I remember my year spent on crutches after knee surgery and whilst I felt like suing my doctor, it was the lack of mobility that drove me spare – never mind trying to get up the stairs without a stairlift.  It wasn’t the big things either, but smaller irritants like bending over to tighten a shoe lace or wanting to put my foot against the door to stop a Jehovah’s Witness telling me I was doomed…

That’s the problem with any form of disability – it’s the little things that rob you of your independence and constantly remind you 24/7 that you’re not ‘normal’.  For that reason I was moved when reading about a fellow blogger who not only survived a vascular brain tumour but had a stroke thrown in for good measure.

His outlook on life, “I truly believe that as long as you have a brain and can talk and think then you have no reason to not make an effort to live life to the fullest extent you are capable of” is inspiring to say the least.  To be honest, it puts me and my Victor Meldrew doppelganger to shame.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, the reason for writing this post is to alert people to the dangers of buying a second hand stairlift. The average cost of a new stairlift amounts to £3,800 – OK, so it’s still less than moving home tbh – but it’s a fair whack all the same.  Think of three all-expenses paid holidays to Sharm El Sheik and you get the picture.

That’s why my blood boils, not literally because I’d be dead, about unscrupulous vendors offering second hand or reconditioned stairlifts that don’t cut the mustard.  The internet is a particularly dangerous place to source a re-conditioned stairlift, as are the small cards placed in newsagents’ windows.  The prices may be cheap but so are opal fruits and when you’re perched twenty feet above the ground floor and the clunky motor grinds to a halt, the extra £300 you might have saved is thrown into sharp perspective.

All smiles….if it works…

home-stair-lifts1

Many ‘re-conditioned’ stairlifts have simply been ripped out of homes undergoing renovation, given a squirt of WD40 and sold ‘as new’.  There is nothing ‘new’ about them in the same way that two cars welded together in a ‘cut and shut’ aren’t new.

If you’re still tempted by a second-hand stairlift, for Gawd’s sake make sure that you know someone willing to fit it for you.  Most stairlift companies will not want to install a reconditioned stairlift without seeing its full service history first.  Therefore if you don’t have a full service history you’ll be limited to the tradesman down the pub who will happily fit it for you for £300 and a pint…and that’s it.  Buyer beware because you’ll have no recourse for any money back if anything goes wrong.

My advice and mobility compare’s advice?  Authorised sellers are the best option.  Reputable companies like Stannah Stairlifts offer superb reconditioned units and they will fit them too.  Costs start at £1,695 plus VAT which is more, admittedly, than you you’ll pay if you source your own second hand stairlift but as my partner says, “what price peace of mind?”……