Thursday January 05, 2006

What cover do you have?

Whenever you buy anything nowadays you always seem to be asked to purchase extended guarantees, insurance etc. These cover cars, credit cards, electric appliances etc. We have our own motley selection of these schemes. On Xmas day we had to test the effectiveness of one of them. So we got up late on Xmas day and the heating had turned itself off - it is on a timeswitch. It was cold so my wife asked me to turn it back on. Later on there was no heat from the radiators but an unfortunate sound from the airing cupboard where some of the central heating bits are. I remember that heating systems have switched valves to direct the heated water to either the hot water tank or the radiators or both. One of these switches was making the noise. I also remember they have an overide switch so you can manually direct the water flow. This worked for a short time and heat started coming out of the radiators - as long at the timeswitch was set to have the hot water on. Meanwhile I rang the vendor to arrange a long term fix. It turns out you needed a double failure of both heating and water to qualify for a callout on xmas day. As we have an electric heater inside the water tank and a small gas fire in the living room we would have to wait until the UK finished its Xmas holiday in three days time as our problem was not classed as an emergency. I managed to then persuade the helpline that with the cold weather on the way when they did come round they would find two frozen people. She relented and said the maintenance man would arrive the next day - Boxing day the 26th. Meanwhile my temporary fix failed and the house started to get cold. I took the lid off the switch and found it had come loose from its outer surround. A quick tighten with the screwdriver and all was well. When the man came the next day he confirmed my diagnosis.

So the moral of the story is by all means sign up for these policies but make ure you know what conditions trigger someone coming out to assist you in your time of need. I am about to purchase a car breakdown cover and you can be sure I am going to ask some pretty tough questions...