Help on insurance claim on wedding dress Dry Cleaners at fault

DrPepper123

Its seems its not that straight forward. i believe the dress if ordered new was around £1300 my mum thinks it was more so would have to check with shop. we purchased for just over £1000. Will the insurance company care what I proposed to do with dress? At the end of the day I don't have the dress to do what I want with, whether it was to keep it, sell it or use material to make another garment.

Dimey

DrPepper123 wrote: »

Its seems its not that straight forward. i believe the dress if ordered new was around £1300 my mum thinks it was more so would have to check with shop. we purchased for just over £1000. Will the insurance company care what I proposed to do with dress? At the end of the day I don't have the dress to do what I want with, whether it was to keep it, sell it or use material to make another garment.

They won't look at what the dress was worth new, they'll look at what you paid for it - at the receipt.

InsideInsurance

Pollycat wrote: »

InsideInsurance seems to have some experience in this field.

I have experience of dealing with third party claims against insurance but don't think I've ever dealt with a wedding dress which is possibly slightly different.


The insurers are not likely to really ask any questions. They will be getting a copy of the T&Cs from the dry cleaners to check the contractual limitations on liability. From the OP they will simply ask for any receipts/ invoices for the dress. From these two things, assuming they accept liability, they will make an offer for settlement.

The OP however does need to decide what they want to do with the dress now. If the insurers provide a full settlement then the dress becomes their property as salvage, though if they'll actually want it is another mater. If you want to retain the dress even though its damaged you need to make this clear and the value of the damaged dress, if any, will be netted off the settlement - so they should offer you £X for the dress, salvage valued at £Y and so you receive £Z (X-Y)

DrPepper123

Dimey wrote: »

They won't look at what the dress was worth new, they'll look at what you paid for it - at the receipt.

that makes sense, thanks.

InsideInsurance wrote: »

I have experience of dealing with third party claims against insurance but don't think I've ever dealt with a wedding dress which is possibly slightly different.

The insurers are not likely to really ask any questions. They will be getting a copy of the T&Cs from the dry cleaners to check the contractual limitations on liability. From the OP they will simply ask for any receipts/ invoices for the dress. From these two things, assuming they accept liability, they will make an offer for settlement.

The OP however does need to decide what they want to do with the dress now. If the insurers provide a full settlement then the dress becomes their property as salvage, though if they'll actually want it is another mater. If you want to retain the dress even though its damaged you need to make this clear and the value of the damaged dress, if any, will be netted off the settlement - so they should offer you £X for the dress, salvage valued at £Y and so you receive £Z (X-Y)

The dry cleaners did say to me that they would give the dress to a local bridal shop if wanted. If I get a full settlement I am ok with that but as you advised it's really the insurance companies property?

Thanks for all your help, appreciated.

InsideInsurance

Yes, if an insurer pays out on a total loss basis then it owns whatever is left. Often this most commonly happens with cars that are beyond economical repair but can also be stolen items that subsequently turn up or on higher grade policies which cover matching sets where someone loses 1 diamond earring then they get paid out for the pair but must give the insurer the one they've still got.

Insurers have various means of dealing with the salvage from standing contracts with scrap yards for cars to selling off items to staff in charity auctions. I did some work for an insurer that does a lot of high net worth home insurance and they did the charity auctions twice a year and one guy bought a very expensive single diamond earring which he got for about 70% of its value and then had the stone reset into a ring for his fianc!e to be.

Of cause some salvage has no value left in it, like a broken mirror, in which case the insurer will waive its rights to the salvage