SAM DUNN: Energy firms are leaving most vulnerable out in the cold! Insufficient heating cover needs to change... and fast

Updated: 06:17 EST, 17 April 2013

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Looking after nan: Elderly people are some of the customers most at risk from policies which fall short

As anyone with young children or elderly parents will know, looking after your family is a number one priority.

That need to make sure your loved ones are comfortable and warm strikes at a primitive instinct: to do what it takes to protect your kin.

This means it’s an absolute doddle to sell insurance that promises to fix a broken boiler or cranky central heating.

There’s no need for insurers and energy providers even to dream up a sales pitch. After seeing his boiler pack up and family go cold, it would take a hard-hearted householder to tell the eager salesman to take his 24-7 heating cover elsewhere.

Bosses at energy giants, including British Gas, nPower, E.On and Scottish and Southern Energy, know this all too well. Millions of their customers have succumbed and bought a policy that promises protection when you need it most.

But as our report shows, many homeowners have found, to their cost, that their policies don’t look after them at all.

Instead, they’ve been exploited by energy providers happy to rake in millions from this cover rather than use such profits to provide a better service.

The rotten behaviour exposed in our report only underlines what you will already know: that being freezing cold and without hot water thanks to the inability of a company to do its basic job is inexcusable.

It isn’t just some inconvenience for customers to shrug off while the energy company gets its act together. In serious cases, prolonged exposure to low temperatures can lead to hypothermia and aggravate other ailments — a particular risk for the vulnerable and frail elderly.

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So, when a company struggles to honour its promise to protect customers’ homes, it has a moral duty to let them take whatever stop-gap action they can to stay warm.

In most cases, this will take the form of a call to a local emergency plumber or boiler engineer who can get to the problem in a flash — within hours, not days or weeks.

It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of policy providers to allow common-sense flexibility to apply in what has become an all-too-common event and to pick up the bill — or at least a chunk of it — afterwards.

It would hardly take a drastic rewriting of their business model to factor in such a vital service.

And if the profits at British Gas’s residential services unit are anything to go by, there’s plenty of cash sloshing around to pay for it.

But many stick their head in the sand instead. They prefer to be more protective of their bottom line than of their customers’ needs.

They trot out the old defence that, in a worst-case scenario, a local plumber may damage your heating further, costing you — and them — more to put right.

Well, the worst-case scenario for a neglected customer in freezing conditions is that their health may suffer a tremendous blow.

I know which is more important. But I wonder if the energy providers who rake in millions on home cover really do.

Of course, it’s important to stress that there are times when the system works brilliantly.

Reader Helen Jones, whose mother lives with her, has told us how their boiler developed a fault shortly after midnight during the bitter weather last month.

A 1.15am call to her heating care provider resulted in an emergency engineer who knocked on her door eight hours later.

It took an hour to replace a worn-out boiler part and their radiators were piping out heat minutes later.

Her relief and gratitude was all too evident, and her £22-a-month policy was worth every penny, she said.

But many people say this kind of response isn’t happening enough. It should be standard practice — but it isn’t. Urgent change is needed, and fast.

Be regular

Habits often have a, well, habit of being expensive. Whether it’s smoking, a love of takeaway coffee or taking a taxi instead of the bus, it all adds up to a hefty annual outlay.

At roughly £7.50 for a pack of 20 cigarettes, smokers wanting their daily fix will pay out £2,738 a year.

So, kicking a habit is usually a great way to save money. But you can also swell your bank account by starting one particular habit — stashing a small sum into a bank account once a month.

Thanks to the power of compound interest, even the tiniest of sums will grow into considerable savings.

Even a tenner is enough, as our report today shows.