Burglary and making a claim

Twoyearplan

Hi,

I was burgled a few days ago while attending my mums memorial sadly so may not be thinking straight at the moment and wondered if I could ask for experiences please.

My premium is currently £155 a year for buildings and contents with tesco. Excess in contents £250, buildings £500.

The total amount of things taken is around £6000, which includes two apple laptops around 4 years old, some silver and cash. Both my patio doors have been damaged but are still useable.

I am still tidying up the mess and am still discovering things that have been taken so the amount may be higher.

I'm debating whether to claim. The laptops will be paid at "cash value" which presumably means nowhere near what was paid.

I fear my premium will increase considerably in future years.

Has anyone had a similar experience please?

Many thanks

da_rule

Whilst your premiums may rise you need to decide whether you can afford to do the repairs/replace important items. Maybe do a quick comparison site quote based on you making a claim and see how much the premium is increased by? At least this way you'll have some guidance on how much claiming will actually cost you.

SuperHan

You'll probably have to declare the burglary on future insurance applications anyway, so your premiums will probably spike anyway.

Macbooks tend to hold their value fairly well - especially in comparison to PCs - so it may be worth ooking on eBay or something similar as to the selling price to get an indicator of what you might get. In future, it's always better to get an insurance that offers new for old.

You shouldn't have to pay the buildings excess, even the door damaged should be covered by contents if directly related to the burglary.

Ultimately whether to claim is your decision though!

InsideInsurance

Home insurance asks about "incidents" a lot less than motor insurance otherwise in theory you'd have to declare every time you broke a wine glass or dripped some coffee on the carpet etc.

What do you mean about their cash value? A quick check of the Tesco policy and it appears to be a new for old in which case they'd give you the nearest matching model to your old machines.

Twoyearplan

Thank you everyone.

InsideInsurance, I think I may have misunderstood the statement "we will settle your claim by repairing or replacing your contents or paying you their cash value ...... ". Can't find anything about new for old though.

InsideInsurance

Thats just giving the options they have.

If they choose to give you cash then it would be the price of buying one new on the high street today. As models move on etc it will be less than what you paid but still will get you an equiv model.

If you request to have a cash settlement rather than their preferred supplier giving you a replacement then they are entitled to only pay their preferred supplier rate for it rather than the high street place. For an Apple computer I'd guess it'd be about 20% less than high street and then the excess comes off too

geri1965_2

Are your premiums likely to rise by £6,000?

Wammer

SuperHan wrote: »

You shouldn't have to pay the buildings excess, even the door damaged should be covered by contents if directly related to the burglary.

Are you sure this is the case? When we were burgled we had to pay the excess on the buildings insurance for repairing the windows and paid the excess for the items stolen on the contents insurance.

SteveJW

Be very careful, for this amount it is likely that the insurers will appoint an assessor. Although they appear to be your friend their sole purpose is to reduce the amount the insurers will pay out
They will add up the value of everthing moveable in the house, including clothes, shoes, cutlery, bedding etc. One quick rule of thumb is if you turned your house upside down everthing that would fall out is moveable
Then they will calculate if you are underinsured, ie your contents are insured for £40,000 and they value the contents at £80,000, you are underinsured by 50%
The amount they will pay out is reduced by 50% so a £6,000 claim is reduced to £3,000

Good Luck

meer53

My claim when i was burgled was over £9000. An assessor came out to see me and took details of everything that was stolen. I had no issues at all, everything was replaced, even things i didn't have receipts for.

Twoyearplan

Did your premium go up meer53?