In article ,
"sro" writes:

Am I being unrealistic - are all modern devices complicated and unreliable ?
:-)

Yes. By turning such products into consumables rather than capital
purchases, the manufacturers keep themselves in business.
OTOH, such products are vastly cheaper in real terms than their
older long-lasting predecessors.

I seriously doubt you'll get 18 years out of any current boiler
without some major parts breaking. I also seriously doubt any
manufacturer will supply spares for anything like 18 years.

Thinking back over many threads in this newsgroup, the combi
part of a combi boiler does seem to be cause for many failures.
If you were looking for something trouble-free, you might want
to avoid a combi.

I have seen fewer problems than I might have expected specific
to condensing boilers reported here, so that might not be
something to worry about so much. However, that could just be
because there are relatively few condensing boilers used by
participents in this newsgroup -- that's hard to tell. The few
problems which have come up here have been initial teething
problems.

--
Andrew Gabriel