multi legal protection premiums with eg home insurances??

grasmere

Hi, whilst renewing our home buildings insurance last week there is an additional £20 premium for 'legal protection'

There is a similar element with BOTH our car insurances and also the home contents cover

questions is - is it all the same cover and are we paying multi times ?

Anyone any ideas please

thanks

mattymoo

Nah - insurers are a bit wiser than that.
The legal advice helpline part is duplicated on both. This is the 24/7 helpline you can ring for advice on any legal matter.

The legal expenses part (the bit you pay for) is different on each policy. The household one will exclude legal costs relating to motor accidents.
The motor one will exclude stuff relating to the home, e.g. claims against suppliers, builders etc.

Both of them normally exclude legal costs relating to family law, e.g. adoption, divorce etc.

Tight_Git_3

Mattymoo is spot on with this one. We have two cars and the home & contents insurance all with Direct Line.
At the last renewal I queried this very subject with the customer services people, asking why I have to pay for three lots of what is basically the cover.
I was told that one will not provide cover for the other.

I did some hunting around to try and find a single legal protection policy to cover the lot, but couldn't find anything.

Incidentally, I'd have the cover - just incase. My missus is a barrister and does a fair bit of insurance related work that's paid for by these policies. If things go wrong it aint cheap.....

Astaroth

You can get stand alone products to cover it all but the cheapest I ever found was £150 a year (though it did include a "discount" on routine solicitor work - eg wills, conveyancing etc - but the discount wasnt quantified). You would have to have a fair number of cars to make it worth while investment, but even then a fleet policy would probably be better for you then anyway

Sponge

Why do you need all this legal cover? Any CAB, or the internet (eg fora) for that matter, can proved free advice and any high street solictor can offer 'no win no fee' legal assitance.

Astaroth

No win No Fee only applies to fast track and above cases so at the moment PI claims over £1000 and non-PI cases over £5000 therefore if you had a hire car, xs and loss of earnings claim for £4000 you would be unable to get a sol unless you paid. Likewise on no win no fee if things dont go as expected you have the risk of having to pay the other sides solicitors fees (many sols will sell you an after the incident insurance policy to protect you against this)

Add to this fact that it is anticipated that the limits will be rising significantly in the very near future to somewhere between £2,500 to £10,000 for personal injury claims this could mean as much as 98% of PI claims wont be able to go through no win no fee.

Personally I think the piece of mind of knowing you dont have to pay anything and that your sols wont be more interested in getting paid as with LE cover they will get paid win or lose is worth the small fee that they charge. For Home insurance it is even better as you know you have a solicitor at the end of the phone 24/7 to answer almost any question and have comeback if you get bad advice at all where as with forums etc you can never be 100% sure if the advice is actually from a sol or someone who has done Law GCSE and thinks they know everything and you have no legal comeback if their bad advice costs you money.