I suggest that anyone taking out a Home Care agreement be aware of this as when you pay insurance you do not expect to be charged more in excess for any claim than the repair actually cost! We have been Home Care customers for a few years. Recently we had need to call them out as we awoke to a large water stain on our living room ceiling and wall. This was directly below the bathroom so I went to investigate. When I moved a storage cupboard we have in the on of the tiles fell off revealing damp and mouldy plasterboard. This was on the boxing around the pipework for the toilet. It was that damp that you could easily put your finger through it. As I could not see the pipework as it went into the wall I called British Gas Home Care. I will be fair to them, they did give an appointment that day. The engineer came, looked at the toilet and found a bolt needed tightening on the freshwater inlet as it had a slight leak. This took him 2 minutes. I asked about the pipework in the wall and showed him the damp and mouldy plasterboard, also explaining about the patch downstairs. He advised that all internal pipework would be fine as it would be plastic. He told me to wait a few week for the plaster to dry and then stick the tile back on. I asked again if he should check it and he advised that there was no need to. He was in the house for 3-4 minutes as the most and all he did was tighten a bolt. Today I have received an invoice for £60 excess, now I accept that I have an excess of £60 on the plan but I doubt the job cost £60 so I rang British Gas to query this amount. I am not trying to get away with paying it and I fully expect that if the job cost £60.01 I would pay the first £60 of this. What I also expected was that if the job was less than £60 I would only pay the actual amount of the job. For example if the job cost £40 I would pay £40. This is not the case I still have to pay the full £60. British Gas advised that even if the repair cost £5.00 I would pay the full £60.00 excess. I tried to explain then that this is a bit of a scam as not only are they taking my £20.00 a month for the insurance but they are then making money on a repair that I have made. So in this instance my insurance was of no use as I had paid more in excess than what the repair cost British Gas. The would not accept this and just advised that even though the engineer was on site for a few minutes and he only tightened a bolt, not using any parts it is still a repair and as such I need to pay the £60.00 excess. I asked to speak to a manager and when the colleague came back to the phone he advised that someone would cal me back before 6pm. I advised that I was at work as 4pm so would wait, it was around 3pm at this point. He went to get a different manager and then came back advising that this one would call me back before 5:30pm. Again I advised that I was at work from 4pm but he advised that we are only doing call backs for complaints as we are busy and they needed to deal with customers issues. I challenged this as they had not dealt with my issue yet as I was being told I had to wait for upto 2.5 hours for a call back. Colleague at one point advised "the managers are busy and have other things to do rather than speak to you". Suffice to say I got nowhere on this call. I did receive the call back later on but only got told the same. At one point it was said that the terms and conditions stated that I would pay the first £60 of any claim. I advised that I accept this but if the claim did not come to £60 surely I should only pay the amount up to this. No one seemed to understand the point I was making. The long and short of this is that I will end up paying the £60 excess although it is leaving a bitter taste that I am paying more in excess than the repair would have cost. I will not be renewing with them next based on this experience so far. I suggest that anyone taking out a Home Care agreement be aware of this as when you pay insurance you do not expect to be charged more in excess for any claim than the repair actually cost!