Accidental damage insurance for table

anniebea

My nephew bought a table from a well know high street furniture store. He bought a policy to cover for accidental damage at the same time. The policy is for 5 years. The table is approx. 9months old.
The top of the table has been damaged by a liquid spill.
The company who came to look at repairing it have said that because of the type of table top surface the table cannot be repaired and they will need to replace the entire table. Not sure if they have put that in writing. This course of action apparently means that the new table will not be covered by the insurance (which has 4 years left) as there is a limit on the value of the repair ( in the small print)
I wonder if this insurance should have been sold in its form for this table as it appears It would never have been possible to repair the table top (the area most likely to be damaged).
Any thoughts

Aretnap

Insurance products which are sold by pushy salesmen at the same time as the furniture/electrical goods/whatever itself are nearly always poor value - high prices, limits on cover, and often they just duplicate cover which is already provided by your home insurance.

If yur nephew has contents insurance which covers accidental damage (accidental damage is an add-on on many contents policies - but still better value than insuring items individually) then he should look into claiming on that - it will offer a new for old replacement with no limit on cost (unless it was a particularly expensive table, in which case it might have to have been declared as an individual item).

As for the furniture store policy though, the fact that it wasn't great value for money doesn't automatically mean that they shouldn't have sold it - so long as the limit on repair costs was (reasonably) clearly pointed out in the documents and there was some plausible damage whic might have been covered by it then the policy isn't obviously useless or misleading - just expensive and not comprehensive.

anniebea

The repair limit is in the small print and it obviously wasn't pointed out by the pushy salesman. He just emphasised that the table would be covered for 5 years for any accidental damage


Wasn't it miss-sold in that it would never cover a repair of this type of table top, so would always lead a replacement and in that case if it happened before the end of the insurance - then there would be no cover for the remaining term.


The multiple claim issue wouldn't apply to any damage to the table top.


I agree I would never buy one of these policies.......

anniebea

Thought Id post the outcome. The Table has been replaced and the store have refunded the amount paid for insurance policy.


Lesson learnt for nephew........


Watch out for stuff in the small print.
Insurance sold with products in store are often poor value
Check whether contents policy has accidental cover that may cover any future purchases.