To argue with insurance company?

[whattoexpectnow]

I’ve never dealt with any of this before, so don’t know if I’m getting fobbed off or not.
Without going into detail and outing myself, we’ve recently had a lot of damage done to lots of our belongings.
The person that did the damage is insured and their insurance company has agreed to take on full liability for the claim.
The insurance company has asked us to photograph approx 40 of our broken belongings and also find screenshots of similar items so they can gauge the price.
This is taking forever.
Also, instead of wanting to pay the full amount of the broken belongings they are trying to pay us a percentage, as lots of things aren’t unusable, but are still damaged.
An example of this is a pushchair wheel was buckled in the damage, insurance company are saying they will pay 10% of the damaged pushchair so £50 of the £500 cost.
If they do this for every item I’ll be running round like a headless chicken trying to take things all over the place to get repaired.
Is this right or should they accept full liability for the damaged items?
They won’t send an assessor out, but want us to document the damage and estimate of costs, but then they are haggling with us re paying out.
Surely this is really unfair that none of this was my fault and they’ll only pay out a percentage of each item?
Other things have dents and scratches and other damage. What use is 10% of an item when I’ll have to find a repairer and then ferry things round getting them repaired?
Hard to explain, but for example a dining table with scratches on, they want to pay 10% of the cost of the table and for me to find and transport a table to a furniture repair place to get it repaired with the £40 they are suggesting.
It’s ridiculous.

[TheInvestigator]

If this is something like airbnb or similar, then they should pay out the full cost of the repair or replacement.

If you're sure they won't pay the full price for a new item then get quotes for repairs and send those in, so they can't guesstimate the repair costs.

[whattoexpectnow]

I really don’t want the leg work of getting 40 items and taking them to places to get an estimate for repair.
I’m just annoyed that I’ve already spent about 6 hours this week trying to sort stuff out.
The damaged items total thousands and insurance company are offering about £300.
It’s so stressful.

[mummyhaschangedhername]

I guess it depends on if the cover is new for old etc. Plus we had some items damaged in a burglary and they offer a small percentage of them as they rate the age on the item etc too. Are the items usable?But keep pushing! You can insist on an assessor coming out too, let them know your not happy and will raise a formal complaint with the intention of taking it to the ombudsmen.

But really it depends on the policy as to what you can get. It's a bit confusing given that you haven't said about the claim so I can't give specific advise.

[Whisky2014]

Fucking insurance companies. They try and squeeze out of paying. I was told by a loss adjuster they were refuting the claim I put in. I argued it and the loss adjuster told me he had come out to the house for an inspection in error and the insurance company had told the loss adjuster to refute the claim from the get go without actually seeing anything! I called insurer and they said they'd advised nothing of the sort and that actually on reading the loss adjuster report they should go ahead with the claim. I called loss adjuster and he was adamant the insurer had told them to refute it and it had been a mistake that he had come out to see the house that he had sat in a meeting where my case came up and everyone in the meeting said it wasn't to be held up. However, because he had come out and written a report backing up our claim they actually couldn't weedle out of it and we finally got it £15k! (( althoughtbthey only paid 2k initially because they misread the quote...)
Ok, my advice is fight fucking everything!

[whattoexpectnow]

The closest way I can describe it without outing myself as it was really unique and my whole village know about it, is for example a builder is fixing your roof, roof falls down and crashes on every single item in the room.
So furniture, appliances, belongings, toys, flooring etc.
So where flooring is damaged in 3 places they want to pay 30% of the claim, where table was scratched in one area they’ll pay 10% of claim, where soft furnishings were ripped they’ll pay 10% of the claim etc.
These things are all slightly broken and probably not feasible to get them repaired, yet I have to live with thousands of pounds worth of damaged items.

[whattoexpectnow]

And there’s such a wide range of broken items.
Like where the bloody hell do you take a jumparoo with £12 to get it repaired when it’s cracked in 1 place.

[TheInvestigator]

In that case, don't accept it. Take them to the ombudsmen.

[Whisky2014]

That's so unfair, definutely double check your policy..

[Pinkginxx]

The principle of indemnity is only to put you back in the same position as you were in beforehand. So if the item is repairable they’re within their rights to only repair and not replace. However I would really be expecting the to source the repair for you (so in the case of the table sourcing a french polisher).

[whattoexpectnow]

It’s not my policy I’m claiming on.
It’s theirs.
Although perhaps i would be better off claiming off of my house insurance?

[Whisky2014]

Definitely check your policy

[Pinkginxx]

It’s an usual way of going about things. I would expect your insurance policy to pay, then the company will surrogate back if they think it’s worth it.

[whattoexpectnow]

They would have to source so many repairs.
So soft furnishings, appliances, flooring, toys, lamps, pushchairs, baby items, crockery. They’re offering 10% of most of these items as they’re damaged but not beyond use.

[Pinkginxx]

Evil underwriter here btw

[RandomMess]

I think you need 2 lists: things that are repairable and things that aren't.

Pushchair - cost of replacing the wheel (or both if it's going to be compromised with different wheels) rather than 10%.

The flooring, I would argue you can't match in so they need to replace the whole floor (had this argument with an artex ceiling and won).

I think make a reasoned response case by case and accept 10% where that reflects the impact of the damage.

[TowandaForever]

Do you have legal cover on your policy?

Would it be better to take this to court?

[whattoexpectnow]

The persons insurance company don’t really want to deal with it. But as they’ve accepted liability then they have to.
They’ve strongly discouraged me doing this and asked me to use my home insurance instead, but I wanted to cut out the middle man and deal with them direct.
I thought it would be easier, but it’s not working out that way.

[TowandaForever]

Also what about needing money for your costs to get things repaired? Petrol money etc

[NiceNewShiny]

Depends on the wording. We pay for a new for old policy which costs is more than a like for like policy,

Do you have legal cover?

[wowfudge]

Speak to your own insurers. Insurance companies always try to mitigate their losses, but you're being given the run around.

[TheCraicDealer]

Go through your own home insurance policy if you have the appropriate cover there. The tradesman's Third Party cover will only entitle you to an indemnity settlement, so his insurers can make allowance for wear and tear, age, etc. You won't get "new for old" values through his policy, or even close to it. Very few home insurance policies these days are written on an indemnity basis, so you will be better off and you won't be quibbling so much about a tenner here and a fiver there.

[whattoexpectnow]

Ok I’ll speak to my home insurance company tomorrow in that case.
This is so stressful.

[BrightYellowDaffodil]

Ex insurance bod here :)

If you're not happy (and I bloody well wouldn't be - IMPO if the items have been damaged they should either arrange and pay for the repairs themselves, replace the items, or pay you sufficient money for you to replace them yourself) then the first step is to write them a letter explaining what has happened so far, what you are unhappy about and how you want the issue to be resolved. Keep it factual, and include any correspondence/summaries of phone conversations (tip: when insurance companies correspond over the phone, follow it up with an email to confirm what was discussed/agreed), including details of any previous promises/guarantees that have been made.

Set them a deadline to sort the issue (the ombudsman website will give you an idea of what timescales are reasonable) and make it VERY clear that this letter is a complaint. Complaints trigger all sorts of deadlines and requirements!

Then, if you get no joy, take it to the ombudsman. Insurance companies have to pay quite a bit of money if a complaint gets referred, so it's in their interest not to let it get that far.

Good luck!

[ApocalypseNowt]

It'd be much easier if you report the incident to your insurance company and let them deal with TP insurer.

[whattoexpectnow]

And also if I did claim on my own insurance then would my premiums be effected?
Would this be classed as a claim?
Can I change at any time and use my home insurance instead of the insurance company that’s accepted full liability?