Rip off house insurance

[Sir Velo]

Useful thread this. I now realise that I have been stung by my insurer over this. In fact, I should have employed the same technique for motor insurance. Faced with a premium I didn't care for, I rang the provider to say I would not be renewing. Instantly, the same cover was offered at approx 50% of the renewal price, and roughly in line with the most competitive alternative quotes.

Some time over the weekend, when the promised rains come and I am housebound by force majeure I will call Virgin to threaten to immediately cancel my subscription for their all-in Broadband, Telephone, TV deal, which is currently an extortionate £87 pcm - roughly double what a new customer pays for the same package and one of their "Ti-VO" 200 hour HD hard drive recorders. I was alerted to this iniquity when trying to reduce my TV package from XL (no, I don't know why either) to M I was told it would cost me £5 a month more and I would need to sign a new 12 month fixed contract!

[Sir Velo]

My (three bedroomed detached) house and contents insurance, both for unlimited cover, currently costs under £600 a year with a major bank.

I thought you lived in a mansion! Didn't you say you had three fireplaces, chimneys or something?

[Dave2002]

As I mentioned in another post, the problem with underinsurance, deliberate or not, is that any claim payout is likely to be reduced by the proportion of underinsurance, as assessed by the insurers.

My (three bedroomed detached) house and contents insurance, both for unlimited cover, currently costs under £600 a year with a major bank.

I agree about under insurance. "They" also apparently try to get you for over-insurance, so you can't win really! "They" would argue that otherwise you could insure your garden shed for a million, and then burn it down, so will try to scale back there too.

Forum members might find this site very useful - http://www.comparethemarket.com/

It at least shows what's possible, even if you do eventually renegotiate with your current insurer, or go back to your broker.

You can get a long list of possible offers, and it's interesting to see how they compare.

[Dave2002]

Good points to ponder. I will try some local insurers for quotes. I think 'loyalty' here is another word for 'inertia', people stay with the same company for the same reason they stay with the same bank (though I have never been able to see that any other bank would offer a significantly different service). But the peace of mind is not just supposed: housed do catch fire and contents are destroyed, and at least with a big chunk of insurance money one could start to rebuild collections, etc. And Mr GG, your last sentence strikes a chord, I get very weary of the time I have to waste ploughing through the paperwork associated with insurances, pensions and associated stuff.

I have had at least five banks in the UK, and several abroad over my lifetime. I do most of my business through one which I've had for a very long while, and currently I've only got one other, which I use as a backup, and because they give a high interest rate on deposits.

There is no point in making your life complicated by having multiple banks if you don't need them, but if you want to do slightly better it can be useful to have another, even if only to be able to access cash when one provider's machines are out of order.

[umslopogaas]

My contents insurance would cover furniture, clothes, books, hifi and possibly some CDs, but not all. It wouldnt cover my LPs, but those are almost impossible to replace in any case: I doubt I have enough years left to me to ferret out replacements for all of them, even if I could be bothered to make the effort.

This correspondence has reminded me that I need to make a list of my CDs; if the house burned down I wouldnt be able to claim for their replacement because I dont even know how many there are, let alone titles for all of them.

Pause for some shelf measuring: about 800. The contents insurance certainly isnt going to pay for replacing that many.

#15 Don Petter, does that mean that if the contents are destroyed, and at £28000 are underinsured, I will not even get back £28000? Obviously I wont get more than that, but I had been assuming I would get back all that I had paid for.

If you can get unlimited cover for house and contents for under £600, it sounds as if I need to go and talk to my bank!

[Don Petter]

I thought you lived in a mansion! Didn't you say you had three fireplaces, chimneys or something?

I've just counted. Only seven chimneys, two in regular use (one of these is for the central heating), and one other functional for stereo fires in our main room should we feel really cold.

It's really only a humble peasant's cott (and I remain, Sir, your humble and obedient, etc, etc ...)

[Dave2002]

uplsopogaas

Say you actually have £50,000 worth of CDs, and a complete record with receipts etc. If you only insure it for £25,000 the assessors would scale things back, and indeed you might not even get the £25k back - I'm not quite sure what you would get back - perhaps only £10k.

It also depends whether you have new for old insurance. If not, then you could simply insure for an estimate of the second hand value - perhaps £1-2 per CD, though of course that would be all you'd get back. CDs are becoming very cheap in box sets, so in terms of the music and recordings that wouldn't necessarily be a bad deal. Of course if you had a "priceless" CD (say an unreleased test version of a Beatles song) then things would be different, but you'd probably have to declare that up front so that the company knew you had it.

I had my car broken into years ago, and CDs were stolen, and the insurance company settled for around £6-7 per CD IIRC - which seemed reasonable to me. They'd probably be more awkward about a large collection.

sir velo - you have PM.

[Don Petter]

#15 Don Petter, does that mean that if the contents are destroyed, and at £28000 are underinsured, I will not even get back £28000? Obviously I wont get more than that, but I had been assuming I would get back all that I had paid for.

You need more expert advice than I can give, but as I understand it (simple figures) , say you insure your contents for £7000 and then claim for loss of some particular part of them worth £2000. The insurer's assessor comes and decides your total contents were really worth £10000. They then will only pay you seven tenths of your claim amount because of the underinsurance, and you get just £1400.

What happens in the case of your hypothetical full £28000 claim would be similar, I think. If they thought your contents were really worth £56000, they would give you only half, or £14000.

[umslopogaas]

Dave and Don, many thanks for these comments, I can see I'm going to need some expert advice! I agree CDs are getting cheaper, but some of mine were bought a long time ago and are probably now out of production, so only replaceable as second-hand purchases, which might be very expensive. If replacement was very expensive I probably wouldnt bother, I value them for their musical content rather than as objects: I'd probably settle for a different, cheaper version.

[MrGongGong]

Maybe
one should

Cultivate detachment from objects
I try
but fail
but maybe could fail better ?

A colleague of mine who is an sound engineer working on lots of "big" and complex recording projects all over the world got rid of the CD's in his house. He decided that it was better to experience music as it happened and that even though his whole life was connected to recording music at high quality the possession of the finished object wasn't significant to him.
He always seems happy
Is still as passionate about music as ever but says that he feels "lighter"

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe
one should

Cultivate detachment from objects
I try
but fail
but maybe could fail better ?

A colleague of mine who is an sound engineer working on lots of "big" and complex recording projects all over the world got rid of the CD's in his house. He decided that it was better to experience music as it happened and that even though his whole life was connected to recording music at high quality the possession of the finished object wasn't significant to him.
He always seems happy
Is still as passionate about music as ever but says that he feels "lighter"

Praps like me, he has a phonographic aural memory?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTetral5LI

[MrGongGong]

Praps like me, he has a phonographic aural memory?

You can't have !
All that plinky plonky nonsense you champion is rubbish because no-one can remember it
We know this because we were told on another thread (SPLAT!)

[Serial_Apologist]

You can't have !
All that plinky plonky nonsense you champion is rubbish because no-one can remember it
We know this because we were told on another thread (SPLAT!)

So long as you can count the number of seconds between the lightning and the thunder, you can know how far you are from the music.

[Don Petter]

Some time over the weekend, when the promised rains come and I am housebound by force majeure I will call Virgin to threaten to immediately cancel my subscription for their all-in Broadband, Telephone, TV deal, which is currently an extortionate £87 pcm - roughly double what a new customer pays for the same package and one of their "Ti-VO" 200 hour HD hard drive recorders. I was alerted to this iniquity when trying to reduce my TV package from XL (no, I don't know why either) to M I was told it would cost me £5 a month more and I would need to sign a new 12 month fixed contract!

Do not go gentle into that, good knight!

(Let us know how you've got on.)

[MrGongGong]

So long as you can count the number of seconds between the lightning and the thunder, you can know how far you are from the music.