AA Home Insurance - Accidental Cover - Broken Screen on Laptop

Ciwan

Hello Friends

So whilst tidying up the house, I broke the screen on my Dell XPS laptop today.

I have contents insurance with the AA and I have the accidental damage add-on too.

I have read the policy documents and it says valuables are covered. Laptops do come under valuables in their policy docs.

Total excess is £200 (voluntary and compulsory). Is it worth making a claim? I am worried that if I make the claim, they will increase the cost of my home insurance! And so they would charge me even more than what the original repair was worth!

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

stator

I'd say get a quote for repair first. It depends mainly on how much the replacement screen is going to cost, sometimes you can get them, sometimes you can't.

InsideInsurance

Ciwan wrote: »

Total excess is £200 (voluntary and compulsory). Is it worth making a claim? I am worried that if I make the claim, they will increase the cost of my home insurance! And so they would charge me even more than what the original repair was worth!

Even my Apple laptop was only around £200 for a replacement screen so I'd expect Dell to be less unless its something stupidly fancy.

They will increase the cost of your home insurance, you'd lose your NCD and also have a claim to declare for the next 3-5 years. Some insurers do ask about "incidents" rather than just claims these days but most are still only claims.

Certainly get a quote or two for the repairs BEFORE informing your insurers

Ciwan

Thanks guys. So I called Dell and apparently due to the nature of the laptop and how compact it is (think of a MacBook Air) it will cost me £350 to replace the monitor!

Is it worth it?

InsideInsurance

Ciwan wrote: »

Thanks guys. So I called Dell and apparently due to the nature of the laptop and how compact it is (think of a MacBook Air) it will cost me £350 to replace the monitor!

Is it worth it?

Have you called a local repair place too?

The one we had replaced was for MBA too but the only difference that made was that they replace the whole upper shell rather than trying to replace the screen from within it.

Do a dummy quote online with slightly altered personal details with the claim and without it to see the difference then remember that it impacts for 3-5 years though the impact goes down each time

Ciwan

Replacing the whole upper shell, I believe that is what they said.

Would a local repair shop be able to do this? I'll pay a couple of them visits over the weekend.

Thanks

InsideInsurance

Ciwan wrote: »

Replacing the whole upper shell, I believe that is what they said.

Would a local repair shop be able to do this? I'll pay a couple of them visits over the weekend.

The only possible issue is if there is a warranty problem, assuming its outside of its warranty then you can even do it yourself without too much problem in most cases other than needing the odd sized torx screwdrivers they inevitably use.

Ciwan

Thinking about this though, at what point does it become worth it to make a claim? Is there any point to me having the contents insurance? It is like whatever breaks, I'll be worried to make a claim!

Is the only scenario to which home contents insurance is worth it is when my house get burgled and the thieves clean out the house of all valuables?

nidO

Ciwan wrote: »

Is the only scenario to which home contents insurance is worth it is when my house get burgled and the thieves clean out the house of all valuables?

Or your house burns down. Or is flooded. Or your brand spanking new 60" telly falls on the floor and breaks.
Insurance is there to deal with expensive problems more than cheap ones, breaking a laptop screen is generally a cheaper problem.

InsideInsurance

Ciwan wrote: »

Thinking about this though, at what point does it become worth it to make a claim? Is there any point to me having the contents insurance? It is like whatever breaks, I'll be worried to make a claim!

Is the only scenario to which home contents insurance is worth it is when my house get burgled and the thieves clean out the house of all valuables?

Insurance is a risk transfer mechanism, you transfer the risk of a big loss in exchange for a known small loss (the premium).

At the same time insurance is there for the unpredictable, inevitably we all have small accidents occasionally, crack a plate, drop some wine on a cushion etc and these types of attritional incidents arent ever going to be economical to claim for because whilst the exact details of the claims arent predictable the fact one will happen every year or so is. Where insurance comes in is when someone breaks in and steals not just your laptop but your TV, DVD and jewelry at the same time or when your TV falls off the wall damaging your coffee table and injuring the neighbour's kid who was sitting under it at the time etc.

When you look at commercial policies for big companies they can often have an aggregated excess/ retention of several million pounds because inevitably with 7,600 stores and 500,000 employees you are going to have some accidents to both customers and employees and its not cost effective to transfer that risk but you dont want to be carrying the risk of a major catastrophic event.

TSx

For this to be covered on an AA policy, you will need to have the personal belongings cover (section 3) - accidental damage on its own won't cover it.