UKC

I've just updated my contents insurance. Fascinating stuff. While doing so, it struck me that I've been paying for this for years and never claimed, which obviously makes me feel bitter. I've got my rack and stuff insured for outside the home but I just found out that I'd never have been able to claim, because they'd want proof of purchase for every bit!

I reckon I won't have the proof of purchase and stuff to actually get any money out of the b*stards for anything really.

So apart from the legal stuff (car, buildings, life) that I don't have a choice about, aren't I just paying a couple of hundred quid for the a worthless bit of paper and the privileged of spending hours on the phone to someone who has a really sh*t boring job?

I reckon a better system would be for families or other groups of individuals to pay premiums into a savings account which can be used if something really sh*t happens. After a generation, you'd have loads of money in there. Obviously it would take co-operation and discussion of the rules, but you could earn stacks of interest on the money (well OK maybe not just now), change the agreement about what you can use it for with everyone's consent, and generally speaking have protection against bad stuff happening while you make a profit on the premiums instead of some fat guy in a flash suit.

That's what mutual insurance companies are set up for and all insurance companies for that matter. Its making everyone take care of what they have thats the problem. Insurance makes people lax with their possessions, even if it was a friendship arrangement, what is there to stop people falsifying claims apart from crime numbers and receipts, therefore back to the same situation as a large insurance company.

You don't have to insure your contents but invest the money to take care of when something does go wrong, someone mentioned on here they have done that with their own pet insurance but you end up screwed if your house starts burning with £500 in the pot.

In reply to Jon Stewart: Great idea ... trouble is, by the time you've ironed out all the wrinkles, put the checks and balances in place, got somebody to do the paperwork, you'd end up with something that looks rather like ... an insurance company.

I think people should generally be cuter about what they insure mind, which is why we never got caught by PPI (sod it!) and I wouldn't dream of insuring climbing gear because I suspect there would be some excusion somewhere.

Had a nice suprise a couple of years ago though, when we had three bikes nicked from our (unlocked) garage. The insurance paid out without a murmour.

In reply to Jon Stewart: I have to step in to defend M&S insurance. I had my mountain bike stolen on two occasions and they paid up with no problems and the claims were over £2000 in each case. I didn't have to produce any receipts but they did want a crime number.

Al

In reply to antdav:

Yes. But I reckon you could have a company of a few close people, who would be able to be flexible about what you'd need in case of a 'claim'. You could sort it out like human beings by talking to each other: we know you've been burgled, we know you had a telly, computer, etc, so there's no need for it to be a formal procedure. Obviously, lots of people would still try to rip their own family off, so you'd need both groundrules on paper, and a bit of trust.

I suggest that it's people's inability to hold trusting relationships when it comes to money that makes this unlikely to work. With an insurance company (small mutual or corporate giant) you don't feel responsibility towards the other members to stop you making false claims, thus the admin, the difficulty of claiming, and the vast profits.

>...but you end up screwed if your house starts burning with £500 in the pot.

Imagine if as a family you'd all paid into a fund for 3 generations, and no one's house had burnt down in that time. If you got the rules right, so that the probabilities were likely to give you a net increase over time above inflation, you'd be winning! I'm not suggesting this would work for all types of insurance, just the petty stuff like holidays, contents, and anything else that can be fixed with a one-off payment of up to a few grand.

In reply to Jon Stewart: It's no different.

All it takes is one or two dishonest people to make it all fall down.

My take is to have any statutory insurance and for everything else, swallow the cost myself, which over time is of course cheaper unless you're exceptionally unlucky.


The only caveat to this is when I've been in a committed relationship, I've had my life well insured.

In reply to Jon Stewart:
I've had mixed experiences with insurance, when I had a couple of bikes stolen a couple of years back the insurance company (churchill) originally wanted to see proof of purchase for everything and this was going to be a real problem as the bikes were built from scratch by me and there was no way I could provide receipts for everything. in the end they did pay up after I sent what receipts I had along with a detailed list of the gear and a load of pics of the bikes. They did however do me over a bit on the final value of the bikes as they made all sorts of deductions at the end.
I'd hope that in the case of my climbing gear being stolen they would do the same, I have some of the receipts and I have a photo of all the the gear I own laid out on the floor so that it could be identified.

In reply to Jon Stewart: Insurance is one of those things that people generally pay for without reading the small print. Most of us will be guilty of this at some point and the insurers rely on this to make their money.
Insurance is a gamble which the house (the insurers) have a massive edge as most people will never claim and the ones that do (ignoring the fraudulent) will never claim back more than they paid into it.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Interesting. I think I'll do what I can with regards to receipts and photos of my stuff so that I stand a much better chance. Fact is that chances are I won't claim - it seems that bikes get nicked all the time but burglary of stuff from homes is much less common. I guess most electronic stuff (the only stuff I own really, and it's not very flash) is pretty cheap now and not worth the bother.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

you're missing an important bit. Ok you me and 5 other UKCers who are suddenly good mates decide we'll pay the money in to savings. Great. But thing is we're all paying a total of £100 a month and at the end of month 2 your car gets nicked and my house burns down. We won't get far on £200 between us.

The point of insurance at it's basic end is that for a monthly premium -
- the insurance company gets interest as it goes in their special savings scheme
- you get a huge amount of money back if something goes wrong, potentially disproportionate to what you've paid, if you lose the game of chance called statistics.

So insurance should really be for the things you really need and couldn't easily replace. Live, house, car, maybe some individual expensive items like your tv jewellry or whatever. If you start trying to insure everything you own then statistically at some point you are going to be much more likely to claim and therefore the insurance company makes less and less money. So that's why they put in rules and exclusions.

In reply to Jon Stewart: You have a choice about life insurance, obviously it makes sense if you have dependents, but if you don't then you don't have to have it.

I was grateful for travel insurance as I missed a connection due to weather cancelling the initial flight and they weren't booked as a package, insurance paid for a new flight and would have paid overnight accommodation if I hadn't made it back the same day.

Some of the other stuff possibly isn't worth paying for. I've had friends who ran old bangers on 3rd party, and just got another for a few hundred quid if it broke down or crashed. I hadn't used the AA for ages, but then had to call them TOD. My mum decided to put the medical insurance premium in an account for a rainy day, but I guess thats far from essential either.

In reply to Scarab9:

That's the thing isn't it - if you experience zero claims rates you lose the premium each year, if you experience average claims you lose the profit margin (which isn't actually massive), if you make a claim then generally you "win" (considering only the money going between you and the insurer) many times what you pay in. And it's that bit that a small scale scheme would suffer with unless someone could effectively loan the fund money now and take it out of peoples contributions in future years (at which point there's a massive degree of trust that they will effectively keep paying for the claim for years afterwards to pay back the loan).

In reply to Scarab9:

I appreciate that it would take a bit of time - a few decades - to start really working, so I wouldn't suggest that a few mates and someone off the internet try it out. I'm thinking more about families who have responsibilities to one another on a permanent basis, so you could build up a decent fund over decades or generations. I think the advantages of keeping the proceeds and of having control of the policy would be worth the risk (or double-investment) for the set-up period.

I take issue with the second point. I'm mainly talking about the lower valued stuff here, contents/holidays etc, not buildings insurance. You're going to have to fight to get your TV or computer replaced, and I'm pretty sure it's not worth it.

I agree. I didn't use to have contents insurance, and now I'm regretting buying it.

In reply to Jon Stewart: we recently (aug 11) lost my wifes wedding and engagement ring. it was a relatively simple process to get the money from the ins (as we had the valuation for the engagement ring (heirloom)) and new purchase invoice for the wedding band. The NFU were pretty good. Consdiering it was just a police case and our word..

gutted didn't quite cover it tho. It was a v.special ring and although the new one looks a lot like it, equally it also doesn't!

In reply to gingerdave13:

Granted sometimes insurance works OK, but I'd still rather keep hold of the money myself (with others I trust) while it's not being spent and pocket the proceeds.

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Thought I'd add my point of view, I don't have contents insurance to cover small items the main reason I've got it is to cover me should a house fire or similar destroy the vast majority of the things I own and the cash would be essential to start over.

In reply to Jon Stewart:
Only insure stuff if it's a legal requirement or you'd be screwed if you lost it. Anything else is a waste of money. For years I insured my motorcycles third party only. Eventually one got stolen. I was very peed off, but I worked out that if I'd have had theft cover up to that point, i'd have paid out more than the value of the bike anyway.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Contents cover is pretty cheap, usually only about £10-£15 per month, thats 5 pints.

I have seen lots and lots of properties that have suffered from fires and floods, the contents claims are usually around 20K upwards. You have a lot of stuff, many people don't realise just how much stuff they have till its gone. Sure, TV and electrical items everybody thinks about, but it's all the other smaller things, individually insignificant, but loose everything in one go and you have quite a problem.

You will hopefully get lucky and never have to claim, but if you do, then you will be glad you invested those five pints per month!

Your scheme would work, but you just need to make sure no-one has a fire or similar for the first 20 odd years.

If your claim is genuine, and you have "reasonable" proof of ownership then you shouldn't have a problem. If you do, then complain to the FOS, they will always find in favour of the customer where there is an element of doubt. If on the other hand you are trying to add a little to your claim since Insurers are just fat robbing corperate scumbags and it is only a little bit extra, then you are committing fraud.

I don't work for an Insurance company by the way, I do however work in the Industry, and see first hand the aftermath of bad things happening.

K