By Iona Bain
This Hallowe'en, many homeowners hope the only ghoulish surprises they receive will come from children trick-or-treating.
But sometimes, things can go horribly wrong in the home, whether it's a broken-down boiler or a freak storm causing damage to your roof.
Homeowners can sleep better during the winter nights ahead if they know they've got home emergency cover. This should provide inspections or urgent repairs, plus an emergency helpline that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is designed to cover the costs of call out and labour charges, plus the repair materials or replacement parts needed for a quick fix.
Urgent repairs can lead to frighteningly high bills. A broken down boiler, which affected 22% of households last winter, usually costs £320 to repair, according to comparison site uSwitch.
If homeowners opt for basic boiler cover from £89 a year, they could save as much as £231 when disaster strikes. Yet only 42% of Brits have boiler cover in place to avoid a potentially huge repair bill, perhaps because it may be seen as an unnecessary expense when household budgets are struggling with inflation.
The problem is that home emergency cover is only included as standard on "high value" contents insurance policies. Unless trick or treaters have to walk up your gated drive and past a vintage Bentley to reach your front door, you will probably not qualify for this and therefore pay more on policies to include this type of cover. Nearly half (40%) of home contents policies will only offer this as an "optional extra", according to research firm Defaqto.
There are some honourable but rare exceptions. For all you non-millionaires, Clydesdale Bank, Cheshire Building Society and Bradford and Bingley have regular policies that include emergency cover as standard.
What to watch out for
Home emergency cover isn't always as straightforward as you'd like it to be.
Some policies will limit how many call-outs you get each year and a few insurers will cap the amount you receive per claim, so the replacement of a central heating system could still come out of your pocket.
Boiler cover alone has a myriad of conditions and exclusions. Many policies require the boiler to be below a certain age to qualify or of a certain type and unless you opt for 'lifetime cover', older boilers (over seven years old) will not be replaced if they can't be repaired.
Some insurers may only cover 'real' emergencies, so you'll have to pay for routine checks and repairs yourself, while others won't include the full central heating system in your cover.
Boiler cover can be added onto some home insurance policies, but customers often have to look elsewhere for this. The cheapest boiler cover available is currently from HomeServe, which offers basic gas boiler breakdown for £7.43 each month and a safety inspection to boot; this can prevent lethal carbon monoxide leaks and improve energy efficiency.
The next best option is from npower, although the monthly premium jumps up to £10.50, so this could cost you £36.84 more annually, plus there is no additional charge for a safety inspection.
How good is the service?
Despite HomeServe providing the best price it has come under fire for raising premiums, alongside British Gas, in the past year. It was also heavily criticised by consumer group Which? after one of its subcontracted engineers failed to perform a simple fix on a boiler in an undercover investigation recently.
Another damning report in the Guardian this year revealed that the firm didn't attend to customers who suffered a broken down boiler last Christmas, only fixing serious problems in the New Year.
But Homeserve isn't the only insurer to have a very bizarre definition of the word "emergency".
The AA, Britain's "fourth emergency service", outraged customers earlier this year for failing to respond quickly to a variety of crises; broken down boilers took months to fix, while burst pipes weren't inspected for weeks on end, according to a BBC Watchdog investigation in April.
This was in spite of a high profile advertising campaign, starring John Cleese, which promised call-outs within four hours.
Given these horror stories, it isn't surprising that a worrying amount of complaints are made about home emergency cover. The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) revealed a few weeks back that over half of all complaints that related to home emergency cover were upheld, an unusually high figure.
The main issue here, however, was mis-selling and not poor service, says the FOS. Disgruntled customers who had signed up for a free period, found their policy would renew automatically and they would be charged without warning.
So if you're offered a free period of home emergency cover, make sure you cancel the cover if you're not happy to continue with it.
Furthermore, HomeServe has now suspended all its new online sales as an internal investigation is conducted into misselling practices.
If homeowners are not satisfied with the service they have received, they should contact the firm responsible before going to the 'scheme operator' that handles complaints.
If you aren't sure how to get in touch with the scheme operator, contact Trustmark. This is a non-profit group which endorses reputable tradesmen and is licensed by the government.
Furthermore, customers who have bought emergency cover through their home insurer should contact the company if premiums rise to see whether they can negotiate a more reasonable price for their cover. You would be surprised how often this works, because firms are only scared of one thing this Hallowe'en – unhappy customers cancelling their policies.