Handyman Insurance

Well, I admit it, I'm not as young as I used to be, so this is more GSETDIFY (Get Someone Else To Do It For You) ...

I'm finding it difficult to do the gardening and decorating, and a friend of the kids is up for doing some work, and perhaps branching out to develop it into a small business. Thing is, I reckon that he should take out some kind of liability and personal injury insurance for obvious reasons. Could anyone suggest likely annual premiums (lets assume minimal liability, turnover etc)? I realise that we can get online quotes, but as this is just at the speculation stage, I don't really want to expose myself to all the likely spam, and telephone calls which are likely to result. Thanks, Bramblestick

Reply to
Bramble-Stick
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I started off with £1 million public liability which worked out to around £9:50 a month. I've recently increased that to £2 million only because I'm a member of a scheme run by my local Trading Standards for accredited traders & they insist on it, that costs me around £15 month. There is a £250 excess on the policy.

If your friend wants any advice on running a handyman business get him to contact me, I'd be happy to give advice.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

Reply to
Bramble-Stick

Can't help you with premiums.

Perhaps someone here can recommend a suitable insurance broker?

Needs liability cover in case damage is caused to other people's property.

Might be an idea to have some type of personal accident and illness cover so he has an income when unable to work.

Needs to be entirely honest with the insurer about what work he intends to do.

If decorating involves application of heat to remove old paint etc he will need a fairly substantial limit of indemnity and to conform to various requirements such as waiting until the area is cool and having water or extinguisher in the immediate vicinity. Favourite is burning off eaves and not noticing the roof inside has caught fire until the building burns down.

Extensive water damage and rot can result from unnoticed leaks following loosening of radiators to decorate behind.

Gardening risks: Hitting underground pipes and cables (an idiot hit our underground mains cable and the electricity company had to turn off a whole load of houses on our phase to fix it)

Chains saws need the use of proper protective clothing.

Remember one claim where a fire broke out after a plumber or decorator had left the premises but resulted from their hot work. It was a private dwelling but was an ancient barn that had been moved bit by bit to the site. Owner was an expert on dead sea scrolls or something and had some in the property. I believe the claim was about GBP5M and that was about

30 years ago!

Huge claims are uncommon but there are people out there who will see the tiniest mark on a carpet as an opportunity to have the matching Wilton right through the ground floor replaced.

I spent 25 years handling claims. I am sure that there are lots of lovely people out there but there are also people like me who complain about anything!

Reply to
Invisible Man

So this'll be the green shoots we're hearing about?

(OK, I'll fork off now :-))

Reply to
John Stumbles

Good sound advice - thanks, Bramblestick

Reply to
Bramble-Stick

You asked the same question in uk.legal 4 minutes earlier did you not?

Derek

Reply to
Derek Geldard

Yes - is this a netiquette fail?

Bramblestick

Reply to
Bramble-Stick

Very good advice. The Self Employed can claim Incapacity Benefitbut for = a single person that's only about =A360/week, stop you starving but might = not stretch to rent/mortgage and energy.

My personal accident and sickness insurance costs =A350/month but that i= s more than just an insurance premium there is an investment element as we= ll so when the term runs out I do get some of the money back. I have a 4 we= ek defferal on sickness but accident pays out from day one.

Incapacity Benefit and the insurance combined provide enough income for = me and the family.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Stop you from starving ?, what about the rest of the tribe;?...

Reply to
tony sayer

In article , Bramble-Stick scribeth thus

Not really..

Its easier to post to

uk.d-i-y, uk.legal

like that with the comma called crossposting

OTOH perhaps thats not a bad idea to post separately!..

Reply to
tony sayer

Well'ish. It is bad form.

If you post seperately you have to follow both threads, independantly, this can be confusing. It is also a bit annoying to others who subscribe across the same groups as they keep seeing the same message in each group.

Crosspostings, in a decent news reader, end up as one thread and are marked as read automatically in the other groups. Crossposting to a *few*

*relevant* groups is a good way to get a range of responses with everyone seeing all the responses.
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

We have someone who insists in crossposting all his ones to cam.misc a local group for Cambridge to mensa.org .. with all the hollyhocks thats on there;(...

Reply to
tony sayer

I used the interweb & came up with

formatting link
> Needs liability cover in case damage is caused to other people's > property.

My policy excludes using any form of blowlamp indoors.

You do get to spot them after a while. They usually start by telling you about all the dodgy tradesmen they have had in the past and the catalouge of disasters they caused.

You start to realise that its not the tradesmen - they couldn't find that many rouge traders if they actually tried. I now avoid such people, you couldn't please them whatever you did.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

I doubt that they are that much cheaper, Tesco is Tesco... We probably have simpler tastes, mostly fresh produce, no booze as neither of us dri= nk anymore, we don't smoke, no bits of dead animal either. B-)

Our local Co-op is pricey compared to Tesco but Tesco is a 50 miles roun= d trip so effectively adds =A320 to stuff bought from Tesco. So overall th= ere probably isn't that much in it, trouble is the Co-op doesn't stock all o= f the things we like. Tesco won't deliver to our postcode but will to the =

town 2 miles away, bar stewards.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Well, in the last twenty years+ of posting to usenet news, I've always been careful not to cross-post as I understand the annoyance that it can cause. The recieved wisdom was, that if you wanted to elicit the opinions of more than one group, and it wasn't of mega interest to a greater audience, then multi-posting was most appropriate . Apologies if times have changed & I've not kept pace . Bramblestick

Reply to
Bramble-Stick

I think the key bit is crossposting to a *few* *relevant* groups only. Personally once I've read someones post I don't want to see that post (or similar one) in another group. Cross posting removes that annoyance. As you are being selective in your groups there should be a common interest across those groups anyway and the interchange of ideas bewteen the groups can be useful as well.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Ooo - get you! :o)

Reply to
Bob Mannix

Not a serious one, but if you ask the same question twice in different groups it gets propagated around the net twice using twice the resources as if a single question were crossposted to two groups.

Also most decent newsreader software will mark a crossposted message as read in both groups as and when it becomes read in the first one.

Derek

Reply to
Derek Geldard

Thanks for that - my experience on various groups is that cross-posting - especially to the more fervent groups like uk.legal,.(even if in my opinion, is of interest to both) rapidly results in flames. A case of dammed if you do etc. I suppose that I should have adhered to the provisions of RFC 1855 & declared the cross-posting . Probably not a shield tho :-) In the event, I was suspected of insurance fraud over there...

Bramble-stick

Reply to
Bramble-Stick

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