Are Click & Collect Items Uninsured?

TheChasman

I recently received a windfall and we treated ourselves to an LG G3 OLED TV.

The vendor wasn't keen on sending it by courier, going so far as to recommend against it. They said the vast majority of their customers collect in store. 

That got me thinking about insurance if we were in an RTC.

A quick check with my broker, Howdens, confirmed personal possessions up to £250. I said that wouldn't even cover a mobile phone. But he pointed out those are covered by Home & Contents.

Sure enough Direct Line confirmed that. BUT and this is a BIG BUT ... It's for jewelry, phones, laptops, etc. The TV coming FROM the shop TO the house WAS NOT COVERED.

This is a real can of worms for Click & Collect operations ...

How many thousands of big ticket items are people slinging in their SUVs, unaware that if they get rear ended ... They're on the hook for the whole thing?

Alderbank

I think it is the driver of the vehicle who rear-ends the SUV who would be on hook for the whole thing.

Many insurers offer 'away from home' insurance as an add-on to home contents insurance to cover possessions temporarily out of your home. It's not a 'can of worms'.

Aretnap

If you were rear-ended you could claim from the driver who rear-ended you, or his car insurers.

It does get murkier though if the item is damaged in an accident which is your fault, or if it gets stolen from the boot while you pop into the next shop etc.

Car insurance is designed to cover your car itself, not the car's contents. The £250 you mention is a sop to cover the type of low-value things that you might keep in your car more or less permanently - a few tools, an umbrella and a spare jacket etc. Many policies don't include it at all.

Meanwhile home insurance does cover items away from the home (often as an optional extra) but as you point it this is often written so as to include only the sort of items that you routinely take out of the home - not one off transportation of things like televisions. So it does seem like a freshly purchased TV could fall through the cracks. 

I suppose if your worried about it the solution is to buy from a vendor that will deliver. Or arrange for goods in transit insurance as you would for moving house - though the cost of setting up a policy for a single item would probably be disproportionate to the actual risk.

XRS200

Do some credit cards offer accidental damage cover?  I seem to remember something like 60 day cover for damage or theft

Aretnap

XRS200 said:

Do some credit cards offer accidental damage cover?  I seem to remember something like 60 day cover for damage or theft

Barclaycard certainly used to do that - but a quick Google doesn't turn up any credit cards which are currently offering it.

Aretnap

Direct Line do offer cover for contents temporarily away from the home independent of their personal possessions cover, which would cover some of the risk of transportation. 

Section 2A includes "being hit by vehicle" but not "accidental damage", so would cover the TV if someone drove into you, but leaves open the question if what happens if it's damaged when you drive into a tree.

The accidental damage section would cover the driving into a tree scenario but does require that the items are "in your home or being moved to your new home" (emphasis mine), which wouldn't seem to include picking it up from a retailer. 

Probably best just not to drive into a tree on your way home... or maybe take the view that if you drive into a tree hard enough to destroy something that's packaged up in the boot you'll have bigger things to worry about than the television.

XRS200

I think mine says temporarily removed.  Would be a tough argument to say something that hasn't made it home yet was temporarily removed.

DullGreyGuy

Aretnap said:

XRS200 said:

Do some credit cards offer accidental damage cover?  I seem to remember something like 60 day cover for damage or theft

Barclaycard certainly used to do that - but a quick Google doesn't turn up any credit cards which are currently offering it.

AmEx does on some of its cards but it's limited and only applies if no other insurance covers it. 

Aretnap said:

Direct Line do offer cover for contents temporarily away from the home independent of their personal possessions cover, which would cover some of the risk of transportation. 

Section 2A includes "being hit by vehicle" but not "accidental damage", so would cover the TV if someone drove into you, but leaves open the question if what happens if it's damaged when you drive into a tree.

The accidental damage section would cover the driving into a tree scenario but does require that the items are "in your home or being moved to your new home" (emphasis mine), which wouldn't seem to include picking it up from a retailer. 

Probably best just not to drive into a tree on your way home... or maybe take the view that if you drive into a tree hard enough to destroy something that's packaged up in the boot you'll have bigger things to worry about than the television.

I was going to say that there is likely to be an inner limit on a single article inner limit but a quick scan read of the DL policy book it seems they've moved that to only be for Valuables and so yes you should be fine with it (though would want a fuller read to say definitively)

TheChasman said:

I recently received a windfall and we treated ourselves to an LG G3 OLED TV.

The vendor wasn't keen on sending it by courier, going so far as to recommend against it. They said the vast majority of their customers collect in store. 

That got me thinking about insurance if we were in an RTC.

A quick check with my broker, Howdens, confirmed personal possessions up to £250. I said that wouldn't even cover a mobile phone. But he pointed out those are covered by Home & Contents.

Sure enough Direct Line confirmed that. BUT and this is a BIG BUT ... It's for jewelry, phones, laptops, etc. The TV coming FROM the shop TO the house WAS NOT COVERED.

This is a real can of worms for Click & Collect operations ...

How many thousands of big ticket items are people slinging in their SUVs, unaware that if they get rear ended ... They're on the hook for the whole thing?

Did you ask the Claims or Service team at Direct Line?

Based on a cursory read of the policy book I'd suggest it should be but they do have multiple products and the same may not be the case on all theirs. As others have said in a non-fault accident everything claimed from the at fault party irrespective what you are and aren't insured for personally. If you go up the levels of cover out there then it certainly would be covered.


As an aside, seeing as your also touching on my hobby and not just my profession... What size screen and price? The G3 was last years model and given we are a getting later into the year now the G4 is receiving ever increasing discounts. From most sources I've read this years model was actually a reasonable upgrade rather than the normal fine tuning... the G3 is still a great screen (I've an older generation)

TheChasman

I don't know how to highlight individual replies in the order I read them. The "can of worms" comment refers to the fact many high street outlets operate "click and collect" operations. Argos springs to mind.

They are exposing their customers to the possibility of an uninsured loss baked into their business model. Lots of situations involved the vendor having to read out a tranche of legalese to the customer. 

I'm surprised to find this is not one of them. I suppose I was going the grande fromage might choose to champion this cause.

I've been in these forums before and they're is a preponderance of very organised people who don't always see the problem for we me mortals. There's one reply like that already.

This only piqued my attention because the total value of the goods was over £1500 (£1061 for the screen saver £350 for a Blu-ray player).

The low value on vehicle insurance is a problem.

Direct Line were very clear that an item being transported to my home was NOT Covered. And they did not offer it as an addition to cover on my policy or any other policy. They are a meat and potatoes operation.

One cannot rely on the accident being someone else's fault.

It seems non-accident transit damage would not have been covered without a specialist policy.

It is a rare intersection of circumstances. Except at Christmas when the chance of a large car full of >£250 of goodies having an off is much higher.

I just think a reminder when ordering online and perhaps on the receipt would be fair play. It could even be integrated into the business model like warranties are ... The first company to offer that while exposing the scandal in their industry could do rather well out of it! Perhaps I'll drop disruptor Branson an email ...

All individual efforts to help are very much appreciated. In the end I checked it was boxed ... Which it was. And we took the chance. It's home safe and sound and looks incredible. Hanging it on the stand was terrifying! The jump from 720p to 4k with 3 x as many lines is stunning ... Worth every penny to us!

Aretnap

TheChasman said:

I don't know how to highlight individual replies in the order I read them. The "can of worms" comment refers to the fact many high street outlets operate "click and collect" operations. Argos springs to mind.

They are exposing their customers to the possibility of an uninsured loss baked into their business model. Lots of situations involved the vendor having to read out a tranche of legalese to the customer. 

I'm surprised to find this is not one of them. I suppose I was going the grande fromage might choose to champion this cause.

I'm realy not sure who you're complaining about here to be honest. Why highlight click and collect in particular? The insurance situation is no different if you... just go into a shop and buy a TV. People have been doing that for a century - indeed by this measure every shop in the country is "exposing their customers to the possibility of an uninsured loss baked into their business model" just by selling you stuff. And they have been since the dawn of time. 

It's never been seen as the job of the shopkeeper to advise the customer on insuring the goods that he's just bought. Unless the retailer is trying to sell you thier own extended warranties and other overpriced insurance products - which most cutomers find to be an irritation more than a help in my experience.

TheChasman said:

Direct Line were very clear that an item being transported to my home was NOT Covered.

Having read the part of the Direct Line policy that I highlighted above, I'm not convinced that the person you spoke to at Direct Line was correct - or at least not completely correct. It does happen. The first person to answer the phone at an insurance company is probably on not much more than minimum wage and has had fairly limited training. Always remember that the question of what your policy covers is ultimately determined by what your policy says - not by what he thinks that it says. But fortunately that's not an arguament that you needed to have in the end.

But I do agree that there seems to be the potential for gaps in contents insurance and it would help if insurers were clearer on what was covered in these circumstances, and ideally included reasonably comprehensive cover for one-off transportation of recently purchased items. If I was going to campaign on the issue that's where I'd start - not with the retailers who sell you things without trying to flog you insurance at the same time.

DullGreyGuy

TheChasman said:

I don't know how to highlight individual replies in the order I read them. The "can of worms" comment refers to the fact many high street outlets operate "click and collect" operations. Argos springs to mind. 

They are exposing their customers to the possibility of an uninsured loss baked into their business model. Lots of situations involved the vendor having to read out a tranche of legalese to the customer. 

I'm surprised to find this is not one of them. I suppose I was going the grande fromage might choose to champion this cause.

On your first question, you just hit the "quote" button thats under the thread you want to respond to; you can then delete sections if you want to focus on just one element... technically you could change it too but clearly thats not good form.

Click and collect isn't a unique thing... you seem to be ignoring the hundreds of years where someone went to the shop and just bought something in the shop and carried it home on whatever the relevant transport mechanism was at the time. Collection of your goods has been the standard practice for the majority of purchases.

If you mean Martin? He sold this site many years ago to MoneySupermarket and just licences his image for them to use. 

TheChasman said:
The low value on vehicle insurance is a problem. 

Direct Line were very clear that an item being transported to my home was NOT Covered. And they did not offer it as an addition to cover on my policy or any other policy. They are a meat and potatoes operation.

Direct Line's staff may have said it's clear but thats why I asked if it was Claims or Service that you were talking to. Staff, particularly claims, are paid a bit more than NMW and training compared to many call centre roles is substantial but those that answer the phone numbers you see advertised are the lowest paid of staff and the least trained. Insurance can be a complex subject but staff are in that awkward situation of being targeted on call handling time so they dont want to be having to put their hand up for help all the time but not necessarily knowing all the details. Having worked in many insurers there becomes slightly odd office myths because someone hears a colleague say something and so they repeat it and it becomes the truth of that office. 


Vehicle insurance isn't the problem, in my opinion, it's meant to only insure the vehicle not the stuff inside it, including the squishy meat bag. The issue is really Home insurance, they are the ones insuring your non-vehicle assets and have the opportunity to ask about the kind of stuff you own and so can work out the sort of stuff you buy.

I use the term "issue" very loosely because the consumer has a massive part to play in this. Insurers ultimately respond to what customers buy. Look at the policies sold to those that are cash rich, time poor, eg the Hiscox Direct or 505 policy... if covers all your stuff no matter where in the world you are with it, anything under £15,000 doesn't have to be declared and all losses are covered unless its explicitly excluded. Compare that to a bottom of the barrel Home policy which only covers things inside the building of your home unless you pay extra for Garden or Personal Possessions cover, anything over £1,000 has to be declared, losses are only covered if the cause of the loss is explicitly stated and to the required severity. The minimum premium for a Hiscox Direct policy is circa £1,000, the minimum premium for the bottom of the barrel is £50. Consumers prefer paying £50 so more policies are like that than Hiscox.