Has anyone tried Halifax home insurance?

OceanSound

Wondering if anyone has been with Halifax home insurance. Especially if you have gone through a claims process.

Also, they offer Home Emergency cover. Is it any good? For example, does an Engineer come out promptly to fix the boiler?

dunstonh

Wondering if anyone has been with Halifax home insurance. Especially if you have gone through a claims process.

Which version?  They have had many versions over the years.  Some have been highly comprehensive plans (but very expensive) whilst others have aimed at the budget end.

jonesMUFCforever

Home Emergency cover will not fix your boiler.
Quote https://www.halifax.co.uk/insurance/home-insurance/buildings-insurance/home-emergency/emergency-boiler.html

OceanSound

dunstonh said:

Wondering if anyone has been with Halifax home insurance. Especially if you have gone through a claims process.

Which version?  They have had many versions over the years.  Some have been highly comprehensive plans (but very expensive) whilst others have aimed at the budget end.

Got a quote yesterday. After entering my personal details, property details, cover (e.g. up to £500,000 standard cover for buildings), additional cover (e.g home emergency £39.60 per year), quote produced two options saying 'taylor your cover'. Option one was called 'Home Insurance' and Option two was 'Home Insurance Ultimate'.

For the 'Home insurance,' I saw that 'buildings- private residence cover' was set at 'up to 500,000' whereas for 'Ultimate' it was 'unlimited'. But for 'home insurance' option I could adjust the cover to a higher amount if necessary (which would up the premium obviously). The Ultimate option also had other features 'included'. e.g. Outbuildings, whereas with the 'home insurance' option I could add them manually (again it would interactively increase the premium). 

Anyway, selecting 'Ultimate' doesn't have any bearing on how fast a claim is processed, right? It just generally offers higher cover level and more features included as standard, I beleive.

OceanSound

jonesMUFCforever said:

Home Emergency cover will not fix your boiler.
Quote https://www.halifax.co.uk/insurance/home-insurance/buildings-insurance/home-emergency/emergency-boiler.html

What do you mean?

That link says:

Emergency Boiler Breakdown Cover can help protect you against loss of heating or hot water due to failure or breakdown of your boiler or main heating system and is provided as part of Home Emergency Cover.

and goes on to say:

"What is covered: 

..... So long as your boiler’s been serviced by a registered tradesperson within the last 24 months (proof required), your boiler claim will be considered."  (Sorry can't seem to add a quote for this one like above for some reason - so including it in " ")

Mind you i've seen a review for a company called esure. 

They hadn't even asked customer if the boiler had been serviced in the last year. Had rejected claim outright saying it hadn't been properly serviced.  No idea if Halifax runs similar practices. 

jonesMUFCforever

Just underneath what's covered it states ;Home Emergency Cover is not a servicing or maintenance policy so cover for routine home services or domestic appliance breakdowns is not included. 

Escape of water would be an emergency - so coming in to fix the leak is one thing getting your boiler up and running - no.

OceanSound

jonesMUFCforever said:

Just underneath what's covered it states ;Home Emergency Cover is not a servicing or maintenance policy so cover for routine home services or domestic appliance breakdowns is not included. 

Escape of water would be an emergency - so coming in to fix the leak is one thing getting your boiler up and running - no.

Above that for 'what is covered' it says 'including a domestic boiler'. When it says 'domestic appliance breakdowns' I think they mean the tv or a kettle. Btw, Pretty hard to confuse a routine service as an emergency!!

Sandtree

OceanSound said:
Anyway, selecting 'Ultimate' doesn't have any bearing on how fast a claim is processed, right? It just generally offers higher cover level and more features included as standard, I beleive.

You cannot say one way or the other unless there are marketing messages that tell you.

A long time ago I worked for a company that did a lot of white labelling of travel insurance, so travel agents, pharmacies, supermarkets that wanted to be able to sell their own travel insurance could come to us and we would provide them everything needed including the call centre answer the phone etc.

In this arrangement they would pay us a wholesale price for a policy, say £10 for a basic cover single trip cover for a middle aged adult with no health conditions. They could set whatever price they wanted to charge their customers and Insurance Premium Tax is added on top of that price. So they could sell it for £10 + IPT and make no money (and really a loss) on it or they could charge £40 + IPT and they’d get £30 for every sale.

However there were also options, if you paid us £11 wholesale we’d prioritise the calls to the telephone number on your paperwork over other brands that were only paying us £10. Similarly you could add another £1 and we’d add some discretion to claims handlers so if the policy paid £5 per full hour of delay after the first 4 hours and one of your customers was delayed 4hrs 58 minutes we’d pay out despite not meeting the policy terms.

This company had a fair number of big name brands on its book and the one well known budget brand that chose every single “optional extra” was selling it as a loss leader whereas another well known brand that pushes their customer service didn’t choose a single one and had the highest prices of all their clients... on paper though the two policies were identical as things like discretion or call wait times are not part of the policy.