Home Insurance - Lost Keys, then found, still an "incident"

dacouch

Quentin answered your question and gave you the correct advice eg make an official complaint at the start of the thread.

The Insurance thread on MSE has people who work in the industry who give their advice / opinions for free. It also has none Insurance members such as Mikey who also give their opinion and advice for free.

You seem to be shooting the messenger for giving you an answer that you did not want.

thegirlintheattic

Moral of the story - wait more than a few hours (and check around) before reporting keys as lost.

dacouch

thegirlintheattic wrote: »

Moral of the story - wait more than a few hours (and check around) before reporting keys as lost.

My tip for finding things is that you always find them in the last place you look, thus if you look in the last place first you find them quicker

l0u1se

2sides2everystory wrote: »

On what basis are we to accept your view, l0u1se? Are you also from another planet, perhaps ?

Not another planet, just because people give advice doesn't mean that they agree with it.

Quentin was just explaining how it works, not his view

usignuolo

So far as I can tell, if you call your insurance company to ask what might be involved in making a claim it goes down as an incident. Whether or not they then use this information to "load" your policy next year, depends on the individual insurance company concerned, or more likely I imagine, the extent to which their IT systems can be set up to distinguish between incident and enquiry.

mrfrisbee

UPDATE:

Well, it seems that, within about an hour of my call from the Customer Relations Team to discuss the matter further, they realised the ridiculousness of this and had agreed to remove all records (internal and external) of the non-incident.

There was still the matter of this non-incident allegedly not impacting my premium, but I had demonstrated on-line that an incident like this was loading my premium going from £320 to £453. Anyway, now offered renewal at £320 (a significant reduction on last year and an even bigger reduction from the initial renewal of £490).

Outstanding matters still to resolve:

1. What constitutes and incident and how does this differ from a loss or a claim? In the T&C the word incident is not defined at all so it is unclear and probably unenforceable.

2. What is the definition of "Lost" and how long is reasonable to wait to report something that might be lost (to mitigate risk) and not impact my claim/incident history. What about misplaced temporarily?

Anyway, there needs to be plenty more of this sort of fighting to try to get the industry to accept what is sensible, reasonable and relevant too.

What a waste of time and effort all round!

Thanks to those of you who gave an honest and reasonable view - to the rest of you, just think about what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot.

I don't care what the rules are if they are utter nonsense, totally unreasonable and made up on the spot then they should not be accepted. I did not "sign" an agreement that stated these rules, so I see no reason to accept them (and yes, I do read the terms and conditions).

mikey72

Glad you got a sensible result. It does tend to be that insurers are self fulfilling, because they say it, some are quick to find a reason to justify it, and invent a "totally logical" explanation. At least common sense won this time.

Hassle12

I feel that you should be aware that, sometimes, insurance companies will agree with a customer even if this contradicts the T&C's of a policy (and even when they still feel they are in the right) . In doing this will likely save costs in the long run even if they lose out on your increased premium.

now your original complaint has been resolved why do you feel the need to argue the point of 'lost', I would love to get a transcript of that first call to see what was said. I wonder if you said you had lost them... or temporally mis-placed your keys?

mikey72

Hassle12 wrote: »

Inow your original complaint has been resolved why do you feel the need to argue the point of 'lost', I would love to get a transcript of that first call to see what was said. I wonder if you said you had lost them... or temporally mis-placed your keys?

As I said above. "temporally mis-placed your keys", so, lost and then found again, like in this thread.

Sally_A

I'd be quite glad the insurers were logging the incident rather than deleting it.

Imagine a slightly different scenario, I've mislaid my keys (advise insurers), oops found them next day after realising I'd left them in my jacket in the pub.

Who's to say in that brief time someone has not had copies made, returned said keys to to forgotten jacket, and followed you home when you came to collect it.

By reporting it to your insurers you have a) reported it, b) told them that you have now found them.

They have presumably also logged that the keys may have been out of your sight for 24 hours.

If they say, "hey ho, glad you found them" that would be on their records, if they advise that someone may have copied them, and suggest you still replace locks, that would also be on their records, and greatly assist you should someone then enter your house without signs of forcible entry or exit, before you had a chance to get locks changed.

If you found them in a jacket that had not been left unattended or away from the home, I would stress this when telling them that you'd found the keys.

I appreciate the above is pessimistic and extreme - but it can and has happened (although it is more common with a stolen handbag, which is then miraculously returned, fully intact, you are so grateful; you forget that your home address was also in the bag along with keys).