Warmfront - should we take the risk to save £1500?

[vonsworld]

My Mum is having her ageing central heating replaced and qualifies for a Warmfront grant.

However she is less than confident or impressed with Warmfront, as a result of her own experiences in dealing with them, and also from reading lots of negative publicity.

Not least their attempts to offload us with an Idel Isar boiler, which with a little research we discovered was notorious, unreliable, underpowered and discontinued. Apparently Warmfront purchased 10,000 as a job lot.

However, when we absolutely insisted, Warmfront did agree to quote for a Worcester Boiler instead, although getting them to do that was like pulling teeth.

My question is... we would save £1500 approx by going the Warmfront route, compared with hiring our own local installer. Is that saving worth the risk given the cowboy reputation they have acquired?

Put it another way, could they botch the installation so much, that it couldn't be put right for less than the amount we saved?

Thanks

 

[gas4you]

Unfortunately their installations vary from house to house and from city to city.

A general response to your question is yes

 

[kevindgas]

why not get a couple of quotes from independant RGI's in your area? and see if they can match the quote often the warmfront scam puts a high price on the job to start with.

 

[mickyg]

impossible to answer. I've seen some excellent warmfront installations, but also I've seen some awful ones. How much are you having to contribute and what work is involved? you may not be saving as much as you think. Usually even the poor installations can be rectified for reasonable cost. I recently rectified faults with an installation by an Iguana installer, that he did privately. It was LPG and he was not LPG qualified, but had someone else sign off the work. There were multiple faults, but they were fairly easily corrected. The customer has sworn blind the man will never enter her property again!

 

[mattylad]

What is the current system?

Can you arrange it so you have some old electric heaters & then get one of the A1 grants instead?
link

 

[bengasman]

Am a bit puzzled about saving £1500 by using warmfront, was a private quote £1500 more, or did warmfront have the gall to ask you for a £1500 contribution?
What is the job, like for like boilerswap or a lot more involved?

 

[izzy eckerslike]

If Warmfront grant is £3600 how can you only save £1500 by using them,

Ideal still offer isar HE boilers on their website so they are not discontinued at all so someones given you wrong information which probably includes the 10,000 job lot