Home insurance renewal

ArchieB_2

So provider A guarantees recovery in an hour and Provider B doesn't? If they did then this could be rated. The fact is the application of the policy is not consistent and can't be reliably rated where as the policy t's and c's are binding. I am sure you would agree that a company providing a recovery service is superior to one that will simply pay the cost at claim time but you have to worry about what to do with your vehicle at the roadside?

Their star ratings deal with what the policy 'says on the tin' and what the insurers effectively promise their customers. When I see it endorsed on marketing literature it clearly states that the rating relates to the level of cover provided. This is only what the customer would know if they went through the policy with a fine tooth comb. As we know they don't even read it in most cases.

Their process seems straight forward and logical to me and I have never had any problems dealing with them so maybe you should take this up with them?

regularsaver1

didnt mean to cause an argument mentioning defacto - but cost shouldn't be the only reason someone goes for certain insurance - the level of cover, benefits and service should too right

i'd definatley prefer an insurer that uses its own assessors

shelly

stefano wrote:

I think insurance companies are ripping people off with renewals, and something should be done about it.

Insurance companies depend on people not shopping around and just renewing the policy. Its easy not to get "ripped off" (as you put it) by shopping around yourself every renewal time. We do it for all insurances and hardly ever stay with the same co 2 years running.

Or another trick we use is to call up the ins co and say we have a quote which is £20 (or whatever you want to say) cheaper than renewal. Ask if they can match or better it, 9 times out of 10 they better it for us.

Astaroth

ArchieB wrote:

Their process seems straight forward and logical to me and I have never had any problems dealing with them so maybe you should take this up with them?

There process is straight forward and I dont have a problem with what they do... I just think their results are 80% useless and that people should be aware of the massive limitations of the results when others start saying "you should consider X insurer as they have a Y* de facto rating"

I have spoken to them before they asked us for comments for an insurance times artical/ press release... strangely my comments werent used at all :rolleyes:

stefano

shelly wrote:

Or another trick we use is to call up the ins co and say we have a quote which is £20 (or whatever you want to say) cheaper than renewal. Ask if they can match or better it, 9 times out of 10 they better it for us.

Thanks Shelly for getting back on track. Very good trick which I shall be using from now on. This thread seems to have been hijacked.

regularsaver1

Astaroth - i never said that someone shou,d consider buying a certain insurance because of the defacto ratings - it is something that could be considered as the service is a big thing. a company who uses their own assessors is good too - as well as cost


not hijacked - jsut adding comments - i personally would never touch direct line with a barge pole. part of the RBS group right and they are not unlimited

funnyguy

zzzzzzzz.!

Astaroth

Unlimited cover has never seemed sensible to me other than for the piece of mind that you will never be under insured as, for me at least, other than for 1 year unlimited cover has always been much more expensive than to have a sum insured.

I have never worked in underwriting so anyone who can show the flaw in my logic feel free

For an insurer to write an unlimited policy they work on an "average" sum insured for the combination of type of property and number of rooms. So say an average 1 bed owned flat has £25,000 of contents this is effectively the figure they will be rating on and so probably a higher than 50% of people will have less than this and under 50% will have less (I can see more people having double this figure than people have £0 of contents)

Anyone realising that they only have, for example, £20,000 of contents will realise they are over insured and therefore paying too much and move their policy else where. This then drives up the average price insured to £30,000 of contents meaning that anyone who now has £27,500 is over insured and so over insured and overly high premiums... naturally this cycle continues ad infinitum.

Ignoring the people who dont shop around each year and so dont realise they are overpaying on their insurance the only ways that this type of insurance could actually be good value for money, in theory, is either if the insurer is under estimating the average value in which case the common pool is unstable and unsustainable or the average person is massively over estimating their contents when quoting on sum insured policies but claims experience says that more people under insure their contents rather than over.

In my case, to get an unlimited cover almost doubles my premium even though I have what would be considered a very high contents value for my type of property. To me doubling my premium is too high a price to pay for piece of mind.

Barter

Stefano,

I suggest you go through Quidco as the insurance cashback is very generous: we separated our buildings & contents cover & put them with different companies, so got 2 lots of cashback - over £100 credited back to us (can't remember the precise amounts offhand) - very worthwhile.

humfer

Also try Halifax. They have been really cheap for me over the last few years and also allow you 'home emergency cover' for about £40 which stuff like your boiler breaking down (so loads cheaper than the Britsh Gas £12/month scheme)