Household insurance why bother

benny5

On a recent holiday abroad I had my purse containing a large amount of money and a digital camera stolen from my bag, reported it to the police and obtained an incident report. On returning home contacted my insurers Coventry b/society and explained what had happened, the claim was then passed to Heath and Lambert who in turn passed it to (Loss adjusters) Aquilo Business Solutions Ltd. While they are prepared to replace the camera (I still had the receipt) they refuse any compensation for the loss of my purse or its contents as there were no proof of their existence.

I have today received further correspondence from another party requesting the policy excess of £50 before they will proceed with replacing the camera.

As I have been paying household insurance without any claims for the past 35 years I am curious to know if this is standard practice for the industry.

lisyloo

I don't think it's normal practice to carry large amounts of cash on holiday and I think it's natural for the insurer to be suspicious.

Why were you carrying a lot of cash?
Why don't you have any proof? If I took a large amount of cash from an ATM I'd expect to be able to get a bank statement to prove it. Where did the money come from?

If it came from under the mattress then how would you expect an insurer to be able to tell the difference between your genuine claim and someone that just made it up?

If it was foreign cash then why don't you have evidence of the exchange transaction (even if you lost the original I'm sure the bank would be able to provide proof on request for a small charge).

Yes I think it is normal for them to be suspicious when people lose expensive items for which you'd normally expect there to be a receipt but it's inexplicably missing (I'm not suggesting you are lying just saying that they can't tell the difference without proof).

Essentially it's up to you to prove you had the item not for them to prove you didn't. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear but I believe that's how it works.

FlameCloud

Aquilo arn't loss Adjustors, despite what they tell you over the phone, they are a Fraud managment company.

I take it you had an interview lasting between 20 mins- 1 hours with them over the phone?

benny5

Thank you both for that insight.
Being an honest person, never having made a claim in 35 years to support that belief, I am somewhat alarmed to be seen as making a false claim. It this a tactic employed by all insurance companies.

The trauma of the incident itself remains and each time I get a phone call or a letter on the subject it all returns so vividly.

gazza975526570

its pretty much standard due to the amount of fraud - particularly on home claims - AD in particular.

It will be within your policy you must provide evidence of any loss - as above bank statements, evidence of purchasing foreign currency, atm receipts etc would all normally suffice

The xs before replacement of the camera again would be standard

FlameCloud

It means that when you first registered the claim they didnt believe you.

You would have an 'amber' settlement- meaning that they have identiffied several things they are not happy with, and can only have what you can prove. These things are known as 'barriers', and intended to make you withdraw the claim.

lisyloo

Being an honest person, never having made a claim in 35 years to support that belief, I am somewhat alarmed to be seen as making a false claim.

I am sure you are honest however why don't you have any paper trail for the money?
If you can tell us where it came from then perhaps we can help suggest ways of proving you had it.
Unless it came from under the mattress then there will be some sort of paper trail.

If you are keeping large amounts of money in a jar or under the mattress then you need to be aware of the fact that you won't be able to prove you had it so there are risks involved in doing this.

benny5

The money was a gift from my Mum to celebrate a special wedding anniversary. As she is an elderly person who believes she has given us this wonderful holiday I can’t destroy it by saying the holiday was ruined by the incident and we are now paying it off on the credit card I had to resort to when we had no money.

By far the worst aspect of this is that, from being a victim I now feel a suspect in a crime.

Debt_Free_Chick

benny5 wrote: »

By far the worst aspect of this is that, from being a victim I now feel a suspect in a crime.

Try not to take it personally. Over the years, far too many people have put in bogus claims especially in relation to items lost abroad and especially for cameras, camcorders & watches.

Add to this a "substantial" amount of cash with no proof and you can see that without knowing the person, the claim would be flagged as suspicious.

It sounds as though they don't suspect you of fraud now - at least not in relation to the camera - and the only remaining issue is the lack of proof of having the cash

Cash claims are always difficult to get through because it's impossible to prove what was in your purse when it was stolen. In any event, there's usually a limit on the cover you have for cash.

Is there no way of verifying the cash Mum gave you? Have you spoken to the Coventry and explained all of this to them?

For the future, what you should have done was to pay it into your bank account, use your CC abroad and then use the cash in the account to pay the CC bill. Or you could have "pre-paid" the CC bill before you went on holiday. Something to remember for the future.

lisyloo

It's a tricky one and I sympathise.
If the money came from a bank account (of your mothers) then there will be a paper trail but it won't be possible to get it without revealing the situation to her.

Or you could have "pre-paid" the CC bill before you went on holiday

I would not advised putting a CC card in credit becuse the money is not insured.
Some CC companies only insure their money against fraud and not yours so if you card is stolen and it's your credit that gets used (and not the CC companies) then you won't be insured on their insurance.

However there are certainly ways round it.
ATMs are very common in most countries abroad, so you can usually use a combination of debit cards, credit cards and small amounts of cash from abroad.
Large amount should be left in a hotel safe and only carry what you need.

If you really feel you are being treated unfairly then I would get hold of a copy of the insurer complaints procedure and make a formal complaint.
If you were a fraudster you would be unlikely to do this.
You can explain the situation and if you are still not satisfied at the end you have the chance to take it to the insurance ombudsman.
All this is free and only costs stamps and time so I would suggest you have nothing to lose by doing this.
They are either taking this approach to fish out fraudsters or it's a cynical ploy to stop you claiming. Either way if you are persistant then you have a chance of getting your claim settled fairly.

MarkyMarkD

I don't think that it's time to be talking about complaint procedures. Thus far, all that's happened is that the OP has submitted an unsubstantiated claim for the theft of a large amount of money. Any insurer would find this at least mildly worth investigation and would reasonably ask for evidence of the existence of the money. As soon as the claimant says "I don't have any" or gets at all defensive, the perceived riskiness of the claim increases in the claims handler's eyes. I don't see any successful resolution of this without proof of the financial gift, but even that doesn't prove that the money was taken out of the country. As it sounds like it was still in sterling (as otherwise there would be a foreign exchange receipt presumably?) it sounds even less convincing to an impartial observer. Why would anyone rationally take a big pile of sterling cash abroad with them and have it in their purse, rather than a safety deposit box in their hotel?