House / Contents Insurance doubled / trebled

James_Blonde

I'd be looking at £935 with M&S for their Premier cover and added legal, emergency and contents away from home (£15K).  Whilst I appreciate their high item limits and complete lack of questions, it's a high quote, and that's without the house being classed as a listed building (you need to call them to quote for that).  Honestly, I don't think I missed anything on last years policy.

I mean have I just been lucky for the last few years, and this is the sort of price I *should* have been paying?  

Went back to AXA by phone today, and they had my Comparethemarket quote stored (rather than the follow up from the Comparethemarket link).  From £490 on CTM, to £1400 on their web linked quote, to £727 from today's phonecall (and I might need to revisit the items). 

I'm going to get a camera insurer quote for my camera gear - just out of curiosity.  The camera gear forms the majority of my away from home cover.  Just to give some context to the problem - I've worked out I've got around £20K worth of camera gear - all of which could leave the house, and £20K worth of computer and gadgets / electronics (including the TV and Sonos gear)    

TELLIT01

I had home and contents insurance through my bank for many years.  Then for no apparent reason the premium jumped over 50% at renewal - I had made no claims and no changes to what was insured.  I phoned them and the lady I spoke to had clearly had many similar calls, she spoke to somebody and came back to me.  Her words were along the lines of "The best I'm allowed to do is offer a 10% reduction.  I assume you will be taking your business elsewhere".

Insurers make their money from people not moving when the premiums escalate.

Sandtree

James_Blonde said:

I mean have I just been lucky for the last few years, and this is the sort of price I *should* have been paying?  

M&S provide a price breakdown so you can see exactly which sections are driving the pricing. For us they are circa £450 and the next cheapest we tend to get is into 4 figures. 

We have the camera gear, gadgets etc too but where we have issues is things like the Mrs' jewellery and handbags that go over the £2k article limit that many have for PP so all have to be declared but clearly she never goes out with 6 handbags or 10 sets of earrings - NFU were charging over £1000 for the PP alone.

What price you "should" be paying is difficult to say, some have too much expensive stuff to fit into the cheap mass market products with their poor covers and are forced into higher tier products who's covers are typically more realistically priced and provide better insurance (but even those with expensive stuff generally want cheap insurance rather than good).