Rip off house insurance

[John Wright]

This thread is good timing! Just had our renewal letter £420 annual home insurance.

Went to the meerkat site and most quotes are £130 annual !!!! 10 quid a month!!!! And the cover is up to £500,000 building and £75000 contents (even though I entered figures of half that)

I ticked boxes for accidental damage (building and contents). Excess is £100.

Think I'll be changing. Low quotes might be to do with: one of us is over 60, the kids have left home, the house is brick detached, we have a burglar alarm on every night. We are in West Midlands and in a Neighbourhood Watch zone.

[Dave2002]

john

You might find it interesting to spend a little time phoning your original insurer. Yesterday we actually did receive the revised quote from our original insurer - it's almost £500 less than the renewal quote. We thought that perhaps they would not send it - but they did. Stupid of them to have tried to push it so far - if it had only been, say, £100 more than others we probably wouldn't have noticed and might not have objected so much anyway.

Don't just go to one site - look at the comparison sites. I mentioned one earlier, which seemed good. That was indeed your meerkat site - so you've done that already. http://www.comparethemarket.com/

The quotes at the bottom of the price range may not be offering exactly like for like services (though they may be), but it seems reasonable to assume that some of the cheaper quotes will be able to offer a very similar service. Then you need to consider whether the company will actually deliver, and also what you really want.

In fairness to our original insurer, they did pay out for damage which arose due to a faulty radiator about 2 years after it was installed. They did not pay for the radiator itself, but they did replace the carpet, and give compensation for damage to some expensive bookcases. Nevertheless, one suspects that they might have ticked a box internally - "get the money back for our payout from these people" - which would undermine the whole point of insurance in the first place.

If every insurer is going to try to recover any losses over a short time period by premium increases, then providing one has sufficient assets one might just as well self insure - i.e don't bother, but just accept every loss. Where it really matters though is in house insurance - the actual building or structure. For those of us with houses, usually a significant amount of the property's worth is the land value, and the market value is often an inflated figure, as building costs are often somewhat smaller. Nevertheless one would want to make sure that the house is covered sufficiently to permit rebuilding with no need for substantial further funds.

Presumably mostly houses are lost through fire, though other catastrophes can present problems - vehicles or aircraft crashing into houses, landslips, flooding - which many insurers are now trying to avoid having much to do with.

I don't know what the situation is for people living in flats. If someone living in a block of flats had a gas explosion in their flat the damage could run into £millions. I don't know how things like that are dealt with, or covered.

We must press on with our renewal/reinsurance soon - good luck with yours.

[Sir Velo]

Just to report back, and many thanks to all those who offered advice on this one, that, after threatening to take our custom elsewhere, the home insurers reduced their renewal quote by 33% to just over £450, bringing it into line with the best of the other quotes. They called the reduction a "discount" for being a loyal customer. Quite why they didn't offer it with the original renewal is another matter.

One thing to note when comparing the market is how much quote will vary depending on the size of the excess. Yes you can get a lower quote , but if the excess becomes well, er, excessive, there's almost no point. I've ended up paying £100 more for an excess that is £150 lower. In effect, if I have to claim I've saved £50 for going for the lower excess.

[Stanfordian]

We've just had a reminder about house insurance this year from Churchill. Over £800.

A fairly quick search of the Internet for similar quotes gets this down to under £200, with several other options from other reputable companies, and even John Lewis is only around £400.

Obviously some of these companies think consumers are idiots - which last year I probably was, as didn't deal with the renewal fast enough.
With this degree of discrepancy inaction is not an option!

Hiya Dave2002,

Just wait until the insurance companies elavate all the premiums as a result of fracking claims for property cracking and movement.