When Christmas doesn’t go according to plan….

I hope you’ve all had an amazing Christmas!

We certainly have although it didn’t go according to plan as we woke up on Christmas morning to find our central heating boiler had decided to choose Christmas Day as the day it was going to go on strike!

We had no heating and no hot water and although the weather’s been mild lately, there was a definite chill in the air in our house! We spent most of the day wrapped up in our dressing gowns wearing thick fluffy socks tucked up under blankets which wasn’t in my plan for Christmas Day!

It was freezing but even worse than the temperature in the house was the fact that there wasn’t enough hot water for me to have my annual Christmas Day bath which is probably the one bath of the year that I get to have uninterrupted. I look forward to trying out some of the smellies that I inevitably get each year while reading the obligatory Christmas book gift and drinking an essential Snowball.

We spent more time together than we usually do at Christmas because the kids were too cold to head upstairs and play with their presents as they usually would so actually it turned out to be a lovely day snuggled up together in the living room.

One thing I didn’t have to worry about was finding someone to fix the boiler over Christmas and how we were going to pay for it as last time our heating broke the call out charges were astronomical on a normal day never mind over the Christmas Bank Holiday weekend.

I’m so relieved that we took out the boiler cover insurance last year because it meant that all I needed to do was pick up the phone and call British Gas to arrange an appointment. From dialling the number to getting a text confirming my appointment was less than five minutes!

I didn’t call them on Christmas Day (even though the are 24/7 for the British Gas Homecare service because I didn’t want to interrupt someone else’s family Christmas having someone come out to us so I didn’t end up calling them until we got back from our shopping trip on Boxing Day (Don’t ask – 8am start in the rain as Miss Frugal wanted to get to Boots and Lush for the bargains). It was lunchtime by the time I got back and called them and we were supposed to be going out for a family dinner that afternoon so we arranged an appointment for the following day.

The engineer was out to us by 8.30am and we were warm again with new parts fitted by 10am! We didn’t have to pay a penny to get it fixed or have the hassle of finding someone to come out to us over Christmas!

There are lots of companies who provide similar service to British Gas Homecare and I strongly recommend looking into getting boiler insurance if you haven’t already got it!

I don’t think British Gas were the cheapest when we compared prices but they were more than reasonable and I think we went with them because Mr Frugal said he had more confidence in them than some of the smaller firms. We paid a little bit more for the service where there is no call out charges and after having it for just short of a year, I think it’s more than paid for itself now.

We’re always quick to call out the bad service we get so I wanted to share with you our experience with British Gas Homecare. Not only did they get us back up and running quickly and with no hassle, their customer services on the phone and on social media were brilliant.

Thank you British Gas Homecare!

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