Annual service of gas boiler and gas sitting room fire

A question about : Annual service of gas boiler and gas sitting room fire

How much would people expect to be charged for this please?

On moving to a (slightly cheaper) area, I was rather surprised to find myself being quoted noticeably more than I am used to paying in my previous area. I was expecting the charge would be 90%-100% of what I had been used to paying.

Both in my last area and this area I have been using a one-man band (so not swopped from man-on-own to big firm).

Best answers:

• My local firm charges Ј75 for a gas boiler, fire, and hob. That includes 25 miles of travelling (I think they add a bit on for the travelling time)
• In B'ham people pay around 65 pounds upwards just for the boiler service, fire probably more like 35.
  You could probably get it done for a total of 100 quid.
  Anything less than that is mega cheap..
• Whew! Now got me wondering how long these gas services take, as I've never timed it to see.
  A service of, say, 1.5 hours worth at that rate would be around Ј65 per hour.
  I was in the wrong job I think...
  My last guy just automatically did the fire, chucked in with doing the boiler and checking the radiators and so I assumed they all did.
  Can I cut costs a bit by just doing the boiler then and not doing the fire? Would that be safe? I'm thinking that if its apparently the norm to charge the fire as a separate thing, then mustn't that mean the fire doesn't actually need to be done regularly iyswim?
• Hi
  Last year I paid Ј75 for boiler and hob service. Maybe it was above average...I will shop around more this year.
  If you decide not to have the fire serviced, make sure you are still covered by insurance if anything goes wrong. I think there is a clause in my policy that states I am not covered if something goes wrong with my boiler and I haven't been servicing it yearly.
• Boiler services usually take around an hour. I wouldn't say it was a Ј65 pound profit for the hour though, they've got general business costs to pay and travel, tools etc.
  Heating engineer pricing varies mainly on whether or not they are busy, some tradesmen know what they are doing but aren't confident enough to win potential customers around or have no sense of advertising which means some work on the cheap and probably pocket the cash and pay no tax etc
  Whether your fire needs servicing every year... i'm not so sure, possibly depends on how old the fire is and what type etc. I have a relatively modern style gas fire and had that serviced, a fire service is pretty simple though, they poke around and vacuum the mess out of the tray. The guy worked for us on and off at the time so only charged 20 quid.
  Whether i benefited more than 20 quid as a result of the service in terms of gas use... wouldnt think so. Wasn;t my idea to service it though.
• I think you'd be looking at less than Ј100 I think, well when I got some quotes for a simple boiler service were highly varying - someone even wanted Ј150 !?!! Phew, there's no better way to get a good price than to get quotes in mind - it's why stl heating got the order to service my boiler - as they tended to be the cheapest in area. I mean who wants to pay more when you don't have to. One word of advice is to avoid them big names as they'll charge a lot !
  But yeah get some prices in from local firms and see what prices you find.