People with no insurance asking for tradesman to do work for free after house burned down

[Purpleturtle46]

Saw a post on a local FB group recently where someone's house had burned down and they had no insurance so were asking for donations/tradespeople to work for free.

My initial thought was WTF how rude, how can you expect people to work for free when you cut corners not taking insurance. However the vast majority of the comments were people offering their condolences and offering to help, including several tradespeople offering to help pro bono.

Then I'm started to wonder if I was being a bitch.
How would you react to such a post?

YABU-you would be sympathetic and offer to help
YANBU-you would think that was a cheeky request

🤣 Literally everything can be criticised as American on here it seems.

I don’t get this either. How did you not think hm no sum of money has come out of my bank?

Bank balance started healthy, remained healthy. 🤷 We just literally never thought of it. Busy, both working, little kids and it was during covid and a bereavement. Read email, thought it was sorted, immediately forgot all about it.

We've recently realised exactly the same as @BarbaraHoward - ours has been lapsed for well over 2 years. We also thought it would autorenew but it didn't. And honestly, there are so many bills leaving the account each month, I didn't even notice that one was missing because there are still so many there! 😭

I have a friend who just hasn’t had home insurance for about 3 years now. I speak to him about once a month and was like have you fucking done it?!?!?

Hes like no not yet. It’s too complicated; they want to much money. They won’t cover the cost etc.

I honestly don’t know what he’s doing. Whether he’s just spending way too much time looking at the T&Cs. Whether he’s telling them the ins and outs of all his top range renovation insulation or whatever. I really don’t get.

I just go on site comparison. Find something with unlimited buildings and unlimited contents. Job done.

But yes I would feel sorry for him if his house burnt down. Because that would be fucked. As much of a numpty he is, he’s also a nice guy. And not particularly a cheap skate either so I do struggle to understand what he’s doing wrong with these quotes.

In the flooding case I mentioned it wasn’t that they couldn’t get insurance as most people we dealt with in that street were insured. The area had never flooded before (or since thankfully). No idea if they could get insurance afterwards though...

I don’t think cheeky is the right word. I think it’s desperate and understandable in the circumstances. If their house burned down and they lost everything and don’t have insurance, I don’t suppose they have many options for survival.

I don't see why they wouldn't ask. They have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Personally, I wouldn't contribute as it's ridiculous not to have insurance.

I take your point about being allowed to choose your own insurer; but forcing you to use a particular one - especially if that insurer knows that you have to use them - is so open to abuse and mega ripping off.

We've all experienced ridiculous sky-high insurance quotes and sighed "Yeah, you wish, mate!", before finding another company that's a lot more reasonable; but imagine if that crazy expensive company was the only one you were allowed to use. Knowing you could have got the exact same cover for maybe a quarter of the price, but that you have no alternative but to shut up and just pay a king's ransom for the same thing.

In fact, with insurance prices rocketing across the board, I bet there are a lot of people who don't have the luxury of choosing an unaffordable quote that seems reliable and comprehensive, and who just go for the unknown/suspicious company/cover level that they can afford.

Certainly with car insurance, where you are forced to buy an acceptable policy in order to be able to legally use your car, there will be plenty of folk with little alternative but to go for the cheapest - very likely not the best (or maybe even no good at all) option that ticks the mandatory boxes, and just desperately hope that they never need to claim that year.

I would have some sympathy with people who have lost everything and have no insurance as, to me, insurance isn't just the cover, but also the peace of mind of knowing that you have the cover, if that makes sense.

Never having to suffer the embarrassment and potential humiliation of having to beg people to help you - without ever knowing if they will or not, although knowing that they will harshly judge you - would mean a lot more to me than being peeved that I'd paid money to guarantee that I'd get something that somebody else had eventually managed to get without paying. Either way, insured or not, I presume that none of us would ever consider somebody who had lost everything in a fire or flood somehow luckier than us?!

Maybe if people could easily have afforded insurance but deliberately decided not to bother, my sympathy would be limited; but those in flood plains and similar who simply can't get insurance, poor folk who had the choice either buying home insurance or feeding their kids that month, those who made an honest mistake in not having the right kind/level of cover or who mistakenly believed that it had been auto renewed, and even uneducated/low-intelligence/vulnerable people with a woeful lack of understanding about how insurance and financial products work.

I can no longer afford decent insurance for my dog, which has doubled.i have a basic policy for emergencies ,a savings pot for him, and a spare credit card!

Per insurance in Australia is a scam. You can only get it when the dog is a puppy. So many things excluded. And once claimed for one thing, you can never claim for that again. I don’t see it as true insurance.

Agree with pp. I have 8 pets and zero pet insurance ( Australia). I did try the monthly set payment with a local vet but I spent more than they provided.
Since when did pet insurance become such a " thing" ? Have you guys checked your are actually getting your money's worth. They are obviously making a profit or they wouldn't be in the pet insurance business!

With regard to floods there are definitely houses that are not insurable for flood ( they usually claim act of God!) Fire should be insurable for almost anywhere except fire-prone areas.
I feel so sorry for people who lose their homes. The feeling must be devestating , insured or not. All the stuff, just little things like your pillow and your teacup; that you are used to just gone in a flash. Terrible.

This was in the late 90s & the quote was competitive as the LA used the same insurer for all their housing stock & if I recall correctly we paid the premium to the LA rather than the insurer. I take your point though about not having a choice meaning you could easily be ripped off. I think the LA did it this way to protect their own housing stock in the event of fire spreading through attached houses. Tenants could also insure their contents with the council’s insurer very cheaply.

Does anyone else remember when Windsor burned? HMQ did not have insurance.

My neighbour burnt her house down
No insurance,but within hours,a gofundme was set up,begging posts on fb and sad face on radio and the papers
She 'forgot' to mention her partner had a good job,the council tried twice to rehome her (but she turned both down) and the fact she had a massive posh car,endless takeaways,all the latest tech,taxis for her dds and paid a fortune for that blasted ring doorbell
But couldn't afford £3 a week for insurance
I try not to judge,but it did stick after all the trouble she caused us,she expected us to pay into the gofundme (and slagged us off when we didnt)
Why the hell should I pay for my own insurance and pay for others that didn't bother to save a few quid?

In the UK the Flood Re scheme insures properties at serious risk of flooding.

Same for us a few years ago - we had a bit of plumbing done which went wrong and flooded our kitchen. Fortunately that was covered under the plumber's insurance, because I went to check our policy and realised it had expired 6 months previously! I think I had just assumed it would auto-renew like our other policies, and the amount of money wasn't so big that I'd notice it being there or not.

Home insurance costs have absolutely rocketed in the last few years. It took me 3 days of solid searching this time to find a company I could afford that also had good reviews.

We've had an odd one in our town this week. A house (appears to be an HMO) caught fire badly, everything damaged and black. One person had to be woken and dragged out, really near miss from the sound of it. The landlord is on FB asking for replacement belongings for the residents. I can underhand low earners not having contents insurance but I'm starting to wonder if the landlord had sufficient or working smoke alarms and is trying to cover their backside. (Still nosily watching the FB fall out).

Thanks to this thread, I've just checked my home and car insurance hasn't lapsed 😂

It is?

@Notsuchafattynow I just checked that my policy was building and contents rather than just contents!

In the tradespeople point. On local FB groups being seen to be helpful to those in need etc can drum up a bit of positive advertising I think. So whilst I agree they are CFs for asking those that render assistance might get a bit of extra (paid) work in return.

We had a problem in the house. We've been paying house insurance for 25 years to this company.
An assessor told us we were overpaying.
What the insurance company offered us was laughable.
Insulting.
Replacing and repairing what was damaged would be double, at least, what they were giving us.
Yet Zurich's new, shiny offices in our city would have cost millions so they know the cost of building/tradesmen.
I was disgusted with the experience.

I think yeah that people have bad experiences trying to claim on insurance and sort of conclude it's a con. It is a bit of a con IME.

I always take out travel insurance, but I do know that if you ever have to claim on it, it's gonna be a couple of years of legal wrangling to actually get the money. I have had made two claims, in my life, on travel insurance and both were enormously protracted cases that I had to take to the Ombudsman to resolve. I did win both those cases, but that was two years of fighting per claim.

I paid pet insurance for 15 years and it didn't cover the very modest cost when my pet got ill and died. So what's the point of it. They're gonna take your money and they're gonna screw you. That's the economic model of insurance companies.

So I only buy insurance that I am legally required to take out now, because I just don't think they pay out. When I bought this house obviously I was required to buy buildings insurance, which I did, but the broker was suggesting I take out critical illness insurance and so on, but I just think it's nonsense! They'll never give you that money if you get ill. They'll find some way to wriggle out of it. You're just buying yourself a legal case when you can least cope with it.