to wonder how many people actually claim back on house insurance?

[betterwhenthesunshines]

I mean we seem to pay the premiums year after year, never claim (eg I my camera was damaged recently and it never occurred to me to claim for it - it was 5 yrs old and I figured the children must have dropped it)..

My dad has a claim going through for a leaky roof which I suspect is just repairs that we would do under regular maintenance.

I just wondered if anyone thought it was actually good value...

I pay one company to insure everything under the same policy, I've claimed twice, once for £45,000 after a break in, and £10,00 for a cancelled holiday which is covered by my household policy, my insurers would not really expect to see a claim for a stolen i pad or damaged camera, and nor would i bother making such a claim as I'm paranoid I'll ever have to make a big claim again.

We had our cellar flooded with sewage earlier this year. Nearly £3k of possessions ruined and a clear up that probably cost a couple of grand. Fortunately we have stone walls and floor or the bill would have been higher.

I wouldn't claim for small stuff because I know what claims do to future premiums (I work for an insurance company).

OP, I'm surprised the insurance company are paying out for a leaky roof. Most would consider that to be the result of poor maintenance so it wouldn't be covered, unless it was storm damage.

We claimed for the first time recently when dp's and ds's bikes were stolen. The company (Tesco) were fantastic - we got the cheque for the exact amount (minus the excess) within a couple of days. We really needed to claim because dp cycles to work each day so it was vital we got the bike replaced with a similarly good one and there's no way we could have afforded to just go out and buy one.

Other than that we've never claimed but that and breakdown cover, which I've had to use a couple of times in the past year or so, make me realise how important they are when you need them! ooh and also pet insurance - thank god we took some out for our kittens for the first time since owning pets and when one of them got into trouble and needed about £1,200 of treatment, we were covered!

In our experience it has been well worth it, too. We had a flood (burst underfloor pipe). The insurance company paid all invoices without query (repairs, re-decoration, alternative equivalent accommodation for 8 months, cost of storage of funiture, even the cost of the electricity used by the fans drying the house out). It came to over £50,000.

Mind you, our premiums have since increased slightly ...

I wondered this....til our house caught first in December. £35k damage to buildings and £15k contents. For what they would class as a fire 3/10 - we didn't lose any walls for example. We did have to get new ceilings in the kitchen and living room, those rooms replastered, new kitchen, new carpets throughout, all the white goods, the tvs, lost half the furniture, our favourite clothes....the list goes on.
Whilst I know our premiums will increase, only paying £400 excess and getting a fully cleaned and repaired house is totally worth it.
Our fire was a freak electrical fault with a food processor that no-one could have seen coming. You have no idea how much your stuff is worth - and how much you'll miss- til you lose it.

Oh and we're with Direct Line who are excellent. Had the fire Saturday night, rang them Monday, house was assessed by Tuesday and the clean up started Wednesday. They found us a house to rent for 6 months too while they did the repairs!

We have our Insurance with our housing association. Its £7 a month (contents only) and is for i think £10,000 (that's all we need really, don't have that much stuff) The good thing about it is that there is no excess and the premiums don't go up if you claim.

4 years ago we claimed for a trampoline enclosure that was stolen (yes just the enclosure ) and earlier this year nearly had to claim for the (3 month old) tv (samsung finally agreed it was a fault rather than damage so fixed it and i cancelled insurance claim) and I did claim for my (imitation) ipad when i accidently kneeled on it after having it only 3 months They paid up both times no bother.
Oh thats the only times we've claimed in 11 years.

Thirty quid a month is ten grand over thirty years. Not a huge amount.

I claimed once, we had legal cover and I used it to sue a dentist. Was worth every penny.

Insurance isn't about getting " value for money", it's about pooling risk and the certainty of making a small payment to cover against the uncertainty of a large loss.

I've only claimed once, came home to find radiator spewing out hot water, dining room carpet completely ruined and a lake of water spreading across the hall. Insurers sent someone round that evening, dehumidifiers installed, carpet removed and replaced about a week later when it had dried out. I sent them the invoice for the carpet, they reimbursed (less excess) a few days later. Well worth it, that claim was double a years premium.

I have known of so many people that have dropped a tin of paint down the stairs that i assume those claims are fraudulent - presumably you get all new carpets on the stairs and in the halls, plus decorating and possibly curtains.

We have claimed once - when a chimney plate fell in and the whole sitting room was damaged by soot. We had only just bought a new carpet and the whole thing had to be replaced, plus the insurance company paid for new chairs. Weirdly, and stupidly, we didn't claim at the same time for the cost of repairing the actual chimney plate.

We live in an old house near the coast and have made two claims for wind damage in the last 15 years. In one we lost ridge tiles, a chunk of roof tiles and the big piece of wood off the gable end, in the other we lost all the tiles off a section of roof which apparently came down like an avalanche (luckily we were out!)

We were persuaded at one point by our utility company to have a 3-month trial of indoor pipe cover for £1, DH told them upfront we would not be taking out insurance at the end but they said we might as well still try it just in case. The day before it expired we had a burst radiator in the bathroom which brought the kitchen ceiling down and all the damage was covered! How lucky was that?!

DP and I are in an on going battle about claiming for my broken iPhone. He says I'll brake the next one too (he has a point - I am clumsy) and that I should wait for an upgrade as its not worth our premium going up. I say I want to claim because why on earth are we paying mobile phone cover if I can't claim? At the moment he's winning!

I always think of house insurance being primarily for fire/flood and wouldn't be without it as the impact of an uninsured loss would be huge.

As well as paying for items lost/damaged you could also need to pay for rehousing for months until your house is repaired.

We've had only one claim in 17 years and that was when my bike got stolen from a locked shed. Was an expensive bike so claim was equivalent to about 10 years premiums. Have had other shed break-ins where the only things stolen were garden tools and DPs spare wires, broken tools and useless tat collection of things that may come in useful one day . Unsurprisingly we didn't claim or replace those items

In our previous house our house insurance people must have ended up regretting the day they ever took us on. We had subsidence cased by cracked Victorian drains - was a nightmare and involved quite major work. They were very good with it all.

YANBU. Basically buildings insurance is for fire and flood - the stuff you can't be self-insuring for because it could destroy your whole house or leave it uninhabitable for months while the work is done. Anything else either they won't pay out for or it's not worth claiming for. The whole business is a racket. We've never even bothered with contents insurance and must have saved loads of money over the years.

down What if you did have a fire/flood though? Do you think you've saved enough money to cover the cost of replacing all your contents? We lost in excess of £15k for contents from our fire. No way we'd have found that money ourselves!

Exactly Faith - DH has had plenty of cases where people lost everything in fires/burst water tanks/floods. You have to imagine going out and needing to buy everything from underwear to sofas again, and how much that would cost.

I do, actually - we have a decent amount in savings, we don't have expensive furniture or carpets, and most of our books are irreplaceable so we'd just have to write them off. Money wouldn't really help. If the whole house had burnt down replacing contents wouldn't exactly be high on the list of priorities anyway as we wouldn't have anywhere to live except whatever the insurance was prepared to pay for, which I imagine would be a grotty B&B with no space to keep anything.

Ah well that's a bit different then - we don't have much in the way of savings. We lost so much though - I literally had one pair of undies and had to go out and buy more. Toothbrushes, makeup, hair brushes. We lost all stuff like that. We got an advance on our settlement to cover that kind of thing and enough to set up the rented house. We were fortunate to get a rented house with a fridge/freezer and oven integral but they would have taken money off our final settlement to provide a furnished house. We had 6 weeks in the house with almost nothing while we waited for the salvaged items to be cleaned but fortunately my Dad has a campervan so we borrowed stuff like kitchen things from there. For the sake of £30 a month I'd glad we had the contents cover.
One thing I found interesting - re smoke damage - obviously they burned everything from the living room which was severely damaged but with the other furniture, the expensive stuff was ok but the cheap stuff wasn't.

I have to renew ours this month.

I'm pissed off though, after the heavy snow couple of years ago, our cast iron guttering collapsed. I couldn't find our policy so called the company to ask if it was worth getting someone out to assess the damage. I said at the time I was fairly sure guttering wasn't covered, but the chap on the phone recommended they send someone out anyway.

The loss adjuster came out, said we weren't covered and left. For that, we lost our no claims (3 years, just when it started to be worth something!) and it increased our premiums. Not impressed.

I've claimed twice in 18 years; both legitimate claims and both paid out without any problems, and didn't notice a massive hike in premiums afterwards.

Our premiums went up by £1 a month - our renewal states despite no claims or anything they have gone up by £10 a month!