Legal & General Gripe

MoneyBob

My daughter just dropped my iPad on the hard kitchen floor and the screen is smashed, but it still works.

I have L&G home insurance - I opted for their quite expensive option so we'd be _really_ covered, including accidental damage.

I've got 5 years no claims bonus.

I tried to find out, roughly, how much a single claim would affect our next premium given that they'd told be the claim would knock off 2 years of our no claims bonus. They would not tell me.

I pressed and asked who I could speak to who _could_ tell me, and they said I'd have to go back to customer services again (I'd been with customer services in the first place when I got passed through to the claims department with the same question) - I was then put on hold indefinitely.

I guess I don't have a point really so this is just a bit of a rant, but surely they should be able to give me some idea of the extra cost to me as a result of my making a claim - otherwise there's no way I can possibly judge if it's worth my doing so or not.

I conclude that insurance for accidental damage is useful only if you accidentally damage something extremely valuable - or more than one thing at once.

Aretnap

Even if Legal and General did tell you how much extra they'd charge if you renewed now it wouldn't do you a great deal of good because (a) there's no guarantee that they'll charge the same when you actually reach your renewal date and (b) it wouldn't tell you if you'd be able to get equivalent cover more cheaply from another company (after all, different insurers have different price structures, and there's no reason why the cheapest company for someone with no claims should be the cheapest for someone with a claim or two).

You can get an idea of how much it will add by doing a couple of dummy quotes online with and without the claim. It still won't give you an exact figure because insurance prices change over time, so the price may be different when you get to your renewal date - let alone for the 3-5 years you'd have to declare the claim.

You're right - as a rule of thumb it's not usually worth claiming for, or for that matter insuring, relatively inexpensive things which you can easily afford to replace yourself. Over the course of my (hopefully) long life I'm sure I'll lose, break or have stolen two or three iPads, phones, cameras etc. Insurance companies aren't stupid and they know this as well - so if I insure my gadgets all they're going to do is charge me premiums which add up to the cost of two or three of those items over my lifetime, and add a bit extra on top for admin costs and profit margin. If I can afford it, I'm likely to be better off by just earmarking some savings as a gadget replacement fund, and replacing them as I go along. Insurance is for the big things like a major car accident or my house burning to the ground - not especially likely to happen to me, but without insurance they'd leave me destitute if they did happen.

InsideInsurance

Is it the screen itself or the protector infront of the screen thats gone? Certainly in older models they are separate, I think they have since been merged but that may not be the case.

What is your policy excess?

As above the best idea is to do some dummy quotes with and without a claim to see the impact. In practice not many Home insurers have NCD but simply claims history and so whilst LG say you will go down to 3 years NCD with most Home providers you will now have 0 years since your last claim.

The other problem is you have now told your insurers about it. Home insurers are increasingly talking about incidents rather than just claims and so if LG have noted the incident it would be dangerous to "forget" to mention it for the next 3-5 years.

Given how cheap it is to get it repaired even before the excess I doubt it'd be economical to claim when you consider increased premium for 3-5 years but it may be too late now.

MoneyBob

Thank you. Both of your answers make a lot of sense. Much appreciated.

mastini

Hi think yourselves lucky we left ourselves in the so called capable hands of legal and general, Our bungalow burnt to the ground in sept 2009, it was a very difficult period as you can probably appreciate,our insurance company appointed Merlin a loss adjusters firm which we know find have gone into receivership, Merlin really dragged their heels once they got the go ahead via legal and general, building work did not actually start for at least 16 months, we were as mentioned insured with legal and general, we moved back into our partially finished home in approx may 2012, we understood that the property was signed off and things behind the scenes via legal and general, loss adjusters Merlin and the contractors was sorted, we arrived home today to find an envelope pinned to our gates, stating that our property has been seized by the courts on behalf of med king a solicitors on behalf of the contractors etc, to say the least my wife and i are devastated as we don't understand any legal jargon and are totally unaware as to why we would be taken to court anyway, along with this legal and general are stating that they no longer have any records of this claim, as its been over 5 years, we have an eviction proceedings date , due to the insurance companies negligence in paying for construction to the property from the original claim, what avenues can we take.

MoneyBob

mastini wrote: »

Hi think yourselves lucky we left ourselves in the so called capable hands of legal and general, Our bungalow burnt to the ground in sept 2009, it was a very difficult period as you can probably appreciate,our insurance company appointed Merlin a loss adjusters firm which we know find have gone into receivership, Merlin really dragged their heels once they got the go ahead via legal and general, building work did not actually start for at least 16 months, we were as mentioned insured with legal and general, we moved back into our partially finished home in approx may 2012, we understood that the property was signed off and things behind the scenes via legal and general, loss adjusters Merlin and the contractors was sorted, we arrived home today to find an envelope pinned to our gates, stating that our property has been seized by the courts on behalf of med king a solicitors on behalf of the contractors etc, to say the least my wife and i are devastated as we don't understand any legal jargon and are totally unaware as to why we would be taken to court anyway, along with this legal and general are stating that they no longer have any records of this claim, as its been over 5 years, we have an eviction proceedings date , due to the insurance companies negligence in paying for construction to the property from the original claim, what avenues can we take.

I don't know anything about insurance law - perhaps you need legal representation pronto!

They (L&G) surely can't get away with that!

khakilad

I saw this post and thought I had to respond.

Apple have something called, "Out of Warranty Replacement"

Basically if you book a genius bar appointment and explain the problem Apple will replace the said iPad with a brand new one. Depending on the model the cost will be:


iPad mini: £156.44
iPad, iPad 2, iPad mini 2: £206.44
iPad 3rd generation, iPad 4th generation, iPad Air, iPad mini 3: £256.44
iPad Air 2: £306.44

Worth doing this before claiming on your insurance!