Abbey claims it cost £632 for 1 roof tile!

jus71_2

Hi

Today I received a letter from Abbey to say my building insurance is almost up for renewal. The premium has gone up £7 a month due to a claim I made when a roof tile blew off last year. The cost of the repair according to them was £632 :eek:

I just cannot believe this - They sent an assessor round (Asprea) who said it was a simple job, as the tile had landed on the grass so not broken. A few days later someone turned up, nailed the tile back on, said "I love these nice simple jobs" and went. It took him longer to get his ladders out than it did to do the job!

There is no way I am renewing my insurance with Abbey now!

lisyloo

Are you sure they meant (or said) the cost of the repair rather than the cost of the claim.

For the claim in total they will need assesors, claims handlers and all sort of anti-fraud checks.
Although it's a small job it may still have needed the involvment of some skilled people to give approval, so this may explain the cost.

The people that answer the phones and process the claims do not work for free.
I can't give you a detailed list of people or processes but I expect there are several people involved and some of hem will be highly paid e.g. assessors.

jus71_2

Ah maybe thats what it meant. The assessor looked at the roof and said 'oh the tile has fell off I will get it sorted'. What a great job!

lisyloo

The assessor looked at the roof and said 'oh the tile has fell off I will get it sorted'. What a great job!

Yes, but even though the job was tiny he still needed to travel to your house and back.
This probably included a company vehicle which would have to be taxed, insured, maintained fo business use etc.

The costs of dealing with the claim are not necessarily proportional to the size of it.
So he would have to travel to your house regardless of 1 tile or 100.

Unfortunately if they didn't send asesors round then the costs would be MUCH higher because there would be so many fradulent claims.

mattymoo

Insurers do not include overheads when revealing the cost of a claim so the £632 in this instance is what Asprea have charged them.

Asprea would be billed by the contractor, and then add their handling fee before submitting to Abbey.

It might be the case that Asprea have a fixed fee (say £300 for example) that applies to all claims. On this one it is disproportionate but it is a case of "swings and roundabouts".

If the bulk of the cost is the contractors labour, I would be interested to see the invoice. I am aware of cases where the contractor has hidden behind H&S regs and cited things like hire of scaffold, erect / dismantle scaffold and so on when in reality, all he has done is put the ladder against the side of the building.

colin13

a friend of mine had something the same except he told his insurance company he was not willing to accept the hi payment for a cpl of tiles.. after a cpl of phone calls and arguments he won the company did not pay the extornanite cost but paid a lowerr amount his argument is tht if every 1 did this every 1 insurance would b cheaper and hes right