Be Excellent To Each Other

I just changed home and building insurers this week. Over the last 5 years I have made several enquires with this sort of insurance, living at two addresses

• 2 for water leaks where an adjuster came out and there was no cover for the damage
• 1 where my wife lost her engagement ring and wedding ring in or around the house. We didn’t have the right cover for this, so I sucked it up and bought her new ones.

It turns out that all of this is logged on a 3rd party system, for good reason as it would have been easy for me to get the right insurance for the lost rings with another company then made a claim a month later if I was that way inclined.

Where gets is dodgy is that I was asked when sorting the new policy out if I had ever made any claims, so I said no. As far as I was concerned as no point had I had any insurance pay out for any contents or building insurance. Yes I has made calls and asked questions but never had any payouts.

They (Admiral) then came back with these 3 claims and the policy quote doubled. I asked for a supervisor and it was sorted out, when I explained that I had given them a truthful answer to the question they asked and that they needed to get their terminology right.

After this was sorted out I called the 3rd party system owners and they said there were only 2 enquires logged against me at both addresses and that it should be clear to any insurance that I’m not some serial claimer.

What isn’t clear to me as a consumer is if these enquires have lifted my premium cost. When you ask this you get the wall “We can’t discuss our under righting”

So it would appear that just by doing what the insurance companies ask you to do if you have an issue (call them and progress it) may count against you.

So might be worth reading the paperwork before you even call next time

That's annoying, as you say, you can't tell now if you have been discriminated against based on your insurance history.

I keep meaning to get contents insurance but then I think "it's just stuff."

Health insurance is just as bad about paying up if you need it - thank the deity of your choice that we have a universal health system rather than relying on insurance.

Gosh. It's actually reasonably cheap to get, and if you add up the cost of replacing everything in your home, it really adds up!

I got contents insurance through quidco and it cost me £110 and I got £70 cash back.

Very true, they say that if you could turn your house upside down, everything that fell onto the new floor so to speak would not be covered by building insurance. So think beds, clothes, furniture, white goods, electrics, it adds up.

I have contents for the worse case in that the house burnt down. It’s one policy with buildings and covers other things like £50,000 worth of rental accommodation. I would think that you would be looking at a year minimum from your house burning to the ground before you had a replacement built and ready to move in. I would expect to pay £1500 a month to rent a house similar to mine