Home insurance- a big joke?

[KayMarie121]

any recommendations for uk home & contents insurance?

we’re looking into finding a new deal, and I’ve never really read the small print before, and a few things I’ve found quite shocking during our search:

boilers won’t actually be paid out for.
leaks from pipes only covered if the pipes are frozen.
boilers of over 4 years old might get a £100 pay out towards replacing but the excess would be £450.
water leaks will only be covered if they can find the source- otherwise no payout.

do you only get the basic cover for fire and disaster, and not bother paying for the extras as the small print reads like they don’t actually pay for anything any more? Even the top tiers of cover have such complex stipulations on actually making a claim. Grrr….

With any type of insurance I try and read the small print (ie the full policy wording) of a shortlist of, say, three policies before final choice. This is of course extremely time consuming and complex. I have found the variation between policies is critical to my needs. Comparison sites can be useful for identifying those in the right price range (which also varies wildly). But they are useless for narrowing down the cover details. I'm not sure anyone can recommend any to you. It depends what you particularly need and which will offer the closest. Also, companies target different demographics which may be specific to your profile. Have you considered separate buildings and contents cover if you need to finesse it that much? It may be worth going to an insurance broker who will be better informed. I usually end up paying more than the cheapest, but not a huge amount over. Good luck.

We pay extra for accidental damage. They will not pay out for normal wear and tear. I have jewellery listed as all risks with up to date valuations from jewellers.

Anything to do with water leaks is often an higher excess than other things

Boilers have a relatively short life span and they are no different to any other household appliance. You can get separate boiler cover, just as you can get separate cover for most appliances.

Why would an insurer pay out if they can’t locate the source of a leak? It will just keep leaking if it’s not fixed properly at the source, and need constant ongoing repairs. This is just common sense.

If you have a lot of add ons it is sometimes cheaper to get a premium insurance than a cheaper insurance and add loads of stuff to it. Very cheap insurance are often for people without much stuff.

The home insurance policy is not a maintenance contract. If your boiler is young enough you can buy specific boiler cover, but insurance isn’t intended to replace something that needs replacing due to its age (and boilers might only last 7 years, though mine is 40 this year). Ditto the roof, windows, carpets… you can pay (a lot) extra for Accidental Damage cover but if the carpet is 20 years old when you spill paint on it, the insurer is not obligated to pay for a brand new one without allowing for the fact that you’d been happy to live with a very old one before it was ruined accidentally. It’s entirely standard to cover damage caused by escape of water that can be attributed to a specific incident - a nail through the pipe, for example - but leaks from pipes usually aren’t dramatic and plumbing joints fail over time. The cost of maintaining a home is down to the owner/occupier.

We bought house insurance with home emergency cover as an option for years. Our heating broke down one very cold bank holiday weekend so I called them to try and get an engineer out under the policy. Turns out that when you read the small print and the additional hidden clauses, having no heating or hot water isn't covered unless you've got gas - which isn't even laid on to our village. So our oil boiler was not covered under the policy. It even took the agent who answered my call forever to work out why the computer said no! Total rip off for the extra we were charged to not be covered for one of the most likely things you'd need an emergency plumber for.

It would never occur to me that a boiler might be covered on home insurance!

Using a comparison with car insurance, you wouldn’t expect the insurers to pay out if there was a mechanical fault, but you would expect them to pay for theft or crash damage.

Insurance covers specific things, not everything. It’s always been this way - not a new thing.

I haven’t paid for any add-ons with my house insurance. If I drop a pot of paint on the carpet, I know that’s not covered. But if the house burns down, or I get burgled, I know it will be.

yes- this! I think the most likely things to happen in a home are water leaks- but reading the small print on all the comparison site companies- they wouldn’t pay out for damage unless it was a frozen pipe. We wouldn’t claim Willy Nikky because hubby is a tradesman and does lots of maintenance. It just seems that the most important thing to us is very much a grey area if we were to have a water escape emergency.

We had a water escape emergency and I will recommend our Beezley policy until the cows come home. They fully covered, no quibble, replaced floors etc. it’s the only home
Insurance claim we’ve ever made and they were fantastic.

I wouldn't expect home insurance to cover a boiler any more than I'd expect it to replace an old cooker or dishwasher. It does usually cover damage caused by a leak, but not wear and tear on the boiler or the repair of the leak.

Im not sure why you thought that it would cover a boiler, it is the same as any other appliance. If you want appliances cover then that is a seperate thing.

Yeah I guess I thought it was part of contents/ home infrastructure and as such there’d be some support in an emergency, as something that’s more expensive than a washer etc.

Home insurance for buildings and contents does not include boilers or any other appliances, for that you need boiler cover or home emergency cover which is either an add on or stand alone policy. Do read the small print though as many of this require annual maintenance of boilers and 5 yearly of electrics. We don’t bother, we put the £300 it would cost into an account then pay out as needed

Having been stung by cheap landlord insurance ( Covea/ Simply Business in looking at you) I believe that in the immortal words of Michael Winner, you buy cheap you buy twice ( or tenfold in my case). There was a huge leak in my rental property. I had paid for alternative accommodation for my tenants in this eventuality so I put them up in a hotel, submitted my claim only to be kept dangling for 6 weeks when I was finally told they would pay out nothing, because on page 26 of the schedule there was a clause stating internal pipes weren’t covered. I also had to replace carpets, repaint etc Now I read clauses v carefully before buying insurance. Leaks are a no 1 cause of claims and I make sure all eventualities are covered.

@KayMarie121 make sure the cover you buy lists the correct values of your contents and your building unless the buildings cover doesn’t require a value (some policies don’t). Don’t try to save money by under valuing as in the event of a loss if you’re under insured your claim either won’t be covered or will be reduced to reflect under insurance. You can always go to a broker who will hunt around for the cover you require.

There are home emergency add-ons that you can buy. This is really your fault for not being aware of what you're buying though.

Yes I know- hubby was equally shocked. It’s easy to look at the tick list and buy your policy, shove the docs in a drawer when they arrive and come unstuck if something happens.

@KayMarie121 yes, and that’s why I get irritated when I get the inevitable satisfaction survey after buying an insurance policy - the ease of buying the policy is not the purpose of insurance, it’s how well the policy works when you need to claim! Bet they don’t send out satisfaction surveys after a claim is handled!!

💯