Cheap Boiler Services: are they good value?

Posted on 3 Sep 2008

We all want to spend as little as we can on keeping our homes toasty, particularly in these times of rising energy prices. But how low can you go before sacrificing quality and, more importantly, safety?

It's hard to put an exact figure on when a cheap boiler service becomes too cheap, but there's definitely a point below which you should think twice about paying for a Boiler Service. If your plumbing firm is quoting less than £50 for a full service you should probably ask why. You might be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but it's much more likely you're buying a lemon. OK, enough with the metaphors already!

£50 is around the minimum a CORGI qualified tradesman will quote for a call out and half hour's work, which is approximately what it'll take to service a boiler (presuming it doesn't have any faults). Any less than that and you might be buying a "gas safety check", during which flue output will be checked but the boiler won't be cleaned and put through annual maintenance procedures, leaving it much more likely to break down in future.

The worst case scenario is that a cheap quote results in an unqualified person performing the service (or indeed, no service taking place at all). We've heard tales of plumbers arranging cheap jobs then sending their (non CORGI-registered) apprentices round to do the job unsupervised. The recent wave of immigration into the UK has brought a great many skilled tradesmen, but Poland has it's share of cowboys too, so if you're being quoted a lowball figure for a cheap boiler service make sure they're CORGI registered and familiar with safety standards in the UK.