RIAS home insurance - some help needed please

dacouch

Forevergrey the exclusion you mention is common on virtually any Insurance Policy for any type of Insurance.

Basically Insurers exclude "Consequential Losses" (These are losses that happen as a consequence of the claim). This is because they cannot quantify what they could be. For instance if they insured Bill Gate's (Microsoft owner) home insurance and he had a claim for losing his mobile phone. The policy will cover replacing his phone but will not cover him losing a multi billion dollow contract as a consequence of him losing his phone as he lost the phone number of the owner of Apple.

Home Insurance Policies generally cover the damage the water does when there is a burst pipe, it does not normally cover repairing the pipe. This s because repairing the pipe is deemed to be the normal maintenence a home owner would carry out.

Most policies do not cover the cost of finding the leak or removing a floor to find the leaking pipe. However there are quite a few Insurers (RIAS not included) who include "Trace and Access" cover (typically of around £5000). This would cover the costs of say a plumber having to dig your floor up or remove bathroom tiles to trace the source of the leak. It would not pay the plumber to physically repair the leak though.

forevergrey

Dacouch, I do understand what you are saying. It's just that I consider trace and access one of those important things and as I was starting to opt for RIAS despite the restricted cover you outlined previously, I find that they don't do T&A.

All I want is to find a company who handle claims efficiently, will cover T&A type situations and doesn't have associations with less than competent contractors. Is there one?

dacouch

Norwich Union have the worst contractors known to man (Asprea), however you do not have to use their contractors. Personally I would avoid Axa / Swift Cover and Quinn.

You may find this survey helpful in conjuction with your "Which" survey. http://www.instimes.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=376295

(Note this is a survey of brokers so does not include all Insurers as they have listed the companies they mainly use and brokers do not deal with "Direct Only" Insurers).

I find Legal and General are very fair on claims and have a pretty wide policy cover (They include £5000 for trace and access, offer 33% of the contents sum insured for High Risk items). They are not always the cheapest but they do target retired people which I assume you are so you should get a reasonable price from them.

I would recommend you keep your excess fairly low eg £50 to £100.

Are you aware of cash back sites? If not here are some cash back sites for L&G http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=legal+and+general+%2B+cash+back+%2B+home+insurance&meta (Note sometimes the price through the cash back site is more than using the Insurers website direct and remember to delete your cookies between quotes)

If money is no object then Hiscox are the company for you but like anything in life the best costs more

forevergrey

Dacouch, thank you, that's again very helpful.

Sadly L&G will not quote on our postcode although no-one else has had a problem doing so thus far.

Do you have an opinion about Zurich and LV?

Yes, am aware of cashback sites, although I would gladly forego to find the right company.

[Deleted User]

We had to trace the leak problem in our ceiling, we are leasehold by the way so have no say in buildings cover, only contents. We needed to trace asap so no point in waiting and we got a joiner out, who had to cut into the upstairs floor. He then put his hand in and tightened the plastic joint. The whole cost to us was £60 plus relaying the carpet but the mental cost was horrendous. Plus the physical cost of moving all the furniture, so we could lift the carpet. At the end of the day, the barclays homecare aspect was absolutely useless and we found that the best way to protect ourselves and our sanity, was to prepare a list of trusted tradespeople, which is easily accessible in a hall drawer

All in all, I just want insurance to cover our possessions in case of catastrophe eg fire etc

The building insurance helpline was absolutely hopeless too. I had already turned off the stop crock, ch etc. No thanks to the person at the end of the phone who gave no worthwhile advice

All in all we are very very disillusioned by home insurance hence us going for the cheapest (and relatively best) quote possible

forevergrey

Dacouch,


If you are still reading the thread, I would appreciate your opinion on whether Zurich and LV are fair on claims. As Legal and General are not open to us, these two seem to fit the bill for cover offered and don't seem to have too many negative comments that I can find.

dacouch

Zurich are a pretty good Insurer, there is someone on MSE who has a major complaint against them at the mo but their cover is quite comprehensive, their policy booklet is nice and small and in fairly plain English. (A lot of their calls are dealt with in call centres in Eastern Europe).

LV are also pretty good, they also own Frizzells who offer the CSMA scheme to civil servants. They are based down in Poole. LV used to have a habit of quoting with big excesses to make their premiums low and thus appear high on the comparison sites. Check what voluntary excess AND any complusory excess as the two are totalled together.

forevergrey

Thanks again dacouch. Sorry, I forgot to ask but I can't find any associations between these two and Asprea. Do you know if that's the case?

dacouch

I'm not aware of any (Anyone else please correct me if I'm wrong), Asprea are part of the Carillion Construction Group and were set up with the help of Norwich Union. This would put most other companies off dealing with them plus the fact that Asprea have such a bad reputation.

A lot of other companies use Homeserve who can be very good or very bad but are much better than Asprea (Which is not very difficult).

You are not obliged to use an Insurers own contractors, they will often push them but you are within your rights to get quotes from local builders (Which is what I would normally recommend). If the Insurers builders are cheaper (Which is unusual unless they are cutting corners) you can normally get your preferred builders to match or under cut their quotation which is what I did on a claim I had.

I've just googled "Liverpool Victoria complaints" and they appear to use Home Serve.

Here is the complaint on MSE about Zurich, the way they are dealing with this claim leaves a lot to be desired. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1499697&highlight=malicious+damage My experiences of them have always been pretty good. I'm a broker so if I ever have a problem with an Insurer I use my contacts to get things sorted out and if need be threaten to transfer our book of clients to another Insurer. So my experiences are different than if you deal with an Insurer direct

forevergrey

dacouch wrote: »

Here is the complaint on MSE about Zurich, the way they are dealing with this claim leaves a lot to be desired. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1499697&highlight=malicious+damage My experiences of them have always been pretty good. I'm a broker so if I ever have a problem with an Insurer I use my contacts to get things sorted out and if need be threaten to transfer our book of clients to another Insurer. So my experiences are different than if you deal with an Insurer direct

Much appreciated dacouch. The above link is a bit scary and rather reinforces my concerns about fair settlement by insurers particularly if you are joe public with little clout.