be selling. I still think it’s a waste of money. My old boiler lasted longer than 10 years. Don’t forget at some point they won’t allow new combo boilers, so it could be that after 10 years you’ll need to cough up for a heat pump.