Home Insurance Claim - Help!!

thedunstan

hi i am awaiting a contents insurance payout from heath lambert which when i was broken into on the 4th of jan 09 has still not arrived even though cp adjusting who they have used to handle my claim have made a offer of payment 14 days ago which i accepted then have mysteriously found 2 ccj's in my name at a previous address (which i know nothing about) the day after the offer which i have had to sign a mandate for cp adjustors to obtain details from the court so heath lambert can now decide if they pay me out or not ..... this is really stressfull for me as i was wiped out by the burgalry and thought everything was covered but not neccesarily so after discussing with friends and colleagues they find this unaceptable and if this carries on a formal complaint will be made to heath lambert also anyone else who has suffered similar please share thanks and sorry for the long reply

budgie123_2

Hiya,

It's 4 bedroom detached, we are in our mid 30s and have owned our own houses for about 12 years and rented for about 3 years previous to that. We have 'quite' recently moved to this house and a couple of the rooms still have nothing or very little in them, that's why the insured amount is quite low. I dunno how it all works, I mean our telly cost £1500 2 years ago but now you could pick up the exact one brand new for £600 so we have been counting up our things based on if we had to go out tomorrow and buy them again.

dacouch

It sounds like to me that Sheilas Wheels suspect you are under insured which is why they are asking you to fill out that form.

I'll explain what under insurance means.

Insurers expect you to Insure for the full cost of all of your home, in the case of contents it has to be the full new replacement cost of your contents (Excluding linen and clothing which they take clothing and linen into account) If your house would cost £150000 to rebuild and you insure it for £100000 then you are under insured by £50000 or 30% in this case. Insurers expect you for the full cost of your items in the case of contents.

If the Insurers discover you are underinsured they will deduct the percentage you are underinsured by from whatever you claim for even if it is a claim for £100 (Which they would deduct 30% from in this example so you woulkd get £30).

The good news is that the Building Sum insured on your policy is Unlimited so your not under insured on the building side which the claim is on so they would not normally invoke the under insurance. They may invoke it on any element a contents part of the claim and / or they may ask you to pay an additional premium to increase your contents for the future.

I knew you would be underinsured as to get the policy documents I had to get a quote from Sheilas Wheels and they assumed a contents sum insured for me of £19100 which is well under the average persons amount of contents has about £40000. I would strongly recommend you increase your contents sum insured to a more realistic amount.

If they do try and invoke the under insurance clause, they will normally "forget" that you have specified the engagement ring and paid extra to cover it. The amount you have insured the engagement ring would normally be counted on top of the rest of your contents

http://www.mortgageintroducer.com/ccstory/232623/263/Average_contents_insurance_policy_is_inadequate.htm



I do not really understand why they are getting you to fill the form out as if part of your claim is for contents say £200 the amount they will save by invoking the under insurance clause is not a lot once you have taken into account the costs in processing that form and annoying you.

Don't be tempted to fill the form in incorrectly on purpose as this can be construed as fraud and can allow them to try and void the policy. Don't worry if you make innocent mistakes as this would not be fraud, its only a problem if you deliberately fill the form in incorrectly. Like I said before even if you are under insured luckily your claim appears to be a building claim so should not be affected.

Sorry if I have rambled on

budgie123_2

Wow, thanks for the time you have taken to reply. Absolutely brilliant.

We never knew if laminate flooring was contents or buildings. Even if it happened to be contents, then it is only a 6m square room so the costs is hardly anything. It's the actual workmanship that is making up the vast bulk of the claim. If it was just the cost of putting down new floor we'd pay it ourselves as it wouldn't be much more than our £100 excess.

Can we up the cover on the contents just now or should we wait until after the claim is done with? I'm really scared now incase we are not adequately insured on the contents side? We wouldn't lie on the form for one because we don't believe in all that but for two, the guy is coming out on Monday and he is welcome to look at anything he wants around our house, we've nothing to hide.

I guess on the form maybe I should hand write in the part about my ring and the extra cover we have for that, just so that they don't 'forget' about it. I will also photocopy the form for our own records before we give it to him.

If we are underinsured on the contents, we don't mind paying extra, in fact we'd insist on it as we want to be properly protected. However, could they let that affect our buildings claim for the utility room floor?

dacouch

I would wait until after the claim, once you have filled that form out it may help you decide how much you need (Its always best to over insure a bit to cover for mistakes and new purchases). They should then index it each year to keep in line with inflation

I would not worry about the contents, the laminate flooring is building anyway, if any part of your claim is contents they might invoke it or they might "Suggest" you increase your contents cover which won't be that expensive.

Bear in mind when filling the form out that the £1500 tv you bought last year would probably cost £800 to replace with a new equaivalent as the prices have come down. So you can put what you feel the cost to replace it with a current equavalent version on todays prices

Out of interest when you have filled the form out post up here what you think youn should be covered for contents as I would be interested.

You have probably been lucky in some respects that this has brought it to your attention and will probably not cost you anything on the claim. If it had been a fire you could have been quite out of pocket.

The laminate flooring is normally classed as building.