House insurance claim advice

nlwsaint

Hi, a couple of weeks ago my Husband was having a shower & accidently knocked off the shower head/rail which then hit a ceramic soap dish which is infact part of a fitted tile. In the panic he then knocked off a shelf holding the shampoo etc which fell & cracked the shower tray (his name's not Frank Spencer honest). We put a claim in with Norwich Union who then sent out someone from Asprea to asses the claim. The claim has been passed but I have a problem with the outlined work agreed. It was the ensuite bathroom which has a shower, vanity basin & wc all in a pale peach colour but the schedule says that the replacement shower tray will be in white if a match cannot be found & the quote for re tiling only includes the inside of the shower cubicle( I have tiles on the other walls & around the basin) & as my tiles are 10 years old I doubt very much they can be matched also. This means that I will be left with odd tiles & also a mismatched suite. I'm not happy with this as it means we will be left with the extra expense re tiling the rest of the room to match & also replacing the rest of the suite. Am I being naive in believing that the insurance would have covered the toal cost of the work?

thisisnotmyname

Hi,

I was in a similar position as you only it was my kitchen that was flooded from above, only some of the kitchen units had damage,and as the kitchen was about 12 years old finding replacement units was impossible,they were going to find as close a match as possible.
Well wasn't happy at all of the prospect of a mix and match kitchen,but if you read the very very small print on the insurance documents you will see they have a clause in there,they do not have to replace undamaged goods just because they don't match (that's not their wording that's my interpretation).

In our case they paid a percentage of the kitchen we had to pay the rest.

I hope you can get them to come to an agreement with you.

Good luck

nlwsaint

Thanks, just read the small print in my policy & it does say that they will not cover items that are undamaged even if they are part of a set, suite etc. Oh well, that'll teach me to always read the small print. Looks like we'll either have to put up with the mismatched items or pay for new ones.

gazza975526570

It does but if you press them they will offer you up to 50% of the matching items even thouhg your policy states you are not covered for it.

nlwsaint

Thanks, I'll give it a try then.

JulieMarie23

Just goes to show why insurance companies get complaints so much because people know that if they push they will get things they are not entitled to.

Yu can get insurance policies that have a matching ites cover on them, they are ore expensive but you get what you pay for.

V_tricky

Well it depends what you consider 'entitled' to mean.

The Financial Services Ombudsman believes that in most (but not all cases) the 50% contribution should apply.