Better than praying that the ceiling doesn’t come down as a result of the guaranteed leak.
I used to have BG cover and it was great.
Not so sure how good it is now (not had it in 10 years as they don’t/didn’t cover UFH), but you will definitely have paid a premium to use them for your installation.
Having a few ‘select’ tradesmen you trust is all well and good until something goes pop and they are unavailable, then unless they’re prepared to recommend someone else… you’re stuck with the google “do you feel lucky” button. In my case, the boiler failed not long before Xmas and my usual plumber was out with sciatica and barely answering the phone. We stumbled on another via FB of all places, and he’s been great (completely disproving my own argument 
) which is just as well as it turned out the original CH install was a monumental fuck up (proving my argument !) , which he’s been steadily rectifying…
Imo, Tradesmen are a total lottery and too costly to take the chance of stumbling across a good one.
I used a large, named tradesman for our bathroom job. Expensive, shit work, went way overtime, and never finished the job properly.
I paid them half, and it was still too much.
My regular plumber was booked.
Lucky situation to be in.
And BG have a great reputation for their boiler cover service, not. When I had my new boiler fitted a couple of years ago I had a quote from BG of £3.5K my local plumber did the job for under £1,5K. Mind you the BG one gave you interest free credit! 
It must just be my bad luck then, but over the last 4 or 5 large’ish plumbing jobs, they have all gone wrong, 2 quite spectacularly, 1 bringing down the bedroom ceiling and 1 water staining the hallway ceiling.
Asking friends around the area for their recommendations elicits the same “when you find one, let us know” answer.
I can only speak from experience.
We have a firm of plumbers we use for plumbing jobs & then someone who seems to be a boiler specialist to nurse our recalcitrant Vaillant along.
One recent foible its had, after a spate of F32 warnings, is to work perfectly without the front panel fitted & yet revert to troublesome once that’s refitted… Not sure why, its not as if it’s airtight & there’s a lack of air that can be drawn in by the fan.
we have a BG service agreement and I couldn’t fault them. In fact after Baxi abandoned us saying they did have any more gas men to service our boiler, and we couldn’t find anyone local - BG came to our rescue - they have been great and reliable
Baxi are still doing boiler service, I had a letter the other day offering me a service plan.
not Backboilers in this area. They tell me they have no staff left who are able to service them.
Is it prewar? 
I think it’s a south east thing. You really struggle to get reliable tradespeople within about 50 miles of London. They can earn a fortune doing a bad job, whereasoutside that area they struggle to get work no matter how good they are.
BG recently turned off my mother in laws boiler and fire (despite neither being dangerous) and left her with no heating or hot water. This was despite it already having been agreed that they would deal with my wife as the mil is elderly and vulnerable. Imbeciles and charlatans. It was a cheap shot at trying to sell her a new boiler.
This is not the first time we have had shocking experiences with them. We cancelled her maintenance contract with them immediately.
They are heamorgaing customers and I hope they will begin to struggle as they are not nice people. A cynical company that deserves to hit the skids.
I have a BG support plan for the heating system and the plumbing as BG have been great when things go wrong. BG installed the boiler just before I bought my house 3 1/2 years ago. I was offered a good deal to extend to the plumbing and have used it twice to get things fixed, costs me £8 a month for the plumbing cover and two call outs, got to be at least £200 costs avoided in a year and you get somebody.
Plumbers are a bloody pain here, you just can’t get them to actually turn up and they are not interested in small jobs, but jobs like new boilers. There are a lot of new build houses about a mile away (4 estates with 2,000+ houses), so they all fuck off there.
I tried 4 local plumbers to quote for a job, only one turned up and then sniffed and said a stupid price. I have tried the trades web sites and you constantly get no offerings.
When I lived in the SE (25 years ago) I had the same issue in Hertfordshire, lots of work and sniffy plumbers.
Really? There is a massive demand for tradesmen in the Midlands and at top rates of pay.
Accepted - I was going off the basis of only three people I know of, you will doubtless know many more than that!
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Same in Cardiff.
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Death by a thousand anecdotes.
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