I have a home emergency add-on to my house insurance. Boiler packed up this morning, but engineer came within 2 hours, did a temporary fix, and has ordered a couple of spare parts to be fitted later. Have to say I'm quite impressed. Not bad for £50 a year
That sounds good value. Most insurances for this sort of cover are generally twice that.
Is there a catch such as losing a no claims discount or something similar?
/Is there a catch such as losing a no claims discount or something similar? /q
Or a bill when the repair's finished?
Jim K
I recently claimed on my house contents policy with them (I damaged my glasses) and was much impressed with the speed, efficiency and politeness with which my claim was dealt.
The only stipulation AFAICS is that the boiler must have been serviced within the last 3 years. For me that adds £25 a year. Also the policy covers loss of heating (i.e. an emergency), rather than the boiler not working as it should. I imagine if the pump was leaking, for example, that wouldn't be covered. Well, not until the water level dropped sufficiently to stop the boiler working anyway, and then they might just top it up and tell you to get an engineer. Dunno, I'm sure they'll exclude boilers if they can't make money out of it.
Interesting that up until last year the small print said the boiler must have been "regularly serviced". Yeah, like every ten years? I imagine they might have been turned over a few times with that wording.
Seems too good to be true ATM but I'll keep my fingers crossed the parts are fitted as planned. Parts that are never cheap either BTW, in case anyone thinks d-i-y would have been a better option. Add the cost of misdiagnosis and all the bits you bought in error....
Yeah, well, good luck with that. I've read the policy
In message , stuart noble writes
Funnily enough, just yesterday LV left me fuming. It may have been partly my fault in that I should have argued with them when they said that they now just send out documents online.
I renewed the insurance separately for 2 vehicles. Then looked in my text-only-ish email program (Turnpike) for a way to print out the Certificates of Insurance. Most of the text was there, including little hearts beside something that looked like a click here place, but somehow I missed the attachments at the end of the email beneath the html section disclaimer area. So I forwarded the emails to another of my addresses where they were viewable in Thunderbird. TB suppressed different parts of the emails and gave a small hard to see arrow in the bottom corner labelled 'Download attachments'. So 2 email programs gave very different looking emails.
I paid by credit card. He said "I just need the last 4 digits of the 16 digit code" I gave them. The card was declined. I asked if he was sure he wasn't working with records of last year's card, he said he would take all the full card details. Again declined. I paid with another card and then rang the credit card company, who said yes the attempted transaction had triggered a block by their fraud software. Apparently, if a card is declined on wrong data, then retried within a very short time, even with the right data, it triggers their fraud procedures.
This wasn't an automatic roll-over renewal, but apparently last year the auto renewal system was tightened from being able to roll-over on an out of date card to requiring new details if the end date has passed.
The whole business took over 2 hours.
I inserted a credit card into a fuel pump machine. Fortunately the diesel nozzle would not fit into my (hire) car, so I had to cancel the transaction. I then was unable to use my card to buy the correct grade. When I later phone the credit card company I was told that the card had been stopped. Duplicate transaction. It is just as well that I carry multiple cards.
Just going through the quote process for their house insurance & their rates are good. We meet all the requirements for security (Window locks, BS/3 point locks etc) but there are some weasel words saying that all windows have to be key locked at all times when property unoccupied which seems unreasonable given all keys are the same and, if burglar Bill has broken the (toughened) glass to open the closed but un(key)locked window, he/she is already committed to entering and the key lock status is irrelevant at that point.
Can't find this condition in the current Direct Line policy - is this the case or routinely enforced?
Pity, we have had LV motor insurance for years and on the rare occasions have needed them they have been easy to deal with.
ChrisK
IME, if you say they're not all key locked, it won't make much difference to the quote
It certainly isn't standard, as I would avoid a policy that said such a thing, so our current policy AXA, via M&S doesn't.
Can't remember details as it was >10 years ago, but we used to have house contents ins. with them. We maid a faily small claim, and then on renewal noticed a requirement like that I think (don't know if they were related, or just a standard T&C change) but at that point we left them.
Tried that, you have to agree to fitting such locks within 28 days....
Chris K
I've never been asked about that, so presumably their statistics suggest this is an issue in your area. One agile little burglar might be raising premiums for miles around. Be interesting to know whether the insurance companies pool their risk analysis statistics
No, nothing to do with local crime rates (no breakins in the estate in the last 20+ years). Judging by the premium quoted it is seen as lowest risk band. Seems to be baked in to the standard terms.
Chris K
As I say, LV have never insisted on that. Maybe they will next time. Locks on Victorian sliding sashes are as good as useless but, if they insist......
Seem to insist now. Not that I have a problem meeting the locks requirement (all new windows in the last year), just that requiring locking *all* the windows with the key each time you go out is too restrictive.
Strange that they do not also insist that the keys are not left in the lock. Suggests they have not really thought it through properly.
Stick with DL for another year I guess.
Chris K
As usual, it's (probably) a get-out-of-paying condition. About 15 years ago a friend's house was broken into via a small transom. The insurers wanted to know if the window was locked. The fact that it was wasn't relevant, as the entire window and its sub-frame were on the ground outside! According to the NHS 'Trust' that arranged the insurance payment would have been witheld if the window had been unlocked, so material facts are necessary for the insured but not to the insurer.
I have had LV House/contents insurance for some time, at the last renewal the quote letter had a footnote "We have other products that might save you money - please see www.......)
Out of curiosity I went to the web site and got a quote for about 25% of what I currently pay. There must be some catch thought I so I went through it carefully trying to make it match my current policy exactly; Values/new for old/accidental cover/excess/specified items etc and it still ended up as only ~30% of what I currently pay.
I then noticed a link to T&Cs for this policy and these included
- locks on all windows,
- 5 lever mortice locks on all doors
- an alarm that must be set whenever the house is empty.
If not currently fitted all must be done within 28 days of start of policy.
I wouldn't mind but if I fitted an alarm this house would stick out like a sore thumb as the only house with an alarm in about a 2 mile radius.
The alarm doesn?t have to be visible and the insurance would obviously pay if the criminals did decide to burgle it because it had an alarm. Its much more likely they would burgle someone else's instead if they did realise it had an alarm.
Which would most likely have to be professionally installed and maintained which would, therefore, reduce your savings.
And if you didn't set it and you made a claim...
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