ESURE Cancelled my policy after claim

Shaanbles

Don't know to be honest.

Contents could be £10-15K
Buildings - anyone's guess - new kitchen, boiler, celings, walls plastered, floors

Figured if combined came to £30K and got them down to 7% then paying out £2K which is almost worth it to save the stress levels

dacouch

Loss Assessors are not always a good idea as their fees are expensive so assuming your claim comes to £30000 their fee will be £2100 plus vat so a total of £2520. It is extremely unlikely that your policy will cover their costs.

Loss Assessors tend to come into their own on difficult claims where their assistance can increase the amount paid out to, they can on occasions recover more for you than their fee.

Esure have not advised you yet that you are under insured, they will at some point ask you to calculate what you feel the total replacement costs of your entire contents at NEW prices. Bear in mind built in appliances and furniture is normally regarded as being part of the building.

It would be worth you starting to do this as it will give you an idea whether you are under insured, if you are under insured then Esure (As would most Insurers) deduct a percentage of your contents claims (Or buildings if the building is under insured) which represents the percentage you have under insured by. For an explanation of this see page 28 of your policy here http://www.esure.com/wcm/groups/public/documents/webcontent/wcmprod_es_home_policy_booklet.pdf If you are grossly under insured, then Esure are currently declining claims, this is generally is you are over 50% under insured eg you have insured for £25000 and you actually have £50000 of contents.

I would suggest you do the above before you even think of appointing a loss assessor, as there may not be a problem, if you get into problems later on in the claim the loss assessor will not mind taking over the claim at a later date.

If you work out how much contents you have and then let the claim proceed, should you have problems there are plenty of experts on MSE eg Selson and Flamecloud etc etc who will give you there help on here free of charge.

As a matter of note here is the email address that an Esure employee posted on this thread for help if you have a problem with esure customer.relations@esure.com

Bear in mind that when the Loss Assessor comes around he will give you a very hard sale due to the large amount of money they can make, they will tell you that your Insurer are very difficult with claims and that you need them. They would say this to you no matter who you are insured by.

Shaanbles

dacouch wrote: »

Esure have not advised you yet that you are under insured, they will at some point ask you to calculate what you feel the total replacement costs of your entire contents at NEW prices. Bear in mind built in appliances and furniture is normally regarded as being part of the building.

The kitchen is included in buildings insurance, but furniture is contents. I know I can prove my contents are less than £25K so that's not a problem.

dacouch wrote: »

Bear in mind that when the Loss Assessor comes around he will give you a very hard sale due to the large amount of money they can make, they will tell you that your Insurer are very difficult with claims and that you need them. They would say this to you no matter who you are insured by.

I've not had a problem with esure yet; it's the companies they've put in place to deal with the claim that I'm having problems with.

Munters are driving me to dispair - the humidifier they put in is leaking water all over the floor so not much good! They haven't got skips in, cleared out flooring or loft or put in heaters and they hang up when I call.

Also trying to deal with Countrywide on getting alternative accommodation is proving fruitless.

Cunningham Lydsay are supposed to be managing all this but aren't proactive enough - I know they're all busy but that's no excuse - I can't do their job for them.

I'm a single parent with a full-time job and I know a fee of £3000 is a lot but right now it's almost worth it just to have someone else deal with it for me.

dacouch

Shaanbles wrote: »

The kitchen is included in buildings insurance, but furniture is contents. I know I can prove my contents are less than £25K so that's not a problem.

I meant as in built in / fitted appliances and built in / fitted furniture being part of the building.

The dehumidifiers leaking is probably because they are not being emptied.

You may find this article on what is termed as building / contents helpful http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/30/30-ins.htm

WhiteHorse

arfurrrr wrote: »

if you under insure your contents by 5k then surely they would only pay to the amount you`ve insured !

No.

You would think that if, say, you insure your house for £100,000, but it's value is £200,000, and it burns down, they would only pay out £100,000.

What they do in reality is void your policy. This is common practice. That way they pay out nothing at all. That's why you should always over-insure.

Shaanbles

dacouch wrote: »

The dehumidifiers leaking is probably because they are not being emptied.

I rest my case - they never mentioned that they would need to be emptied - I assumed the tube going down the sink was for all the water collected. Munters are incompetent

dacouch

WhiteHorse wrote: »

No.

You would think that if, say, you insure your house for £100,000, but it's value is £200,000, and it burns down, they would only pay out £100,000.

What they do in reality is void your policy. This is common practice. That way they pay out nothing at all. That's why you should always over-insure.

Esure seem to be voiding policies where they find the customer is under insured by over 50%.

I'm not sure that their stance would be upheld if it went to the Ombudsman as I assume Esure are treating it as "Deliberate" or "Clearly Reckless" Non Disclosure. Where as it would appear that the majority of cases I have seen are more likely to be classed as "Inadvertent" especially when you factor into the matter the ridicuously low sums insured the esure website suggests when you obtain a quotation. Knowing what consumers are like, a significant amount would assume that it is right as an Insurer suggested it.

When you look at how an Inadvertent Non Disclosure should be treated by an Insurer eg they look at whether they would have accepted the client had they known the correct information. Assuming they would have accepted they should rewrite the Insurance Policy. In most of the cases I have seen the answer would be yes. If Shaanbles is under insured by say 50% eg she actually required contents cover of £50000. Then the chances are the Esure would have accepted her as a client all be it at a higher premium and possibly with some type of security requirement.

I hope someone does challenge Esure on this with the Ombudsman as I've seen quite a few cases from Esure and their sister company Sheilas Wheels.