Chris Holford explained on 18/03/2018 :
An elderly friend has an Acorn stair lift. Acorn keep giving their
maintenance plan the hard sell. It costs over £400 a year; mind you they
charge £185 for a call out. These figures seem very high to me.
Is it worth getting the maintenance plan?
Are there independent people who can service stair lifts?
-any comments or experience?

A brand new Stannah, but now redundant (soon after install). It
included a service contract, where they pop in every 6 or 12(?) months
to service it. The service takes around 30 minutes. It seems to be just
a wipe down with an oily rag and a run up and down with the engineer
sat on it.

Rather than leave it unused with the battery on constant charge, I
asked the engineer if there was any way to easily isolate the battery,
so the PSU could be left off. He said the user switch at the rear was a
battery isolation switch, suggesting it would be fine with that off and
the mains off. WRONG!

The switch just isolated all the controls, plus the loss of mains
alarm, but left the unit still powered and the brake powered. That
resulted in flat and wrecked batteries. They replaced them on the
following visit, free of charge. The only way to safely isolate the
battery, is to go inside and pull the battery connection.

Would pay for someone an exorbitant fee to give it a wipe over with an
oily rag, not likely!