Simply Business insurance

[TheGander]

Adverts for this service keep popping up on my mumsnet page. Just thought I’d share my experience which was a very bad one. I took out landlord insurance with them because they were half the price of the competition. Paid out extra for alternative accommodation cover ( in case had to re home tenants). In November there was a huge leak at the property and I had to rehouse the tenants, change carpets, re decorate 2 bedrooms. After 6 weeks of back and forth and SB requesting reports, photos etc which I provided, they informed me they’d pay nothing because the policy did not cover burst pipes ( that fact was hidden away on page 26 of the schedule).
If you look at their Trustpilot page it’s all 5 star reviews from people who have just taken out insurance and found the agents very helpful and the price very good. It’s 1 star reviews from people who have claimed, because SB has invariably turned down the claim.
Be very careful if you are tempted to take out insurance with them. Cheap for a reason.

O that's shocking. Did your policy not include 'escape of water' with them? I would have thought that's pretty standard.

I'm with them and have escape of water (£500 excess though) and assumed it would pay out for a burst pipe situation.

I have Business Liability Insurance with them and find their customer service and price good.
However, I have not had to claim so if I had my experience might be different

@suggestionsplease1 read your schedule carefully. With me they got out of it because the schedule said, on page 22 ( not 26, my mistake) that internal pipes were not covered. Can’t remember if escape of water was covered. But as I found out, I thought I was covered for alternative accommodation, but that was negated by the fact that it was a burst internal downpipe that caused the flood and meant I had to re house the tenants in a hotel for a week.

I am looking now...I have gone through docs searching for each time pipe is mentioned...can't see anything about internal pipes but it does seem to exclude water escape from guttering and downpipe and if house is unoccupied (I assume there will be a definition of unoccupied somewhere, rather than simply out of the house at the shops etc)

It will of course exclude the sort of gradual damage that should have been spotted earlier on and covered by a repair job, it's more for sudden, unexpected escapes of water.

That sounds terrible that's been excluded from yours ...escape of water is mentioned very early on in policy summary for mine. But what you're saying does make me nervous that they would find a way of wriggling out 😡.

Could it be that there has been a massive claim for similar in the past or something and they've listed it as an exclusion for claim or something?

I owned a property once where they was an exclusion for subsidence on insurance due to past issues.

If it's within their conditions of insurance, they've really done nothing wrong. People need to learn that something like insurance really does work on the detail of the policy and that you shouldn't "assume" something.

Maybe, but my suspicion is a company that seeks to undercut the competition with cheap quotes will claw the money back by inserting clauses which will exclude a large proportion of claims. I certainly will look more closely in future.

I’m very cynical about insurance - anytime I’ve claimed my premiums have doubled. I think the whole industry is a scam. I’ve had to ask two different insurance companies to pull up the tapes and they denied agreeing terms with me - both times I was right - total scammers. We have business liability insurance with Simply Business but we’ve never needed to claim.

We used them with a property and had a major leak which was covered. Paid out with no issues at all. The subsequent policy price was a good one however if we wanted escape of water again, the premium was huge.

Previous claim history IS a relevant factor for any kind of insurance.

The vast majority of people don't make any claims at all.

Even if a claim genuinely isn't your fault, in that there was literally nothing you could have done to prevent it, there is still the fact that "something" caused the claim for your particular home/car/holiday, etc.

I.e. for a leaky water pipe, having it happen once, WILL increase the risk of it happening again, either due to age of property, the materials used, standard of workmanship when built, etc. The vast majority of people don't suffer a leaky pipe.

Just over our back fence are some huge un-cared for pine trees. Every few years a huge limb falls and causes damage. The house owner is always complaining about his insurance premiums and how they keep increasing every time he has to make a claim for the costs of a new shed or fence replacement, etc., and whinging about rip off insurance firms. But it's his own fault because he's not spent a single penny on having them properly maintained/felled/topped etc in the 27 years he's lived there. The insurance firm are right to hike his premiums because the risk of future damage is increased due to the past claims. Insurance firm don't know nor care it's his own fault because he's too stingy to pay professional tree fellers to care for the trees - they just hike his premiums because there is a history of claims.

One thing I have learnt @Ironrailing is to document everything and not trust them. Well done on accessing the recordings.
@Badbadbunny I understand your frustration with your neighbour and why a company would put his premiums up. My post is about Simply Business hiding a penalising exclusion on page 22 of its schedule and then string in me along for 6 weeks, not returning my calls, promising to reach an outcome by 4 pm then radio silence etc etc. The Trustpilot reviews show I’m not the only unfortunate one. They sell cheap and then recoup by turning claims down, I wanted to make people aware since Mumsnet is carrying adds for SB.