home insurance claim advice

apples24

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FlameCloud

Cash settlement would depend on how long you have been with them, past claims history, cost savings to them etc. It all depends on the relevent company, but I know my company doesnt like cash settling accounts that have been open less than a year.

To be honest, its not that long a wait from cunninghams- they can take alot longer than that. Putting it politly, they are not the best in the world.

If you do decide to ask for, and get, a cash settlement, do not expect full payment, especially for your bracelet. For example, even though you have had it valued at £3800, if the insurance company can get it made/replaced for less than that they will only offer you what they can get it made/replaced at.

EG, you have a ring valued at £1000, insurance (with discount) can get it for £500, if you cash settle they will only offer you the £500, the limit of their liability on the claim.

Hope this helps.

ben500

I would also point out that valuations "for insurance purposes" are notoriously unreal as many seem to think that for some reason you have to add extra to the value for "insurance purposes" you see this often on your tv screen with some cravaat wearing psuedo pundit advising "well I'd say it would fetch around £2000 at auction but for insurance purposes you should put a figure of around £2800 on it" !!!!!! is that all about?
As the poster above stated your insurers will put a value on the item which reflects the price at which they can obtain a suitable replacement and give little or no regard to your valuation. As for cash settlement there are numerous reasons why they may not offer it, one of them being that they are intrigued that you want the highest value item of your loss converted to cash and my be suspicious about this part of the claim. Cunninghams are about as speedy as a milk float by the way. A sure fire way to extend the duration of a claim is to add a loss adjuster to the proceedings

apples24

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FlameCloud

when you say 'jeweler' did you mean the one the insurance have appointed or the one you got it valued at orginally?

apples24

no he was one of the ppl cunninghm apointed to get a quote, he called me to ask details and i just had a long chat with him

apples24

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scheming_gypsy

if you want a bracelet identical to the one that was stolen i'd attempt to get a cash settlement instead and go to Turkey with a photo of the bracelet.
14c is the lowest they use out there and can pretty often replicate anything (within reason) and are very reasonable on price too...

Plus you get a holiday.

apples24

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FlameCloud

First off- sentimant DOES NOT matter in insurance. It is simply the financial value of an item that matters.

If they can replace it, then you will only get the discounted price if you cash settle regardless of whether you think it is fair or not. They can replace it for a certain amount, so they will only pay up to that amount out.

If, on the other hand, they find they cannot replace it, then they will not deduct any discount because they themselves wont be getting any.

Again, cash settlement depends on your personnal circumtances, the PCC involved and whether you ask politly enough. Remember though that ultimatly, it is the insurance companies choice about how to settle a claim.

Tight_Git_3

I feel for you on this one....

We were burgled in November. Direct Line sent out a company called UK Assistance to handle the claim. We gave their rep a detailed list of everything that was taken, showing purchase price and date, with reciepts where possible.
About 2 weeks later the rep came back, told us our locks were crap (standard UPVC door locks that I have seen on many doors) and that DL might not insure us unless we uprate them at a cost of about £200.

They settled the claim without question for a total of about £4350. The loss adjuster said that a detailed, typed list helped our cause and the speed of the claim.

Anyway, they wanted to pay us using a type of gift card that was valid at selected high street stores. As 75% of the claim was for jewellery I enquired about where I could us it. Basically the H Samuel group was the answer, which I wasn't best pleased with, as I don't want to knock them, but some of their stuff is pure tat.

I asked if we could use other jewellers as a couple of the stolen items were fairly unique items made at a local jeweller. The answer was no as it was against policy.
Apparently DL negotiate a good discount with it's nominated suppliers, and by going elsewhere you cost them.
The rep suggested that we could have a cash settlement, but this was prone to a 20% surcharge (due to the discount which DL was no longer getting). After a bit of haggling and bartering, we managed to get this dropped to about 12%.

However, I could then haggle a bit with the jewellers, having a wad of cash to spend so I recovered most of what the surcharge had cost me.

Basically you should be able to get a cash settlement, as I have read somewhere in the insurance regulator's web site that an insurer cannot force you to replace stolen items with an inferior product. I told the rep that H Samuel was crap and I wanted to replace the items from the jeweller where I brought them.
Be nice but reasonably firm and you should be ok, but be prepared for that 20% hit on your settlement.

The whole thing was settled in about 6 weeks.