Santander contents insurance query

mildredalien

I'm hoping to get some advice about a contents insurance policy. My computer broke this week and I was looking into making a claim on the contents insurance. However as I was investigating how much our premium may go up if I make a claim, I realised that my OH is currently paying 5 times as much on his policy as if we were to take one out fresh today covering even more than his policy does! He pays £27/month for contents insurance covering £10k worth of stuff (no excess) - if we were to take out a new Santander policy, it would cost ~£6 a month covering £25k!! It would only go up to ~£9/month with a claim this year. How can they get away with charging him so much more??

Anyway rant aside, my questions are:

• Does anyone know if we can cancel a contents policy midway through?
• Has anyone successfully negotiated a reduced price midway through a policy?
• How might a current claim affect cancelling the policy?

My OH is not really MSE savvy, so I imagine just took the offer because he banks with them, they told him he was getting a 'discount' and it was easy. I thought that it was insurance that came free with the bank account, or I would have forced him onto a comparison website!

InsideInsurance

1) Yes you can but there will almost certainly be a cancellation fee to pay - the amount will be in your policy book or schedule

2) No, insurers wont do a mid term premium reduction simply due to a customer asking

3) If you make a claim you cannot cancel the policy

4) You say your computer "stopped working"? What happened to make it stop working? It sounds on the surface that its broken down which will not be covered by a home insurance policy

5) £10,000 sounds a TINY amount of insurance. You need to add up EVERYTHING you own including pants, socks, bottles of whiskey etc etc and cost them as brand new. If you underinsure your insurers will deduct the same percentage from any settlement they offer (eg if you had under insured by 50% and had a £100 excess and tried to claim for £1,000 then you'd ultimately receive a cheque for only £400 (£1,000 - 50% -£100)

mildredalien

Hey, thanks for the advice - will probably need to suck it up for this year then and look for a better deal next year (and hope our house doesn't burn down in the meantime).

My power supply exploded when I plugged the computer into a socket in the house, frying the motherboard. Not sure if that counts as just breaking or an accident? I certainly didn't mean to explode the power supply!

InsideInsurance

There is always an element of subjectivity in these things but on the surface I'd say you wont be covered under home insurance as simply because you didnt intend for something to happen doesn't mean it is accidental damage.

On the basis you aren't saying anything else was damaged to suggest a power surge then it just sounds like a failure of the PSU in the computer which would be a warranty issue not a home contents insurance one.

Have you had it checked out by anyone yet? A PSU isnt expensive to replace but these types of failures can cause down stream issues with the mobo, cpu, ram etc but othertimes its a lot of fireworks but nothing more than the PSU that needs replacing

mildredalien

Yeah I replaced PSU but no dice, looks like it fried the motherboard which probably means the rest is also a gonner

Damn, should have tipped a glass of water on it instead, same outcome for my poor PC but different outcome for me!!

InsideInsurance

Unless they catch you out with their cognitive questioning etc in which case you could add fraud issues and voided insurance to your dead pc

hugoshavez

Actually, as Santander define AD simply as

Damage caused by a single unexpected event.

Your claim may have a chance of succeeding.

mildredalien

Haha well I'd rather not commit insurance fraud (my OH thought I was mad for not pretending my kindle had 'unexpectedly' broken to try and get it fixed under guaruntee after I stood on it!), I think I'll give them a ring and see what they say based on it frying after plugging it into a potentially dodgy wall socket... Can't hurt to try...

McKneff

mildredalien wrote: »

Haha well I'd rather not commit insurance fraud (my OH thought I was mad for not pretending my kindle had 'unexpectedly' broken to try and get it fixed under guaruntee after I stood on it!), I think I'll give them a ring and see what they say based on it frying after plugging it into a potentially dodgy wall socket... Can't hurt to try...

Unless you are sure youwant to make a claim, I wouldnt ring if I was you, they are likely to register it on their system and your premium will go up anyway, you are actually telling them, by asking them, that you are a higher risk, madness but it happens all the time.

JimmyTheWig

On the plus side, if you are not going to claim then you can cancel the policy mid-year.
From what you've said it would probably still be cheaper to pay the cancellation / admin charge than to continue with the overpriced policy.

mildredalien

Well there's no way I'll be going through Santander to renew next year if I don't end up cancelling - so they can register my call as much as they like, if I don't claim I won't be ticking the 'made a claim in the last 12 months' box when looking for new insurance!

You're probably right JimmyTheWig - unless the cancellation fee is £100 or so I'd imagine we would be better off switching, we're only 4 months into the contract.