Insurance confusion

Maka29

We were thinking of selling our mum's flat but with other things going on, that's on the back burner.
Mum has landlord buildings and contents insurance under what she called a legacy policy. That always included as an extra, rent guarantee and home emergency cover. She never took out rent guarantee and only added on home emergency 2 years ago.
She got the renewal letter which included the home emergency. The letter said - please check your schedule to see if rent guarantee and home emergency included. On checking the schedule, it's included. They even gave a contact phone number for home emergency. 

They then sent second paperwork with home emergency unticked but still said that home emergency can be added on as an extra.

On calling them, they said that they don't do it anymore but then why say it can be added as an extra and give a contact telephone number?

It looks like their new landlord cover doesn't include it as when I did an online quote, the letter didn't include that as an option.

The legacy policy has a higher premium but she made use of home emergency so wants to keep it. 

Are they confusing the legacy policy terms with their new product?

They won't budge. I don't understand what's going on. 

DullGreyGuy

Is this in Scotland? Would be unusual for a flat to have its own buildings insurance elsewhere and its getting more common for a factor company to take out buildings insurance on blocks of flats in Scotland. 

When a company offers to renew you they have two choices, renew based on the current terms or renew you onto the current version of the terms. The changes per year tend not to be vast, but occasionally are, but if you've stayed on legacy terms for a long time the compound impact can be more considerable. 

If its an intermediary, rather than the actual insurer, the choice as to use old or new terms may not be full theirs, insurers will retire versions of old policies because it creates a fairly substantial overhead having to train staff on all the different variants. 

In your case is "legacy" just meaning your on old terms or is it "Legacy" as in a name for the product?

Ultimately only they can explain what's happened, if the operator has gotten confused between different variants, if they'd offered one version and then realised the insurer had pulled them therefore have to reoffer based on newer versions or something else. 

Maka29

The insurer called it a legacy policy. Mum called it an old one initially as couldn't remember the proper term. It's from a so called reputable insurer direct. I get the feeling they want all customers off this product so have hiked prices. Yes, it's Scotland. Factor won't do insurance now but did initially. It's the same insurer as the factor used. If the paperwork didn't say anything about adding on as an extra, I could understand but it says in black and white, that it can be added. But when I speak to them, it's a straight - we don't do it anymore. One for the ombudsman I think but that could take a year.

DullGreyGuy

Or switch insurer to one that meets your needs.  Insurers arent obliged to offer Home Emergency 

Maka29

It's like different mortgage products. They didn't write to say it's being removed, in fact letter shows home emergency as being an optional extra. They did however, say the escape of water excess was going up. It's just the complaints department saying in writing that it's not included. The landlord insurance team say it verbally and nothing in writing from them about it being removed. 

Maka29

DullGreyGuy said:

Or switch insurer to one that meets your needs.  Insurers arent obliged to offer Home Emergency 

I'm not explaining it properly.
Schedule list is as follows - buildings insured, landlord contents insured, rent guarantee not insured (optional extra), home emergency insured (optional extra).
But they then sent another schedule with exact same wording but this time alongside the home emergency bit, it said not insured (optional extra).

So.....if it's listed as an optional extra, doesn't that make you think that it is possible to add it on?
Logical thing to do would be to call and ask what's going on. They said over the phone that they don't do it but why include it as an optional extra 🤨🤔?