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?
--
Chris Holford

On 18/03/2018 22:53, Chris Holford wrote:
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?

We use a local firm who sell and maintain stairlifts. The call-out is
£30 + VAT.

Everything about Acorn is a rip IMO.

Bill

Most of these companies try to make these pay just like selling and
installing them. Obviously there are other people who can do the job. Are
you suggesting that they will only supply genuine spares to their own
engineers, I think that is restrictive practices and used to be against the
law.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
news
On 18/03/2018 22:53, Chris Holford wrote:
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?

We use a local firm who sell and maintain stairlifts. The call-out is £30
+ VAT.

Everything about Acorn is a rip IMO.

Bill

Parts are probably available at much lower cost from Amazon, eBay or one of the electronic/mechanical parts suppliers such as Farnell

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!

On Sun, 18 Mar 2018 22:53:31 +0000, Chris Holford
wrote:

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?

Stairlifts are pretty simple devices and routine "maintenance" is
limited to cleaning the rack and replacing the batteries every few
years if they have started to fail.

Are there independent people who can service stair lifts?
-any comments or experience?

Usually not difficult to find. Maintenance contracts are rarely worth
the money.

In article , Chris Holford c.holford@brownswell
..myzen.co.uk writes
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?
Thanks for the helpful replies.
Will suggest she uses local co. for annual service and any repairs;
their charges seem to be about half the Acorn rates (and hopefully
quicker as they don't have to come so far).
--
Chris Holford