Water Leak, dealing with the clean-up

Gra76

Report it to your own insurers. They will recover the costs from UU if it is their fault (which it clearly is). Saves you dealing with UU anymore as your insurers will do it for you.

sghughes42

UU have now decided they want their team to come in next weekend which means I don't need to take time off work unpaid but does lead to the complicated situation of working out how much my self-employed losses will be. I think in the meanwhile I'll follow the above advise and contact my insurers as the old adage about breweries springs to mind when dealing with UU...

Thanks for all the tips so far, any more advice always welcome!

rs65

Do your home insurers know you have business items at home?

sghughes42

rs65 wrote: »

Do your home insurers know you have business items at home?

I've not said anything to them as I have a separate business policy. Do I need to tell them even though I wouldn't make a claim on my policy for them?

rs65

sghughes42 wrote: »

I've not said anything to them as I have a separate business policy. Do I need to tell them even though I wouldn't make a claim on my policy for them?

When you take out a policy you are usually asked if the home is used for business purposes.

sghughes42

rs65 wrote: »

When you take out a policy you are usually asked if the home is used for business purposes.

I must admit I can't remember what I answered to this. I'd best check. I know I didn't intentionally conceal the business, I may have thought that as I wasn't intending to claim I didn't need to put it down, I can't recall. I'll dig through the policy and check. Is it likely to affect any claim I make over this as it hasn't affected items I use for my business, the items stored in the cellar are old ones no longer needed.

sghughes42

Right, I've checked my policy and could do with some more advice....

Firstly, I did declare the business use so no worries there. I just wasn't sure as it was so long since I took out the policy. Luckily Halifax have stayed cheapest since 2009 so no need to change.

Looking at the various costs and excesses I am thinking that it is not worth claiming on my insurance for this. There is a standard £150 excess but also what is described as an additional excess for escape of water. The policy doesn't define this in great detail so it may only mean from sources on the actual property, but assuming it covers all water leaks then that is another £250, giving a £400 excess. I would also lose the £50 bonus I get for staying claim free and some (all) of my no claims discount which I'd guess would be a minimum of another £50, probably more. (Oddly none of the documentation I can find details how much discount I get, nor how much I loose for a claim)

That gives a minimum £500 I would need to be claiming over and above what I could claim via UU. As the cellar is used mainly as a store there are no high value items in there but lots of lower value items. You could probably total up the replacement values of everything and come to a figure in the high hundreds that may make claiming marginally better.

However, another way to look at it is that nothing in there is of any real value to me now, otherwise it wouldn't be in there, it would be being used. The suitcases are the only things I have had to replace. I was going to replace the bikes with a good one anyway. The rest is mostly annoyance rather than any great loss.

Therefore, sticking with claiming via UU seems the best option at the moment. Certainly it would take a long time to detail and value the items damaged which would further detract from the viability of a claim. No point in taking a week to compile a list that only comes to a few hundred pounds anyway.

The only thing that may swing it would be how an insurance company would deal with compensation for inconvenience against how UU would deal with it. My household insurance doesn't cover any aspect of my business so I couldn't claim for disruption to the business from this leak.

How should self-employment be considered in these circumstances? UU seem to be saying that they consider it irrelevant as they want me to give up self-employed time over contracted time when doing the clean up. Due to upcoming events I need to prepare for I could well lose more money by giving up self employed time at the moment, but it will be so hard to value the losses as so much of it is potential rather than actual.

Would an insurance company take a similar argument or would they be more flexible in compensating for time off work rather than dictating that I have to sacrifice my own business?

As always, thanks in advance for any advice.

dacouch

Or claim off Halifax and then claim your excesses and lost bonuses from UU.

P.S when you get a chance, move away from Halifax, their cover is not great and has unusual things like the extra escape of water excess

rs65

Your own insurance won’t cover your time – it just covers what is specified in the policy.

I think it will be difficult to claim self employed time from UU – how can you quantify it.

sghughes42

UU have said I can only claim from them or from Halifax, not from both so that would suggest I can't claim my excess back from UU.

Or have I been mislead by the UU solicitors? It wouldn't surprise me.

I do agree about it being hard to quantify self employed time, especially in these circumstances. I would be developing products to sell but there is no guarantee I would sell any, nor any easy way to tell what else I was unable to do because that time was being used elsewhere. (If you follow that!)

This is why I'd prefer to take it out of my employed time as that is straight forward - I have a letter showing my daily rate of pay.