British Gas HomeCare has saved me from potential frostbite twice now so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about why I love them but…. Before I start, I am NOT working with British Gas at all on this post (although I have just added in my refer a friend link just in case you do decide to sign up with them). 😇
I pay for my British Gas HomeCare cover myself and have done now for a good few years – in fact, I first wrote about them in 2015 when they saved Christmas for us after we woke up on Christmas morning to find we had no heating.
They saved me again a couple of weeks ago when I came home from work on a Friday night full of the joys of the weekend to come and found a lovely puddle of water under my boiler which thankfully didn’t fill me with as much dread as it could have done as I knew from experience how good British Gas had been last time I’d needed them in an emergency.
I turned the boiler off at the wall, logged onto my account online to and within five minutes I had an appointment for the following day – presumably as I’d selected the box to say I had no heating. The appointment time was anywhere between 8 am and 6 pm but with the promise of a text and a call from the engineer when he was close by so I knew when to expect him.
Saturday morning came and I got a text at 8 am to let me know the engineer was in my area and then around 8.30 I got a call to say he was on his way. He arrived and had a temporary fix in place in no time at all with the promise of a return visit on Monday with a part that I needed to fix the fault once and for all.
It was as easy as that.
No stress, no having to ring around to find someone who could come out on a weekend, no worries about cost, and no cold weekend which is why I genuinely couldn’t recommend having boiler cover like this in case you ever need it.
I pay £13.50 a month for my British Gas HomeCare cover which works out to £156 a year and seems a huge bargain when you consider how much I would pay for call-out charges, parts and labour. Especially over a weekend…
The prices above are the average prices which I got from the Checkatrade website as I have no clue at all personally but I also found this price list showing the average cost of the most common faults…
The fault with my boiler was the heat exchanger which according to these costs from the Heating Force website would have set me back £475 making my £13,50 seem like an even better deal, doesn’t it? And I get an annual service included which would be great if I’d remembered to get it done this year after missing it last year due to COVID. 😂
If you’re interested, cover with British Gas HomeCare starts from £13 a month for HomeCare One but I just went for HomeCare Two for the extra 50p a month, and to be honest, I’m thinking about upgrading to HomeCare Four at the minute to get plumbing, drains and electrics covered too for the extra £5 a month.
You might even be able to get cheaper cover elsewhere if you shop around but I’ve always had such a good experience with the British Gas HomeCare cover that I don’t think I’d consider changing for a couple of pounds a month.
Also, I know lots of you might think about using a sinking fund to put money aside to cover things like this but it would have taken me 3-4 years of paying £13.50 a month to have covered just this one repair – never mind the odd non-urgent call out I’ve made and the annual services so I much prefer the peace of mind that this gives me.
So that’s my experience of British Gas HomeCare cover.
If you do decide to sign up with them, use my refer a friend link and we both get some Amazon vouchers as a treat too! In fact, it looks like the HomeCare Four cover will give you £100 of Amazon vouchers which is almost half the cost of the cover. If you go for HomeCare Two like me then you get £50 worth.
Whatever you choose to do, whether it’s to take out some kind of cover, use a sinking fund to save, or just to make sure you have enough in your emergency fund to pay for repairs without struggling then please, please do something. Just one night with no heating or hot water was horrible so a full weekend or longer would be awful – especially if you have young children.
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