How to protect yourself. Home Contents Insurance policy holders, please read!

HappyFish2021

Some are worse than others, but many an insurer will try to find an 'out' for not paying you or to pay you much less than you deserve.  They will try and use every excuse in the book and then some. There are some things you can do to help protect yourself most people only learn with bitter hindsight after making a claim (if you are a normal trusting soul like I) unless you are extremely insurer-savvy, in which case, great.

1. First, I will state what I hope is the obvious. When taking out a policy, reveal every single relevant detail. Do not withhold information or exaggerate. Do not claim someone is at home all the time if you're an acrobat in a travelling circus away for half the year, to be a brain surgeon if you're unemployed, etc. etc. Do not withhold telling them about any previous claims/insurance refusals, however small. Do not not tell them about bad debts or your partner's criminal record if they ask. Do not not tell them about someone living with you. Do not give your insurer an 'out' at the start by claiming your policy is void or fraudulent.

2. Make sure your insurer is kept up to date with any changes as soon as they happen. Even if you don't think they are relevant it is best to say just in case. 

3. Make sure you are not under-insured. Make sure you read all the small print to check all that you want  to be covered is covered. It's very easy to say '50k on contents is plenty enough' as it seems such a lot until you actually have to make a claim and discover, actually it is not for many families and you are under-insured. Imagine you lost everything in an explosion... everything from the baby clothes to the tennis racket in the attic to the kitchen cutlery. Hopefully you never will, but imagine... Certain 'big' items such as TV and three piece suite are obvious as to value but do you know how much all your kids clothes and shoes would cost to replace? Then add in yours and the other halves' and you are easily talking a few thousand even if none of you do designer. Add in towels and bedding and we are at 10k for many normal people already. My CD collection, nothing fancy, would probably cost £3k to replace. My DVD collection even more. All those Sopranos and Breaking Bad Boxsets. My other half's vinyl I dread to think. My kids books and toys in the playbox add up to a good few hundred. Now add in your carpets, pictures on the walls.... These are things most people don't even think about that drive up the value of what is actually in your house. Now you may say, 'yeah but if that ever happened, I would just settle for 50k'. But the loss adjuster won't see it like that. They will refuse your claim for being under-insured (I actually know people this has happened to) or if you're lucky, they'll reduce your claim pro rata. So if they decide your stuff was really worth £100k then they may only pay you 25k of a 50k claim - like I say, if you are lucky.

4. Make sure any valuables are covered.  Lots of policies stipulate items over x amount, often around £1500, are not covered. They will also have a ceiling for groups of items such as jewellery and electrical so on. If you have a lot of phones and electrical items (very easy in a tech savvy family home), you should ask for that total ceiling to be raised 5 or 10k higher and if you want that Macbook Pro covered, you need to tell them about it and specify it separately on your policy. It will cost you a few quid a year more but hey, that's insurance.

5. Keep your boiler etc serviced by proper tradesman. If your policy small print says you must service your alarm or boiler or have your chimney swept once a year or whatever, then for goodness sake, do it, and get a proper registered tradesman to do it and keep all receipts/service records. Don't let Uncle John fiddle with it on his Sunday off. Otherwise if your alarm fails and you get robbed, the boiler explodes due to a gas leak, or a chimney fire causes your place to go up in smoke then you could be screwed. Even if such servicing is not in the small print, it is possible the insurer may still blame you for being lax. And if your tradesman is a bodger, they may blame you for not hiring a proper tradesman.

6. Keep all service records and receipts online in a third party drive. It is not a bad idea to photograph and keep all receipts/service records online somewhere like Google Drive or Dropbox. This means that if your place did go up in smoke, your paperwork with it, you can still prove to the insurer you got your boiler serviced when you claimed you did by a registered gas safe engineer. Don't count on keeping everything just on your own computer drive, as if that item exploded or something and your data was irretrievable then again you would be screwed. Have it so you can access it from anywhere in the future.

7. Keep receipts for all bigger purchases. Again, as per Point 6, not a bad idea to keep a backup of them online in case of fire etc. This is to prove to the insurer/loss adjuster you bought the item and the value of it.

8. If you don't have receipts as it's, say, a family heirloom, then get a valuation from a reputable valuer. Or better still get a few different opinions. Ask your insurer's advice where necessary, ideally in writing so there's a paper trail, about what constitutes a reputable valuation for their purposes. Add a copy of the valuation/s into your Google drive/Dropbox.

9. Take photos of all your valuables. Not just of the iphone brand new in the box, or the screenshot from ebay, but the item in situ in your house, of it being used, or if it's jewellery, of you wearing it. Add the pictures to your Google drive/Dropbox.

10. Go around your house by each room and take photos of everything. I don't mean each individual item, but a few shots of each room can show the loss adjuster approx how many CDs you had, how many clothes were in each cupboard, etc. Open your wardrobe and junk jewellery box and take a few pics of it all together en masse. Any particular items you can be bothered to, photograph individually, but this isn't ebay. But it's a good idea if there are designer labels to shoot them. Open that cupboard of DVDs and CDs and show how many there are approx in there (you'll be surprised). Open your kitchen cupboards and take pics of the pots and pans crockery and the sandwich toaster wedding gift you never used. And so on and so forth. Using a digital camera or phone should time stamp everything. Do NOT edit/photoshop any of the shots, leave each photo untouched. If you shoot RAW format all the better. Add the pictures to your Google drive/Dropbox and update as and when or at least every few years. This is useful to prove what stuff you had and what state it was in as who keeps boxes or receipts for everything?! As well as helping to prove to the insurer what you had and when, it also will help you remember what you had in the event of you losing everything. Believe me this is not the Generation Game conveyor belt and you will not remember that cuddly toy and a myriad of other things that add up to thousands even if you have a great memory as most houses just have so much stuff.

11. Finally - and really important. In the event you have to make a claim, get a loss assessor to work for you ASAP. This is different to the loss adjuster who works for the insurer who will find every which way to save the insurer money at your expense. The loss assessor works for you, usually on a ten percent cut of the whole claim basis, and they will work to get you as much money as possible as soon as possible. He will usually get you much more than that ten percent he earns back for you (it is in his interest) and it will save you a lot of grief and arguing with your insurer as he does a lot of the hard work. I wish I had known about these guys before or I would have saved myself literally years of trauma fighting my insurer.

If anyone has any other tips, do feel free to add.
 

HappyFish2021

Also again maybe obvious,  but don't be tempted to exaggerate your claim. If caught out in the lie you may risk losing out on the whole claim,  be unable to get future insurance and even prosecution.

Sandtree

HappyFish2021 said:

Some are worse than others, but every insurer will try to find an 'out' for not paying you or to pay you much less than you deserve.  

If that were close to true then every insurer would be under sanctions from the FCA.

Insurers are obliged to pay you what you are due based on the T&Cs of your policybooks and accepted industry practices. Almost all accepted industry practices are very reasonable, some even generous, when you look at it from an outsiders view point and not when your in the emotive situation of having had a big fire in your home etc.

But this highlights the biggest point you are missing... read the policybook BEFORE you buy it! Home insurance is actually a fairly complicated product and is almost always sold on a non-advised basis and therefore its up to you to ensure it meets your requirements.

To give an example to both points... the majority of budget and middle market policies do not cover matching sets but we all have matching sets of furniture, kitchen units, bathroom tiles etc. If you have a small fire in your kitchen that takes out say 4 of the 20 cupboards you've got and you dont have matching set cover your insurance is only liable for those 4 and the fact no one makes anything like your old cupboards any more isnt their problem. However to cover the generosity aspect, despite the policy book saying no cover it is industry practice to make a 50% contribution to replacing the others if an appropriate replacement cannot be found/made.

The other point you miss is... you get what you pay for... sort of. If Mucho Cheapo Insurance is quoting you £100 and Hiscox is quoting you £750 you really have to ask yourself why. Its unfortunately not true that more expensive is always better, there are other factors that come into insurance pricing, but Hiscox will almost always be more expensive because their policy T&Cs are much more generous (they written on an all risks basis not insured perils for example) and, on personal lines policies at least, they have an exceptional reputation for settling (remember the story of them hiring divers to find a watch dropped off a sailing boat because of its sentimental value rather than simply settling out). 

If you buy on price alone you are more likely to have adverse claims experience later.

HappyFish2021

You say it's not even close to true that every insurer is not out to reduce your claim, but in the few claims experiences in my life,  this has absolutely been the case. Perhaps I've been unlucky. Axa have been particularly foul. It is shocking how criminal their behaviour has been. And yeah they were the cheapest but their policy is not worth that paper it's written on as they do not honour it so I'd have been better off with nothing. They do not follow good practices at all  They are on the list of most complained about insurers to the ombudsman.

But everyone else I know have felt short changed with a cluster of other insurers to some degree and this was nothing to do with them not reading the policy wording. Some insurers may just beat you down a few quid so you feel a little sore. Others like Axa cheat you by welching out on paying for absolutely everything, acting as if they are above the law refusing to answer questions, leaving you traumatised. I have complained to both the ombudsman and the FCA about their conduct.

But anyway, even if insuring through Hiscox who you say is great, IMO it's still a good idea to take pictures etc as a record etc etc - and get yourself a loss assessor too.

AlfieWilko1950

Another OP with a totally erroneous opening statement and then going on to an elongated post stating  the obvious.

HappyFish2021

AlfieWilko1950 said:

Another OP with a totally erroneous opening statement and then going on to an elongated post stating  the obvious.

It's not erroneous in my experience or many other people's though. If you want to modify "every" as Hiscox is the bees knees and you swear they would never ever reduce,  then by all means modify 'every' to 'nearly all'

You can make as many snipe jibes as you like about the rest of my 'elongated' post which if followed will help someone a lot if they have to make a claim. It may be 'obvious' to you, but how many people know all of this or actually do it? 

HappyFish2021

But this highlights the biggest point you are missing... read the policybook BEFORE you buy it! Home insurance is actually a fairly complicated product and is almost always sold on a non-advised basis and therefore its up to you to ensure it meets your requirements.

Yes agreed. I'd made an assumption this bit was taken as read.

rs65

HappyFish2021 said:

 If you want to modify "every" as Hiscox is the bees knees and you swear they would never ever reduce,  then by all means modify 'every' to 'nearly all'

Have you seen the news recently?

HappyFish2021

rs65 said:

HappyFish2021 said:

 If you want to modify "every" as Hiscox is the bees knees and you swear they would never ever reduce,  then by all means modify 'every' to 'nearly all'

Have you seen the news recently?

Well,  yes exactly. 

HappyFish2021

Anyway, even if you're lucky to get a decent insurer with decent loss adjuster (where are they? Please?!) who doesn't try to diddle you to some degree, I have never heard of an insurer who will go out their way to help you discover your real losses. Hence the suggestion to take pictures etc to help recall everything you have and substantiate it - most people apart from Captain Obvious there don't even think to do this.

Sandtree

HappyFish2021 said:

You say it's not even close to true that every insurer is not out to reduce your claim, but in the few claims experiences in my life,  this has absolutely been the case.

The problem with your statement is that "reduce your claim" means you have set a value for it. You are therefore ignoring the real possibility that you have over valued your claim rather than your insurers are under valuing it.

I've only made two personal claims on home insurance, both with Aviva. The first claim was for a fire and in that case the loss adjuster increased the claim value as we hadn't included the cost of professional cleaning in the other rooms in the house etc. On the second claim, a burglary, also the net impact was an increase but there was an argument over the valuation of one item (which was settled lower than we wanted but with the other things being higher the overall impact was higher overall). With hindsight and after online research their valuation on the item probably was closer to reality than the value we'd put down.

As a former claims handler, I have both increased and reduced settlement from what was claimed. Yes decreasing was more common but thats inevitably because people a) dont understand their policy and so their claim isnt supported by their terms and b) people "know" insurers reduce settlements so intentionally overstate their claim to give wriggle room.  Its always odd that no one seems to own a Pulsar or Swatch Watch any more as all claims for missing watches are Rolex or Omega just as all jewelry is 18 or 24ct gold. You should see some of the cheap tat sent in as salvage (not to pick on Elizabeth Duke but had plenty of their 9ct plated items sent in with a claim saying its solid 24ct gold).

Is that the nasty insurance company settling the item for £25 because we can see the same item being sold on Argos' website rather than the £1,500 they've claimed for it?