av friendly insurance thread

[Daddy k]

well im looking into getting insurance.

just contents, with accidental.
obviously this has to cover av equipment upto £2000 for an individual item.

can anyone recomend some good companies, with proof they have paid out for genuine accidents ie; spilt drinks into amps, plasma simply failing to work etc etc aswell as paid out for a theft with as little hastle as possible, not to mention quick pay out and perhaps new for old?

then perhaps we can gather a recomended list of av friendly insurance companies??

 

[BobBob21]

Ok.... as I work for an insurance company it wouldnt be correct for me to mention any brands in particular but on general notes....

Most home insurance includes accidental damage to any "entertainment" equipment irrespective if you have full accidental damage cover or not. So drinks into the AVR will be covered.

A plasma failing to work is probably to be a warrenty issue - I dont know any insurance company that covers mechanical/ electrical failure indefinately.

On the single item limit, it would be expensive to set the unspecified limit to £2000 and much more likely more economical to have a lower unspecified limit (say £1000) and just itemise the items over the limit.

 

[Mr_Wistles]

On the single item limit, it would be expensive to set the unspecified limit to £2000 and much more likely more economical to have a lower unspecified limit (say £1000) and just itemise the items over the limit.

This is what I do.

I am with Churchill and they have always paid out well. The missus burnt the stereo while using a wallpaper stripper (dont ask) and they paid out straight away.

More interestingly I had a £1300 laptop that got stolen and when I told them I was not happy with the replacement they were offering they asked me to send through a quote for a cash settlement. I went on the Alienware website and configured one to the exact same specs (but cost about £800 more) and they sent me a cheque for £2100!!!!

 

[Daddy k]

mmm seems good!
churchill will be on my list then!

a quick thing for astaroth:

a had a criminal conviction, that has now passed under the rehabilitation of offenders act. do i still have to declare this with insurance?

is it best to get insuarance in partners name? but will that throw any probs in future if say 3 years time we get broken into????

 

[BobBob21]

I have a claims background (though now work in strategy) so may not be the best person to give advice on underwritting type issues.

Looking at our intranet at a couple of our brands though I note that we record all convictions for both the policyholder and anyone else who stays at the property but cannot effect the policy premium for any ciminal convictions that are spent under Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

The only "issue" I know of for using a partner as the policyholder (assuming they live in the property) is the fact that they will be the one getting the no claims discount so if you went your seperate ways in the future then you would go back to 0 years NCD. I am not sure what you specifically were thinking of though.

It is worth remembering that policies can vary between different brands owned by the same company. So whilst Churchill, Direct Line, Privilige, Tesco, Prudential (to name but a few) are all run by RBS they do all have their own policy T&Cs and underwritting (ie pricing) policies. Dont rule out all of them if you dont get the cover you want with one and dont assume that if one gives you cover that you want that they all will - and their prices will vary.

Always make sure you ask the questions which are important to you and make sure you read the policy when it turns up... whilst if you can prove the policy was mis-sold then the FSA would probably rule on your side in a complaint it is much better just to make sure you get the right thing to start with than risking your possessions on the outcome of a complaint.

 

[la gran siete]

Do they normally ask for receipts etc? And replace new for old?

 

[Daddy k]

yeah is there any onus on the person who has insuance to proove they have the items?

or do receipts/pics these speed up the process any more?

ie i store my receipts for expensive av stuff at work, alas if my homes broken into they wont take receipts too.

or are receipts pointless insurance wise?

 

[BobBob21]

Absolutally, it is on the customer to prove that they owned the item and not the insurance company to disprove it.... after all I am sure we would have all owned £50,000 projectors if it was the other way round.

Depending on the value of the item will dictate how much the company looks into it. If you say your £30 Next sunglasses were stolen it isnt going to end up with the grand inquisition but if you say they were your diamond studded designer glasses worth £30,000 then it gets looked into a lot more.

For low value items then they typically will except things like receipts, instruction manuals, boxes and photos. More expensive they will start asking for more things. My personal (non-professional) advice would be to keep both the receipts and photos (items in situ - eg if it is a necklace then have it on the person rather than a close up of it on an annoymous beech tabletop) safe and away from the home.

An important thing to remember is that if you claim under insurance then any "salvage" becomes the property of the insurance company. Therefore if you broke your £30,000 sunglasses you couldnt throw them away and claim under your insurance by just producing the receipt. The insurance company would want the broken glasses (and probably a receipt too) and would then replace them. For theft, if the items are recovered at a later date they would have to be handed over to the insurance company too - you dont get to keep their settlement cheque and the recovered items.

When I worked in claims our office was full of bikers gear (I dealt with third party injury claims) where our ph had knocked a biker over and his leathers/ hemet had been damaged. Most of the stuff went into the bin but occasionally there would be things that had value... like 1 of a pair of earings (the other was lost - along with the ear - during the accident) but the stone in the remaining one was worth £8k or so.... unfortunately the company sold it rather than letting the claims handler keep it.

 

[Daddy k]

so once i sort my insurance out ill be taking pics of everything and keeping them with receipts, instructions etc in a safe place.

 

[BobBob21]

Insurers have to be realistic about things and dont expect people to keep every receipt for everything for ever. Certainly it is a sensible precaution though to keep the receipts and photos outside of the property - whilst a theif is unlikely to bother taking them unfortunately a fire is less likely to be so discriminating.... again wouldnt be an issue if you had a standard 28" TV - an insurer would be on ropy ground saying that they didnt belive you owned a TV if the house burnt down but would have more grounds to ask for proof on a 60" plasma in a bedsit that burnt down.

 

[BobBob21]

Do they normally ask for receipts etc? And replace new for old?

New for old depends on the policy - most home policies are new for old these days (with an exception of clothes). For small claims is generally isnt worth arguing over the value of an item.... if someone had a £150 washing machine that was 2 years old that was damaged in a fire... what value would it have if it wasnt new for old? How long will it take for a claims advisor to research the likes of Ebay etc to try and value it? How many more advisors would you need to do all this research and then argue with customers when you say it was worth £75 but the customer says it was worth £90.

New for old, the advisor simply faxes/ emails/ phones etc the approved supplier and say provide customer A with washing machine b and then a month or two later they get an invoice for £100 - corporate discounts obviously. Easy, quick, can often be cheaper and customers like it

 

[la gran siete]

New for old depends on the policy - most home policies are new for old these days (with an exception of clothes). For small claims is generally isnt worth arguing over the value of an item.... if someone had a £150 washing machine that was 2 years old that was damaged in a fire... what value would it have if it wasnt new for old? How long will it take for a claims advisor to research the likes of Ebay etc to try and value it? How many more advisors would you need to do all this research and then argue with customers when you say it was worth £75 but the customer says it was worth £90.

New for old, the advisor simply faxes/ emails/ phones etc the approved supplier and say provide customer A with washing machine b and then a month or two later they get an invoice for £100 - corporate discounts obviously. Easy, quick, can often be cheaper and customers like it

What about a £600 receiver though or if you had all your AV gear stolen and it was worth a grand total of 2 grand would they require a recepit?

 

[BobBob21]

What about a £600 receiver though or if you had all your AV gear stolen and it was worth a grand total of 2 grand would they require a recepit?

An insurer is entitled to ask for proof of your losses, that being 1) that you owned it in the first place 2) that it has been damaged/ stolen etc

It is down to each individual insurance company to decide exactly what format the "proof" looks like. In general terms a receipt is a good proof of ownership as it also confirms how old it is (esp relevant if you dont have a new for old policy). Photos are good as it does partially eliminate the issue of people "borrowing" receipts from friends/ family etc as whilst it is still possible for you to carry your friends 60" plasma into your living room to take a photo of it in situ the probablility is much lower.

Insurers have to be "reasonable" in their dealing with customers and a rule of thumb is that the more expensive a claim is the more proof they will require/ more investigation they will make into the claim but the exact nature of this again is down to the individual insurer.

A general best practice is to keep any receipts for anything over a couple of hundred quid and a photo of the item in situ safe and away from your home... have known too many people who say they have lost all their receipts for their £10k of golf clubs because their briefcase with their receipts in were stolen at the same time as their clubs.

If you are concerned then contact your own insurance company and take their advice.

 

[la gran siete]

An insurer is entitled to ask for proof of your losses, that being 1) that you owned it in the first place 2) that it has been damaged/ stolen etc

It is down to each individual insurance company to decide exactly what format the "proof" looks like. In general terms a receipt is a good proof of ownership as it also confirms how old it is (esp relevant if you dont have a new for old policy). Photos are good as it does partially eliminate the issue of people "borrowing" receipts from friends/ family etc as whilst it is still possible for you to carry your friends 60" plasma into your living room to take a photo of it in situ the probablility is much lower.

Insurers have to be "reasonable" in their dealing with customers and a rule of thumb is that the more expensive a claim is the more proof they will require/ more investigation they will make into the claim but the exact nature of this again is down to the individual insurer.

A general best practice is to keep any receipts for anything over a couple of hundred quid and a photo of the item in situ safe and away from your home... have known too many people who say they have lost all their receipts for their £10k of golf clubs because their briefcase with their receipts in were stolen at the same time as their clubs.

If you are concerned then contact your own insurance company and take their advice.

i'll take your advice. Personally I have never made a false claim as i feel ultimately it comes back on us . Insurance companies arent stupid anyway. In 30 years I've only made 3 claims and 2 of those were 2 years ago. Premiums subsequently shot up
Thanks anyway

 

[lovemunkey187]

Astaroth, any suggestions to those of us with large collections? As like several others on here some of my dvds would be exceedingly difficult/impossible to replce.

 

[Mr_Wistles]

The dvds come under contents.

I too was worried about what would happen if I was to be burgled as I owned a great deal of OOP Japs and Crits.

The insurance company said that they would try to replace and if not would give cash. When I started to try and explain that half of the dvds could not be bought anymore and the second hand value was greatly increased - Salo, Spinal Tap, Killer, etc... they did not seem to understand what I was talking about.

I just made sure that I had every individual dvd photographed at a high resolution so they could see where it was from and what version. If they ever tried to under compensate me I had the evidence to come back at them.

 

[Knyght_byte]

not sure if they still limit who they sell to by age, but Saga are good......they paid out for a lightening strike taking out a TV, amp, Video and computer.....the amp and computer were mine and listed as a separate multimedia entertainment package on the insurance, premium at the time was barely worth mentioning.....£30 i think a year..lol.....however it meant when my 3 year old computer got knackered by the strike, they ordered a replacement from Dell that was the nearest thing....luckily the nearest thing Dell still did was double the processor speed, double the RAM and 3 times as good on teh graphics...lol

for the TV and video of my parents they sent them a Currys or Dixons coupon to replace it....
for my amp at first they wanted to do the same (was a Cambridge audio) but i told them i bought stuff based on it integrating in to my system and currys wouldnt sell this sort of thing, so could i purchase an item, send them the receipt then they send me a cheque for the same value as the amp i lost so i could basically buy a better amp by putting in the extra myself...they said sure no probs....

oh, and i even managed to convince the insurance company to send back the actual hard disk from my PC so i could attempt to retrieve data from it.....the lady i spoke to said normally they dont send anything back once its tested as not working, but in this case she'd arrange it as i only wanted the hard drive.....bonus

but i do recommend Saga if they'll take you on.....(oh, for my setup as it is now, £11,500 the premium is around £400 apparently, cant remember exact figure as they changed it a couple times due too misquoting...lol....anyhow, for £400 i'm happy with peace of mind i get...heh)