What counts as a claim for the purposes of taking out a new Home Insurance policy?

Goldust

Hi all,

I've been ill for most of this month and in hospital so I'm a lot more slack than usual on these things.

Anyway, I've been with PolicyExpert for the almost 5 years we've lived at this house.  They were cheap and cheerful and did the job.

However, this year we had a couple of interactions with them which didn't go our way but that's the nature of the beast I guess.  Firstly, a piece of the roof support from the house got damaged over time by the weather and then fell off, damaging one of the cars.  I contacted them to see if they could do anything but the guy who came out had already decided before he knocked on the door it was wear and tear over time so nothing could be done.  We got this fixed ourselves and paid for the car to be repaired as well. 

Later in the year, the roof started leaking from several places.  It needed resolving urgently so we used our savings to replace the entire roof as a repair seemed like a waste of money and it was the original roof from the 60s.  I enquired with the insurance company again but once again they said they could not help us due to the age of the roof and the previous excuse again (wear and tear over time).

I missed an email from them which states they are more than doubling my premium (£240 -> £508) and they have already taken this as I forgot I had auto renewal.  The actual policy is due to start on Tuesday so I do have some time to cancel if I can get a better deal.

Having compared prices or a price comparison site, it asks if I've made any claims and states that it doesn't matter if anything was paid out or not.  So the short question to my long story is have I made claims?  What do I actually need to declare?  As their guy has come and looked and said it is not a valid claim on both occasions.  But I don't want to mess with the semantics of insurance in case I do have a valid claim and they challenge me on this at a later date.  Based on no claims, the renewal price is £300 cheaper so it's not a small amount I'm talking about here.

Many thanks for your time reading all of this  

marcia_

Goldust said:

Hi all,

I've been ill for most of this month and in hospital so I'm a lot more slack than usual on these things.

Anyway, I've been with PolicyExpert for the almost 5 years we've lived at this house.  They were cheap and cheerful and did the job.

However, this year we had a couple of interactions with them which didn't go our way but that's the nature of the beast I guess.  Firstly, a piece of the roof support from the house got damaged over time by the weather and then fell off, damaging one of the cars.  I contacted them to see if they could do anything but the guy who came out had already decided before he knocked on the door it was wear and tear over time so nothing could be done.  We got this fixed ourselves and paid for the car to be repaired as well. 

Later in the year, the roof started leaking from several places.  It needed resolving urgently so we used our savings to replace the entire roof as a repair seemed like a waste of money and it was the original roof from the 60s.  I enquired with the insurance company again but once again they said they could not help us due to the age of the roof and the previous excuse again (wear and tear over time).

I missed an email from them which states they are more than doubling my premium (£240 -> £508) and they have already taken this as I forgot I had auto renewal.  The actual policy is due to start on Tuesday so I do have some time to cancel if I can get a better deal.

Having compared prices or a price comparison site, it asks if I've made any claims and states that it doesn't matter if anything was paid out or not.  So the short question to my long story is have I made claims?  What do I actually need to declare?  As their guy has come and looked and said it is not a valid claim on both occasions.  But I don't want to mess with the semantics of insurance in case I do have a valid claim and they challenge me on this at a later date.  Based on no claims, the renewal price is £300 cheaper so it's not a small amount I'm talking about here.

Many thanks for your time reading all of this  

 You have made claims which were refused so you need to say yes. 

chrisw

marcia_ said:

Goldust said:

Hi all,

I've been ill for most of this month and in hospital so I'm a lot more slack than usual on these things.

Anyway, I've been with PolicyExpert for the almost 5 years we've lived at this house.  They were cheap and cheerful and did the job.

However, this year we had a couple of interactions with them which didn't go our way but that's the nature of the beast I guess.  Firstly, a piece of the roof support from the house got damaged over time by the weather and then fell off, damaging one of the cars.  I contacted them to see if they could do anything but the guy who came out had already decided before he knocked on the door it was wear and tear over time so nothing could be done.  We got this fixed ourselves and paid for the car to be repaired as well. 

Later in the year, the roof started leaking from several places.  It needed resolving urgently so we used our savings to replace the entire roof as a repair seemed like a waste of money and it was the original roof from the 60s.  I enquired with the insurance company again but once again they said they could not help us due to the age of the roof and the previous excuse again (wear and tear over time).

I missed an email from them which states they are more than doubling my premium (£240 -> £508) and they have already taken this as I forgot I had auto renewal.  The actual policy is due to start on Tuesday so I do have some time to cancel if I can get a better deal.

Having compared prices or a price comparison site, it asks if I've made any claims and states that it doesn't matter if anything was paid out or not.  So the short question to my long story is have I made claims?  What do I actually need to declare?  As their guy has come and looked and said it is not a valid claim on both occasions.  But I don't want to mess with the semantics of insurance in case I do have a valid claim and they challenge me on this at a later date.  Based on no claims, the renewal price is £300 cheaper so it's not a small amount I'm talking about here.

Many thanks for your time reading all of this  

 You have made claims which were refused so you need to say yes. 

I agree. You have still claimed even though the claim was rejected and the payout was zero.

Marvel1

Yes, you have made 2 claims, when asks for amount you say £0.00

dunstonh

 I contacted them to see if they could do anything but the guy who came out had already decided before he knocked on the door it was wear and tear over time so nothing could be done.  We got this fixed ourselves and paid for the car to be repaired as well. 

To be fair, poor maintenance is fairly easy to see externally.

Later in the year, the roof started leaking from several places.  It needed resolving urgently so we used our savings to replace the entire roof as a repair seemed like a waste of money and it was the original roof from the 60s.  I enquired with the insurance company again but once again they said they could not help us due to the age of the roof and the previous excuse again (wear and tear over time).

Interesting decision.  Our roof is from the 1950s and doesn't need replacement.   Age itself isn't the issue unless there has been no maintenance and its got so bad that its a write off.     In our case, we tend to replace a selection of tiles every few years as routine maintenance and that does the job.

The key with any property is to carry out routine maintenance.   Insurance isn't there to allow you to avoid that.

So the short question to my long story is have I made claims?

two claims with zero paid out.

DullGreyGuy

dunstonh said:

Later in the year, the roof started leaking from several places.  It needed resolving urgently so we used our savings to replace the entire roof as a repair seemed like a waste of money and it was the original roof from the 60s.  I enquired with the insurance company again but once again they said they could not help us due to the age of the roof and the previous excuse again (wear and tear over time).

Interesting decision.  Our roof is from the 1950s and doesn't need replacement.   Age itself isn't the issue unless there has been no maintenance and its got so bad that its a write off.     In our case, we tend to replace a selection of tiles every few years as routine maintenance and that does the job.

The key with any property is to carry out routine maintenance.   Insurance isn't there to allow you to avoid that.

Age will simply have been an indicator. Home insurance is typically written on an insured perils basis and so to be able to make a claim you have to be able to link the loss to one of the insured perils - fire, flood, theft, earthquake etc. 

Unless the OP had explicitly stated that there was storm damage to the roof and weather station data supported that there had been winds/rains of sufficient magnitude to meet the policy definition then its likely to be excluded out of hand as wear and tear especially if the view was the whole roof was in such a state that it needed replacement.