Be Excellent To Each Other

I found out the other day that Tesco are charging me £450 a year for my home insurance, which I think is a fucking joke.
Who's better?

If you're happy with Tesco apart from the price use one of the comparison sites, get a better quote from somewhere and then phone them. We did this and they damn near halved the premium and gave us some Tesco vouchers as well.

Phone up tesco and tell them that they won't charge you that much and they'll cut it.

My first year was £250, Tesco put it up to £400 on renewal. When I called them to cancel it, the price fell to £250 with all excesses removed.

Esure will do it for £123. There's no tick box for "24-hour security guard", though.

[edit]And £20 on quidco.

That's because it isn't a job site.

Granted, but it obviously makes a difference. I'm half tempted not to get insurance at all.

I used moneysupermarket.com and switched from Endsleigh to Admiral, and it brought the annual premium down by 65%.

This was just for contents insurance though.

Aye, that's all I want.

Yeah, do you mean content or building insurance?

You should try my business insurance! I know companies with 10 times my turnover who pay less.

Have managed to reduce it this year slightly by going on a specialist policy.

As always the advice is to shop around.

LV give us stupid rates compared to everyone else on our contents, literally less than 50% of the nearest competitor. I'm sure the caps are lower, but nothing that bothers me unduly.

Meanwhile, their car insurance is always a joke. Bizarre.

LV are by far the cheapest car insurance for us!

Malc

It might be tempting but DON'T DO IT...as a burglary victim one of the bright points was how quickly the insurance dealt with the replacement of stuff. Surely you get contents insurance with your mortgage?

Thing is, we're practically burglar-proof. Said burglar would have to break into the building through the one ground floor entrance (choosing to either hide from or ignore the CCTV cameras on the way over the car park), sneak past the security guard who sits right by the entrance to the building and the security-controlled doors to the lift, happen to choose my floor from 26 others, then happen to choose my door, which is half-way along a corridor of 12 identical doors. I honestly can't see it happening.


Do I? I'll have to look into that.

Tsk, haven't you seen "The Towering Inferno"? Fat lot of good yer CCTV and Mr Benton on security will be.

Oh yeah, fire, didn't consider that. Good call, Chinster!

...and accidental damage.

and water damage from butler tears.

My washing machine took out the whole of my downstairs a few years ago*. So glad we didn't skimp on contents cover. Don't go without it Grim..., burglars are only half the story.


*curse you new wave Decepticons!

I went with MoreThan. as they ae giving free contents with building insurance.

Mortgage companies can proved Buildings but it is normaly not competative.

My motorbike incurance, third party fire and theft is only 147 quid this year. Which is nice. That's garaged, with 5 years no claims.

I'm hoping I'll never have to find out how good my contents insurance cover is. I did phone and check with them about my games collection though and they said that as long as I had plenty of photos of the stuff I've got then it should be ok - not that I've got anything particularly rare.. it's just quantity really.

I have pretty super duper home insurance with Tesco (£35/mnth for contents and building and loads of accidental cover). When a radiator leaked, unnoticed, for a few weeks and buckled the laminated floor in my living room I had a cheque for £600 in less than a week, which was the cost of a quote for a new fully-fitted floor from Floors2Go. I then blew the cash on hookers and booze, and put the sofa back on top of the damaged segment of floor.

I know you're only kidding, but are you allowed to take the money and spend it on something else?

You're probably not supposed to. It took some wrangling to get them to cough up a cheque instead of using their choice of subcontractor to come replace it (I lied and said I'd had a really bad experience with the firm before). I'm sure if I made a habit of it they'd start refusing to issue cheques, too. But once I have the cheque, the money's mine. 'Course I do have to replace the floor at some point.

I am not sure they can kick up a stink, there was something (maybe a law) passed a while back which made it a bad court thingy for insurance folks to stipulate a subcontractor or supplier, as it is unfair trading. Or something. Whether you can take the money and run, I don't know.

I assure you, you can. If I made a habit of it I expect I'd get rumbled, but this was my only claim in 3 years (so far... I do fancy a new laptop though, and my stairs are very trecherous).

A mate of mine had a mate who scammed his insurance firm for thousands. He was "burgled" three times. In the end they noticed that the £350 TV cabinet he was claiming for was only big enough to hold a 42" TV, but he also on the same claim recorded the loss of a £1500 50" plasma. They took him to court, and clawed it all back, plus expenses

He didn't get done for fraud then?

Sorry, I meant legally take the money and run. Altohugh personally I don't see why not, as it is my money after all.

As I recall, he settled with the firm out of court and repaid everything he'd claimed and the full cost of all his premiums for the entire time he was insured.

(Disclaimer, I was pissed when I was told this story and it's a friend-of-a-friend so already qualified as an urban legend before I posted it on the Internet. The bit about the TV and TV stand was definitely true though.)

Quite. My floor was damaged, and would cost £600[1] to replace, and they paid me the £600 to repair it, which is exactly what I pay them money to do. I chose to live with the damanged floor is neither here nor there really, as I will have to replace it eventually.

[1] except I'd only laid it myself a year earlier for a total outlay of about £150, as I did the job myself and had a deal on the laminate. This is part of why I didn't replace it; apart from that damaged spot under the sofa the rest of it is fine, and it seemed more worthwhile to wait a few years and lay a new floor myself once I've had some use out of the current one.