Great 'How to ensure your insurer pays claims' Hunt: How to assure a payout

Droop

LadyIndecisive wrote: »

'Top tips on making legit insurance claims'?

What, as opposed to non-legit insurance claims!?

AS Dan T says, if your claim is covered (and not fraudulent) it will be paid. If it's not, then it won't. If there's some kind of ambiguity the FOS make an independent final decision.

Threats of 'going to the papers' or Watchdog are not new and will have been heard before.

If you think you have a valid claim, fully document it and evidence it, take the names of everyone you speak to, put everything in writing wherever possible, plus keep calm and don't swear at the claims person or be rude or threatening as this will be noted on your file, which may end up with the FOS.

Not true I had a claim refused for "non-disclosure". I was not being dishonest I had completlely forgotten about the previous claim.

They are the dishonest ones they took my money knowing all too well that they wouldn't payout on a claim.

pedro123456

Charlotte

Do you really expect someone to sit on the phone with a client and tell them exactly what is and isn't covered???? Yep, if not all the important ones.

And yes I do work for an IC claims department in motor claims. I would be happy to go through all the terms and conditions of our policy but I would be here all day Really?, what about your commission?, wouldn't you going through T&C's affect your and the IC's income?.............yep it would.

T&C aint mentioned until a claim, and then they are loopholes.

Cromwell405a

Non-disclosure is a form of dishonesty, albeit maybe in your case unintended. Insurers will rate your risk based on past claims experience as an indicator of likelihood of future payout. Almost all policies will have a clause allowing avoidance in the event of non-disclosure as in some cases it will have been intentional and fraudulent (not suggesting you were) and the insureds end up underpaying their premium.

Cromwell405a

pedro123456 wrote: »

Charlotte

Do you really expect someone to sit on the phone with a client and tell them exactly what is and isn't covered???? Yep, if not all the important ones.

And yes I do work for an IC claims department in motor claims. I would be happy to go through all the terms and conditions of our policy but I would be here all day Really?, what about your commission?, wouldn't you going through T&C's affect your and the IC's income?.............yep it would.

T&C aint mentioned until a claim, and then they are loopholes.

T&Cs are in the policy wording which you should read prior to accepting quotation. Can you define "important" things being covered? It is a very subjective statement.

poet123

dacouch wrote: »

Your son would get almost nothing from the Travel Insurer as they all have an exclusion for items in an unattended car unless the items are locked in the glove compartment or a locked and concealed boot. Even then the wear and tear deduction would apply and the low limits on valuable items.

Your lucky Fortis paid as most home insurers only pay for items locked in the boot or glove compartment

They were locked in the boot!

We might be daft,:D but we would never leave valuables in a car on display. The thief broke the side window and popped the central locking switch on the dash I assume, or went through the back seat.

Droop

Thereby proving the insurance companies dishonest practices. They have access to your previous claims and can if they so chose remind you of them before they accept you as a customer.

pedro123456

"It is a very subjective statement" correct, just like the T&C, are subjective and unbalanced in the favour of IC's

dacouch

Like I said, Travel Insurance is not great for claiming for baggage or valuables, I always advise my clients to delete baggage from the travel insurance and ensure its covered on the home insurance as it provides much better cover

dinesh17

dacouch wrote: »

A very good way to ensure your claim gets paid is not to go with a rubbish insurance company. People need to get away from buying on price alone and take into account the quality of service, claims service, the cover and the price as a whole.

For all those who have read my earlier posts (I'm sure you can see how passionate about this issue given the trouble the insurer put me through) I can disclose that my insurer is one of the largest and well-known in the UK and so well-known that it decided to embark on a name change.
Therefore I dont think the argument stands up that a reputable company will treat its customers fairly as my case proves!:mad:

Katie-Kat-Kins

Droop wrote: »

Not true I had a claim refused for "non-disclosure". I was not being dishonest I had completlely forgotten about the previous claim.

They are the dishonest ones they took my money knowing all too well that they wouldn't payout on a claim.

Non-disclosure enables an insurer to avoid a claim. You should disclose all relevent circumstances beforehand, if there are issues which you don't tell the insurer about or aren't 100% honest about then this affects their decision on whether to offer cover and/or whether to charge more for it. Basically you aren't the risk that they agreed to insure. They need a sanction against non-disclosure.

You may have genuinely forgotton but how do they know you weren't intending to defraud? A lot of people do "forget" to get a lower premium. If your insurers believed that it was a matter of inadvertance then they may well have paid anyway. Often they will allow you to pay the increased premium and will meet the claim.

They certainly didn't take your money knowing that they wouldn't pay a claim, when they took your money they believed that you had no previous claims and if that had been true they would have paid out. You lied to them so you suffer the consequences, it may be unintentional but hopefully you have now learned that you can't be too careful when making declarations to an insurance company.

You also need to be aware that incidents like this are recorded on the insurance company records so they can refer to it in future.