write off washing machine 2 yrs ins. left.

Nett_2

My washing machine has been written off and I have 2 years left on the insurance which I bought for 5 years. Yet I am not being offered any pro-rata premium return, I know on a yearly paid insurance this is the case but I paid for 5 years in advance. The machine I had is unavailable and I am having to pay extra for a different machine. Is this just another insurance trap that we can do nothing about?

pondie1

is the washer less than 6 year old,we had a 10 year parts policy(we bought seperate yearly labour/callout insurance) when we bought our machine,they refused to fix the bearings when they went ,it was 8 year old washer by this time,the trading standards were great told us what to do,theres some law of saleable goods act if less than 6 years old,look into this just give trading standards a call,we had only been offered a new machine for £280 as settlement of policy

pondie1

btw when we got trading standards consumer service involved they completely back tracked & came and repaired the machine, when we looked on the internet for the model that we were going to get to replace the machine all the prices were £100 cheaper than the quote we were given.

Astaroth

Sales of Goods act gives you cover for the "reasonable life expectancy" of an item up to a max of 6 years (or 5 years in Scotland). Life expectancy will be based on what the item is, what technology was like at the time and to some extent the price of the item (you would expect a high end model to last longer than a supermarket special etc). So you would have no claim for a disposable razor bought 5 years ago but may have for a £100 a sq m carpet.

Given you have already made a claim under the warrenty this point is fairly mute though.

The policy that you bought was for a fixed term, as such you have no right to cancel it or receive refund from it. These are the questions you have to consider, do you buy a short annual warrenty which costs you more each year but know you will only ever waste X months cover if you do have a total loss or do you get a long term warrenty for a much lower per year fee but run the risk of a total loss resulting in you lossing a number of years cover.

It may be possible to move the remainder of the cover onto the replacement item so worth giving them a call.