to think our home insurance co are taking us for a ride?

[crazycatlady]

We were burgled back in the Spring. No sign of forced entry. We figured they either jimmied both our front door locks somehow without causing any damage, stole a key (cleaner perhaps?), or entered via the cellar window while were in the house and hid there waiting for us to go out.

Tens of thousands of pounds of personal items stolen. We reported it to our insurance company and the police immediately and changed the locks straight away. The burglary took place the day after our home insurance policy came into force.

Our insurance claim is still not settled and the company seems to be very evasive. They sent a loss adjuster in April to take a statement and proof of ownership for items stolen. We had receipts and photographic evidence of ownership for 90% of the items.

The loss adjuster sat on our case for months and did nothing with it despite us chasing. All he did was respond 6 weeks later with a request for information we had already given him. The insurance company has also failed to act when we have chased them, always referring back to the loss adjuster.

We have made a high level complaint to the insurance company and now they are sending a second loss adjuster out. The company representative we are dealing with now seems very pleasant but I am concerned we're going round and round in circles here and it's so distressing still being without my wedding and engagement rings and other personal belongings. We just want it sorted.

Is this a typical course of events for a home insurance claim or are we being taken for a ride? Not sure what to do now really except wait for second loss adjuster to visit and hope for a quick resolution.

I can't see why it is taking so long?

We have no previous experience with such a claim and would really appreciate any advice or stories of similar situations.

Many thanks

In reply to the nosey posters

crazycatlady Mon 22-Aug-11 22:24:45
It was about ten thousand pounds worth total items stolen inc jewellery (wedding and engagement rings, earrings, watch accounted for most of it) and electrical items another few £k (laptops, ipods, digital camera, video camera), not tens of thousands multiple. Typo in my OP. So no, we don't have tens of thousands of pounds worth of jewellery. In fact we haven't even got ten pounds worth now!

off to bed to stew over it. thanks everyone, partic sponge, nonno and mrsrochester.

We'd run the gauntlet for such a long time with no contents insurance. And sponge I think it was precisely because we're not on low incomes we didn't worry to much about insurance of any kind, bar the buildings ins and car ins we had to have to be within our mortgage terms and within the law...

We could afford to replace all the stolen items. I'd like to get on with replacing them, but since we're now in the midst of this claim I don't feel like we can, in case their settlement decision is to replace the items on our behalf instead of issuing a cheque, then we'll be left with two of everything!

Do not replace the stolen items! Most insurers 'replace' items claimed through their own supplier network (with whom a hefty discount has been negotiated).
If you replace anything, you will only get back the amount the insurer would have paid said supplier.
I feel for you, I really do.
I suggest written complaint and escalation to ombudsman 6 weeks on.
Press threat can work a treat

I second not replacing anything. You will most likely get vouchers for major jewellers/electrical retailers rather than cash.

And do pursue a complaint. They should be keeping you informed rather more than they appear to be doing.

Hope you manage to get it resolved :)

Re the second loss adjuster - it it another adjuster from the same company or an entirely different loss adjusting company?

It's an entirely different adjusting company.

Oh god what if we are offered vouchers for the jewellery? My wedding and engagement ring were hand made to a specific bespoke design by a small family run jeweller in Hatton Garden. I want to commission them to remake them. Vouchers from Goldsmiths or even Tiffany or De Beers wouldn't be worth a thing to me .

given what people have said why niot send proof that you have had insurance for xxx years and this is first burglary?

sounds very iffy OP
no forced entry, day after policy starts.

you will find that a lot of policies have a period after the policy starts that you cannot claim within.

I'd just had our second baby a few days before

wow how efficient you were, organising new insurance as well as just giving birth!

You will most likely get vouchers for major jewellers/electrical retailers rather than cash.

agree. had a flood in our garage where a load of stuff was stored and we were given a set sum of credit for two stores where the stuff could be replaced

OTOH M&S just paid cash into my account when i damaged my laptop

Summer if you read my subsequent posts you'll see the insurance was purchased the month before.

I wanted all admin done and dusted before having a newborn and a toddler to look after. I've ended up with more admin in the end!

A couple of yrs ago the house directly behind us got hit by lightning & the noise of the thunder was the most frightening thing i have ever heard.

It sounded like somebody had picked the roof up & slammed it back down,anyway all the surrounding houses had a power surge & in the morning i went to switch the pc on & there was nothing.

I went to phone dh in work & the house phone wasnt working either,it slowly dawned on me that we had sustained damage from the storm.

We lost our home pc,house digital phone,my washing machine had melted inside,our tv in the lounge melted the circuits inside,the tv in the play room had the same,our camera that was charging broke,dhs radio in his garage broke,it was a nightmare.

I only had my mobile phone to ring from & we have a rubbish network here,luckily for us BT were aware of the problems due to everyone in our area having the same problem.

Our ins co really dragged their feet & it took me ringing every other day for 3 mths before it was all sorted.

They valued the goods for us & gave us model numbers of replacements,if we didnt like it we could pay a bit extra to upgrade.

We actually upgraded the 2 tvs but the rest of the stuff they sent was fine.

It is a pain in the arse sorting out ins but i think you need to keep on at them to get your claim sorted.

Good luck.

Summer try reading the thread properly. Op clearly stated she arranged the policy a month before. She picked a date 30 days later to allow time for previous contents policy to end.

Op, I had similar issues with a car claim. Tell them they have a set length of time to settle or you are going to the ombudsman.

Good luck

I must admit having read the thread, it does sound suspicious.

1. No insurance even though you had over £10k worth of goods, taking out insurance just days from giving birth
2. Lots of photos of your stuff
3. Insurance claim within 24 hours
4. No sign of a break in
5. Wanting bespoke jewellery made

However I do think - it would be pretty silly to claim after 24 hours if this was all made up so I dont know - but the insurance company are right to be slow. Fed up of paying for people who make fraudlent claims (not sure about this one!)

I used to be a loss adjustor and your claim sounds very dodgy and would have been investigated as "fraud". I find it very hard to understand why you didnt have your rings insured and I assume you discussed them when getting your insurance. It is a high amount for burgulars to take out of a house.

There are seveal fraud flags with your claim so I would imagine its been passed to their fraud department who will work closely with the loss adjuster and run the various checks they do. They are very unlikely to tell you its gone to the fraud department though.

Press threats dont work with insurers and they wont be interested in a one off claim, if you believe the claim is not being dealt with correctly then escalate to their claims department. If you do not get an answer re claim paid/cancelled then you could consider contacted the ombudsman but your insurer will make them aware if they have passed this to their fraud team.

mumatron it's even more complicated than that! You're right, we did have previous home insurance but it was for buildings only. They were charging us an arm and a leg for it so we needed to shop around and get something new.

I deliberately left a 30 day period between the purchase of the new policy and its inception date, my reasoning being that if we needed to make a buildings claim during this time we'd have screwed ourselves as I think having two concurrent policies means neither is valid. And since we'd been without contents insurance for a while i thought we'd probably be ok for another 30 days.

We have provided all the info about our previous policy to our insurers. The loss adjuster read through the policy docs while he was here and took copies with him.

The other options would have been just to buy a contents only policy and have it start immediately. But then we'd have been left with an expensive buildings policy that still needed switching.

I hoped for some sensible advice on what to expect from here on in, thank you, all useful stuff. If the insurance company really does suspect our claim is fraudulent, what next? At what point will they actually tell us given it's already been 5 months? When should we get a lawyer?

rainbow I never took my rings off until I was hugely pregnant and fat so I figured someone would need to steal me in order to steal the rings. I guess we got complacent.

Call today and say you want to make a complaint and get someone to talk you through their complaint process. Then follow that to the letter. No point getting a lawyer involved until you've been through that process.

I had an insurance policy for my home contents with AXA. I would never, ever use them again. I had an incident with rainwater pouring through my roof that caused huge amounts of damage. The building insurance company sent their claims advisor around the very next day. She was sympathetic and helpful and arranged for their contractors to arrive a.s.a.p. with dryers, etc., then paid for all the replastering and redecorating when the room was finally dry several months later.

The contents insurance company, AXA, behaved appallingly, arguing with me about everything ("...you're claiming for storm damage, but according to our records there wasn't an actual storm that night... heavy rain, yes, high winds, yes, but not a storm ...) At an extremely stressful time they bent over backwards to refuse the claim and all I was claiming for was a carpet; I had managed to drag all the furniture etc. out of the room to avoid further damage. In the end they saved themselves £400 by not paying me, but I will never, ever use them again and always check, when taking out new policies, that they are not the underwriters. They are awful and, for me, made an awful situation far worse.

How horrid woolly. So stressful...

wilson we're in their complaints process already and had to escalate even beyond that to their press office as still nothing was happening. Calls weren't even being returned!

Just reading back through some of the posts I'm at a loss now wondering what on earth the right thing to do would have been, other than what we've done which is to make a claim?

Should we have sat there and thought, ah, our policy only came into force yesterday so they're unlikely to pay out, and not bother making a claim? We'd have had to inform them about the burglary anyway, wouldn't we?

I'd almost rather we'd stayed in our insuranceless state. At least then we'd have been able to go out and replace the items that we lost. Being without them for this length of time is almost more distressing than the burglary itself.

rainbow can I ask why you think it's odd from an insurer's point of view to want the original jeweller to remake the stolen rings? A substitute from a mainstream jeweller would mean I'd have an entirely different design. I'd rather remain ringless .

Dealt with these types of claims all the time. The insurers we worked with all had the same policy ie replace unique old much loved jewellery with goldsmiths etc. However if you read your policy it will state how they will replace your items and how the costs will be worked out. THe best you can hope for (unless you are really lucky) is cash at the discounted rate the insurers would have got had you replaced your jewellery at a place liek goldsmiths. You could try getting a quote to replace the item at the original jewellers and argue this but the insurers can say they can replace if cheaper.

I still find it hard to get my head around that you had 10,000 of goods and no insurance. I have nowhere near that amount but have always had insurance based on if we ever had a fire and lost everything including clothes and all furniture.

The loss adjustors will read your insurance policy and have to follow the wording. You need to do the same after all that's what you agreed to when you got the policy.