Home insurance carpet claim - reasonable match colour

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We're having to make a contents insurance claim for a carpet in our house due to accidental damage (burn damage). The carpet is an unusual colour, it's a dark blue with lighter threads included in twisted pile to create a variation in colour, and it's a couple of years old. The insurance have passed us on to a specialist assessor (Independent Inspections Ltd) who have agreed that the carpet should be replaced and offered us a voucher to go back to the same carpet shop and order and fit a replacement carpet of the same product. Here is the problem though - whilst the same product still exists, but the colour has been discontinued, and there isn't a different product that even looks similar at the same price point, the only similar looking carpets are in the price range at least £15/sqm above the same product of our carpet, which will add a couple of hundred £ to the cost of re-carpeting the room. IIL, however, will only offer a voucher to the cost of the same product, saying that insurers don't match for colour, because "you'll never get exactly the same". This will leave us a long way out of pocket, on top of our excess, to get a similar looking carpet again.

I have looked in the policy wording and I can't see anything excluding colour, only that the insurance will provide for a "reasonable match". Have there been rulings from the Ombudsman / Courts which have decided that colour can be ignored?

I should add I don't feel we are nitpicking over small colour differences here. We have been to 2 large carpet shops with a sample of the old carpet and in both of them the sales assistants have been left scratching their heads because there is just nothing similar at the same or lower price any more. At similar or lower price point there are much lighter blues, or solid blues without the variation which was a feature we liked so much in our current carpet, but it doesn't take a discerning eye to tell they are very different.

TELLIT01

Insurance isn't designed to leave you better off after a claim than before it.  If they agree to provide a carpet at a higher price, that would be exactly the outcome.  You are not entitled to anything more than the cost of the original item.

jimbo6977

Contact the manufacturer and ask whether they have any knocking about?

FlameCloud

TELLIT01 said:

Insurance isn't designed to leave you better off after a claim than before it.  If they agree to provide a carpet at a higher price, that would be exactly the outcome.  You are not entitled to anything more than the cost of the original item.

On a reinstatement policy, that is simply not true. 

[Deleted User]

Does it need to match some other carpet or do you just like the colour?