£4000 of personnel property lost in boat fire

stars_bright

We have just been on holiday in a hired cruiser which caught fire due to a suspected elctrical fault. All our property which was on the boat was destroyed and we reckon it is about £4000 worth of property in total. I had no idea we had this much stuff with us, but with all our mobiles, the sat nav, the kids cameras, ipods, gameboys etc it soon adds up! Our holiday insurance only covers up to £1,250 and our household up to £1,500. We feel that since the boat was faulty the holiday company should pay for our property as well as a refund of the cost of our holiday and maybe compensation for the trauma. The boat company have said that they are not obliged to pay for our property and if we want them to pay we would have to sue them and proove negligence. I don't know whether we should claim as much as we can on the 2 insurance policies and tehn try to get them to pay the rest or to try to sue them for all the costs as our house insurance is bound to go up afater making such a big claim. The other thing is that the holiday insurance only covers up to £250 of "valuables" which means mobiles, electrical devices etc - this would only just cover the replacement cost of 1 contract phone, so it is a warning to others to check their holiday insurances wording and whether the cover is enough! any advice much appreciated

dmg24

I imagine that somewhere in their t & c's the company will have excluded liability for your belongings whilst on board. If this is the case, then the company are spot on, they will only be liable to you if you can prove that they were negligent.

In order to prove negligence, you must show that the defendant had a duty of care towards you (yes), that the defendant breached that duty of care, and that the loss caused was due to that breach.

The issue that you have is showing that the defendant breached their duty. Was the electrical fault foreseeable? Was the company aware that it was faulty? If not, then I doubt you have a claim.

jonesMUFCforever

Do you have legal expenses cover with your home insurance?
If so give them a ring.
You need to prvide an itineray of goods lost and some kind of proof that you owned them.
Do you not have seperate insurance for your contract phones or does your bank account offer any 'free' mobile phone insurance?

Also the travel insurance limit would be per adult yes /no??

stars_bright

The fire started when we tried to use the microwave, the wiring it was plugged into must have been faulty as soon as we switched it on there was a burning smell and the fire started in the boat wiring behind the socket. We could argue that if the microwave had been tested before we took the boat then the fault would have been apparent but I don't know whether that would be enough to proove negligence. We didn't have any seperate insurance for our mobiles but our house insurance does have legal cover so I will ring them tomorrow for advice. The limit of £1500 and £1250 is the toal limit per claim, not for each person.

dmg24

We could argue that if the microwave had been tested before we took the boat then the fault would have been apparent but I don't know whether that would be enough to proove negligence.

Definitely not. The company are not obliged to test the electrical equipment each week.

They would only be negligent if the previous user had informed them of a fault and they had not followed it up, or they had not had annual electrical testing.

The fault needs to be reasonably foreseeable. Unless they failed in either of the two above options, I am afraid that you would not have a case.

IvanOpinion

Sounds to me as if you under insured yourself .. many people do this with travel and household insurance to save a few quid and then when they need to make a claim they suddenly think they are being hard done by. The onus is on the purchaser to make sure the product suits their purposes ... as an example a tumble dryer looks like a washer/dryer but costs about a third of the price, if you got it home you would not have a claim that it did not wash your clothes. When you buy insurance on the web it is often a basic product that will satisfy the needs of 80% of the likely applicants .. if you need extra you need to contact them.

I am sorry to say it but it sounds a bit like you took a gamble and you may be about to lose on it. As others have pointed out, do they have anything in their T&C about personal belongings ... to be honest I would not expect them to offer insurance since it would be hard to judge 'value' ... you claim you had £4K worth of kit someone else may only have £1K of kit so why would they want to pay extra to insure them for stuff they did not have.

Ivan

getmore4less

stars_bright wrote: »

Our holiday insurance only covers up to £1,250 and our household up to £1,500.

You may find that this is not the case if they are covering the same risk,

Hollidy insurance : personal goods.
House insurance : personal goods away from home.

Many insurance policies don't allow this double cover

£4k of stuff how much of this is away from home even when not on holiday, looks like under insured on the house policy anyway as well as the holiday policy.

It is common for house policies to only do proportions of a claims for under insurance.

Should have had £4k cover but only £1500 so only 37.5% cover thats a claim for £562.