1 reply to this topic

[David P]

Last year I was unfortunate enough to drop my camera. The repair was quite expensive so I claimed on my household insurance. They paid me £88.

This year they (LV=) have loaded my renewal premium by £110 (and I suspect that may continue for several years). This is solely due to the claim as I have verified by getting quotes from a website both declaring and not declaring a claim.

I have asked of LV's regular complaints channel, their General Manager and their Chief Exec, how they can justify this. None have attempted to answer that question, just saying the policy has been reviewed, taking the claim into account, take it or leave it.

Over the years I have paid about £700 to this company for accidental damage cover, yet as soon as I claim a small amount they immediately grab it back and more.

The moral of this story is either:

- don’t buy accidental damage cover as it will always cost you more than you are ever likely to claim, or

- if you do make a claim, make sure you grossly inflate it, because if you don’t rip them off they sure as hell will rip you off.

Rant over. If anyone has any suggestions as to how I might get justice I’d love to hear them (the financial agony aunts are not interested and the Ombudsman says it’s nothing to do with him). Otherwise it just helps to get it off my chest.

[Bawbag]

Completely agree.

A few years ago we claimed on our insurance as our fairly-expensive-but-not-very-old dishwasher went pop. They (Direct Line) paid out no problem but ever since then I've had a sneaking suspicion that our premiums have been loaded.

It's difficult to quantify, but we're definitely paying a lot more than we used to, certainly in the year following the claim our premium went up by about £12/mo. They try to explain it away with "premiums are up year on year" nonsense of course. Even if that loading reduces by 25% each year over the five, by the time you take into account the excess I paid they'll pretty much get all their money back.

The worst thing is having to declare it to all insurers means you can't escape the uplift by shopping around.

We still have accidental insurance but would think long and hard about claiming on it again.