Recommendations for emergency cover for water and gas please?

[IsabellaGoodthing]

This morning we found water dripping through the ceiling from the tank in the loft so we turned off the stopcock, felt pleased that we had Emergency Cover with our Policy Expert buildings insurance, and lodged a request. It was impossible to speak to a human being but I filled in a form with all the details, then had to register an account with their partner Sedgwick.com who dealt with the emergencies, and eventually was promised a phone call within 2 hours and a home visit within 2 days - seemed a tad slow for 'emergency' situations.
We didn't receive a phone call in the specified period and Trustpilot showed that Sedgwick has form for slow response times and poor work, including a technician arriving without the correct materials, a handyman making the problem worse rather than better, and even charging for providing a permanent fix when a temporary fix is not possible!
It made me realise how vulnerable we are to future episodes and now I'm looking for a company that services your boiler etc and guarantees a swift response time to an emergency callout. Could anyone recommend one please?

Personally I would find a local independent person and pay as you go, an independent person or small company needs to trade on reputation, anyone with coverage beyond the surrounding districts is contracting work out at the lowest rates

We have cover from homeserve and have found them excellent. I also have landlord cover with them for 2 properties- and they have been out within 4-6hrs and solved the issues.... (However we are near one of their big centres in the west midlands)

Thanks, in effect that is what we have been doing, but the local guys can't always manage a quick response in very cold weather because so many customers need them. So I'm thinking national rather than local.

Thank you. I've signed up to Homeserve. Looks really good.

Homeserve couldn’t help us when boiler packed up last winter. No heat or hot water and earliest appointment was in 3 days. Cancelled it and just put that money aside. If I need it for repairs it’s ready. This week boiler broke again. Local plumber fixed it same day. These ‘plans’ are not great IME.

These big national home emergency companies always seem to be a bit crap and are very much putting all your eggs into one basket.

Put the money you would have spent on monthly premiums in to savings, to use when you have an emergency. And then you are free to ring 20 different tradespeople until you find someone available to help ASAP.

If you pay premiums to one company and then find when it comes to the crunch they can't respond quickly enough then you have wasted your money.

Better to be free to pick from a larger pool of trades, then you massively improve the odds of finding someone available to help.

I know what you mean. I signed up for the £4 a month cover so it's not much money but I think increases the chance of getting help at busy times.. They have got far fewer bad reviews than Sedgwicks who seemed pretty useless.