Home Insurance Claim

WorldCitizen

This is my first insurance claim. I do not know how it works.
I have all ceilings in my flat affected/damaged after the water escape from the neighbours upstairs, where they had a tradesperson, who did a new bathroom and damaged the water mains pipe.
Neighbour gave me the tradesperson's insurance details, which I passed to my insurance company when I made a claim.
I have the building insurance only. I understood the risk of not having content insurance. 
1. But interesting - do I have rights to ask for my mattress to be covered by tradesperson public liability insurance?
2. Now I am at the negotiation phase with the insurer. They say if I want I can obtain the quotes from local tradespeople. I contacted some of them, asking for a quote only not for work as we think to do the work by ourselves. But several tradespeople say that this is insurance fraud. 
Now I am confused. I will call to insurance company on Monday to clarify if I obliged to do works by tradespeople only. Can you advise how insurance claim works.

Aretnap

WorldCitizen said:

1. But interesting - do I have rights to ask for my mattress to be covered by tradesperson public liability insurance?

Potentially yes. You would have to prove that the tradesperson was negligent, ie that he did not take the amount of care that would be expected of a tradesman, and that the leak wasn't the result of something extremely unlucky or unavoidable. If he was negligent then he would be liable for the damage to all your property, not just the things that you had your own insurance to cover, and his liability insurance would cover those liabilities for him.

WorldCitizen said:

2. Now I am at the negotiation phase with the insurer. They say if I want I can obtain the quotes from local tradespeople. I contacted some of them, asking for a quote only not for work as we think to do the work by ourselves. But several tradespeople say that this is insurance fraud. 
Now I am confused. I will call to insurance company on Monday to clarify if I obliged to do works by tradespeople only. Can you advise how insurance claim works.

It's certainly not insurance fraud if you are honest with your insurance company about what you are planning to do. However a tradesman might not want to go to the trouble of providing a quote if you've told him that you're not actually going ask him to do the work, and saying "sorry, no, that's insurance fraud" is one way of shutting the conversation down.

Whether the insurer will agree to what you're asking for is a different question. There are several ways that an insurer could settle the claim, and the policy will generally give the insurer the right to choose which one to use.

The options would include
(1) The insurer arranges for a contractor of their own to do the work and pays them directly
(2) You find the contractor but the insurer pays them for work they've actually done
(3) a "cash in lieu of repairs" settlement where the insurer just pays you the money that the repairs would cost, and it's up to you whether you use the money to pay a tradesman, do the repairs yourself, or perhaps not do the repairs at all, live with the damage and spend the money on a holiday instead.

So you can certainly ask the insurer to use option 3, but you can't really insist on it.

DullGreyGuy

WorldCitizen said:

This is my first insurance claim. I do not know how it works.
I have all ceilings in my flat affected/damaged after the water escape from the neighbours upstairs, where they had a tradesperson, who did a new bathroom and damaged the water mains pipe.
Neighbour gave me the tradesperson's insurance details, which I passed to my insurance company when I made a claim.
I have the building insurance only. I understood the risk of not having content insurance. 
1. But interesting - do I have rights to ask for my mattress to be covered by tradesperson public liability insurance?
2. Now I am at the negotiation phase with the insurer. They say if I want I can obtain the quotes from local tradespeople. I contacted some of them, asking for a quote only not for work as we think to do the work by ourselves. But several tradespeople say that this is insurance fraud. 
Now I am confused. I will call to insurance company on Monday to clarify if I obliged to do works by tradespeople only. Can you advise how insurance claim works.

1) As long as they accept liability for the damage and you show its irreparable then yes but remember this isnt home insurance so it isnt "new for old" but instead is indemnification so effectively they should pay you what you could have sold it for immediately before the damage 

2) You can ask for a cash in lieu settlement, though you should tell the trades that is what you intend to do as no one is going to waste their time preparing a quote for which they have no chance of winning the job on. Expect a CiL payment to be made net of VAT if the quotes show VAT is payable. 


Presumably you are in Scotland? Buildings insurance isnt normally held by flat owners elsewhere in the uK

WorldCitizen

Thanks for your answers.
Yes, I am in Scotland.
Usually the qoutes are free, but I told the trades that I need the estimate only for insurance purposes and asked for the price doing this.