Jewellery Lost or Stolen...

adamL

Hi,

I’m after some advice. The basics are below.

My wife got handed family jewellery from her mother 5 years ago but didn’t really wear it due to fear of being mugged. At this time it wasn’t insured.

We got burgled last year in our previous property (didn’t have contents insurance in place) but were very lucky that they didn’t take the jewellery (lost plenty of other valuable items). Lesson was learnt and contents insurance purchased. The jewellery was valued. We decided to also insure two items out the five “outside the home”.

With a burglary in the back of our mind we kept hiding the stuff in odd places.

We then moved. And put the box we believed the jewellery to be in, in a room inside a food box. We did not check the contents at this point as we thought it was transported safely from one place to the next (and that it was actually still there).

6 weeks later my wife looks inside the food box and to her horror, only the cheaper jewellery is in there. House has been tipped upside down. Nothing.

We have had several people around (all have been shown the room in question) including 4 builders. The light switch to the room is very near the location of the food box although as far as I was aware the lid was shut. We had professional cleaners over at the previous property although this was after we had moved the stuff out the flat (although we don’t know if we left the jewellery accidentally behind because we were trying to store it safely).

We are fearful to call the insurance company because this all sounds wish washy. But it’s killing us at the moment. Suggestions?

huckster

You cannot explain the loss. Insurers may refuse any claim.

Most people with items of value, if they are moving house or have builders/cleaners in the house, would be very careful. They would most likely move the items of value to somewhere safe and be checking fairly regularly.

If you submit a claim for the loss, you would just state the truth as to what has happened. The Insurers as I have said may refuse the claim, as you cannot explain how the items have been subject to loss.

ciderboy2009

huckster wrote: »

The Insurers as I have said may refuse the claim, as you cannot explain how the items have been subject to loss.

How much are you talking about?

We put in a claim a few years back which included a ring worth £3,500 which just disappeared.

Our only guess was that my father (who had Alzheimers) had tidied it all away into the bin (he was going through a bit of an OCD phase with regards to tidyness at the time).

The claim went through quickly and without any problems.

adamL

Thanks both for your responses. More than £3.5k but I don’t really want to state the actual amount on here as I am highly embarrassed as to what we’ve actually lost. All we can do is try and obviously tell the truth. Thank you again.