Is boiler cover worth it?

Boiler cover is sold as a small monthly payment, which over a year adds up to a sum worth weighing against what repairs would actually cost you. Whether it is smart depends almost entirely on how old your boiler is.

When cover is probably worth it

Your boiler is out of warranty and over eight years old. Parts fail on a curve, and you are on the wrong end of it.

You could not comfortably find the cost of a major repair in a hurry. Cover is not really insurance in that case, it is a way of turning an unpredictable bill into a predictable one, and there is nothing wrong with that.

You are a landlord. The annual service and CP12 are often bundled, and the admin alone can justify it.

When it is probably not

Your boiler is under warranty. You are paying twice for the same protection. Check the warranty length before you buy anything - many are now ten years.

Your boiler is under five and serviced. The odds of a big failure are genuinely low.

You could absorb a big repair bill without pain. Over ten years the premiums add up to considerably more than most people spend on repairs in that time.

The bits people miss in the small print

The excess. Most policies charge one on every claim, and it makes cover much less useful for the small faults you were probably worrying about.

The exclusion for pre-existing faults, and for boilers over a certain age - some policies will not cover a boiler over fifteen at all, or will cover it but exclude the parts most likely to fail.

The service requirement. If you skip the annual service, the policy may not pay out, which puts you in exactly the position you were paying to avoid.

The uncomfortable question

If your boiler is old enough that cover looks obviously worthwhile, it is old enough that you should be pricing a replacement. Paying every year to insure a machine that is also wasting gas every winter is a strange place to be standing.