We all have white goods in our kitchens, be it fridge, freezer, cooker/oven, washing machine, maybe even a tumble dryer and dishwasher, as well as things like boilers elsewhere in the house.
All have electronics and moving parts, so at some point, something is going to break on them.
One’s gas boiler should be regularly serviced every year for safety, I’m not allowed to do that servicing by law, only a registered Gas Safe engineer can do that, and that is to protect people form blowing themselves (or others) up, or messing with oxygen flow and suffocating either themselves, or others – so as I’ve said, fine, I’m happy with that.
For a monthly fee, £25 in this case, we can call upon the services of British Gas to come out to so the annual servicing, and fixing for free, along with fixing any failures with the heating/hot water system that the boiler is attached to, great
What isn’t so great is that these cowboys try to repeatedly bludgeon you into taking out their entire “white goods” insurance scam policy for at least £60 a month.
Woah, hold on there, I’ve said something controversial, I’ve called it an insurance scam.
It is, and I will explain why.
I’ve lived at the same address for 12 years, all with new appliances from day 1, fridge-freezer, cooker, oven, boiler and washing machine.
In that time, the washing machine has played up twice, the heating/hot water once, the boiler once, and the fridge freezer died.
So, lets look at the costs shall we.
Cost for the repair of the washing machine, £70+£50, boiler = nothing, hot water = nothing, (they cost nothing due to having the insurance of the regular boiler being serviced annually for £25 a month) fridge freezer replacement, £650 (but, note I got a Neff, so not cheap, in fact, one of the best built-in fridge-freezers money could buy, as well as one of the most expensive – it’s lovely).
So, in total, £720, but could have been as little as £550.
Now, the boiler and hot water would have cost about £300 all in to fix., so say £1100.
That’s £1100 in twelve years, or £100 per year.
With British Gas’s HomeServe scam at £60 per *MONTH* that would have been 60*12*12 = £1728.
I’ve just looked at a well-known electrical retailer’s site (no, not Comet as they are now in administration!!!) and here, let’s tot up the costs.
Assuming I didn’t buy the best new fridge-freezer I could have laid my hands on, this little lot could have set me back, 329, washing machine, 270, new gas hob, 230, new oven, 220 – thats £1049.
That’s £700 *CHEAPER* than paying British Gas for the insurance of the items over that same period, and that’s assuming that all the things break – but in actuality, what has broken that needed full on replacement ?
Only the fridge freezer, which I could have replaced for £329, leaving me around £1400 out of pocket had I taken up British Gas’ “generous” offer of appliance insurance.
Let’s take a second here, I would have had installation issues, as I would need someone else to install the gas hob, but, seriously, when does a stainless steel gas hob ever break ? Near as dammit, never.
Ovens, yeah, they fail, but, the cost of a new one and installation, not going to cut drastically into my £1400 saving of not paying an insurance to British Gas.
So, even *IF* my devices all broke, I’d still be less out of pocket by simply replacing them than I would be if I were paying BritshGas to “maintain” them.
In fact, in my case, they’d have to all fail twice, and require complete replacements before I would be noticeably out pocket by *not* having British Gas’ insurance policy.
Coming down to the financial bottom line, as everything does these days, it costs *MORE* to have these insurance services for your home appliance than it does to replace the bloody things when, and importantly *IF* they fail.
Services such as the British Gas HomeServe are not uncommon, there’s insurance for your Sky Box failing, one for your water pipes to be replaced – I could go on and on.
Bottom line here, as one expects, the insurance companies are ripping us all off – and we as the general public are stupid enough to cough up.
It’s no bloody wonder we as a country don’t have enough money to buy things to get the economy going – we are all paying the banks/insurers for another gamble that is unlikely to pay off.
