Hi,
I hope someone can help me, its a bit of a saga so please don't get bored and stop reading half way through,
I took out my contents insurance last October through my bank LLoyds Tsb. At the time I already had cover but my bank manager said he could save me money. I explained to him at the time that I had extra cover for certain items of Jewelery that I wanted covered off to premises. (We have four Cartier watches, A Cartier Bangle and some diamond rings) he said that I would not need to insure all items as I would only be wearing one or two at a time. I agreed to this.
I received my policy documentations, I have copied exactly below.
CONTENTS SECTION
Sum Insured 50,000 (there is a space here) Discounts Applicable to the Personal
(There is space here and should be under discounts) belongings section
Accidental Damage This cover has been selected. Policyholders age
Note. Your contents sum insured includes cover for high risk items claim free
dependent on the number of bedrooms you declared when your policy
was first taken out at new business or as subsequently amended.
the limits are as follows:
No of bedrooms total high risk item Sum insured
1 7,000
2 9,000
3 11,000
4 13,000
5 15,000
Looking at this layout I understood that I did have enough cover(50,000) as I had with my last insurance.
At the begining of March my house was burgled while we were away for the weekend. After contacting the police, I called the insurance Co. they asked for a breakdown with either receipts or proof of ownership. I sent this off within two weeks of the call. The insurance company have passed this over to Crawfords. It has taken almost 2.5 months for me to get any payment out of them for the electrics, I agreed to a settlement 4 weeks ago for the electrical items and have only just been paid out. Last week I received a call from Crawfords informing me that my limit was 13000 and therefor that is all that they would pay out.
I called my insurance company to establish if this was correct, I spoke to a lady and she told me she could not figure out how much I was insured for but she said that if Crawfords said that my limit was 13000 then it must be!!!!!! I told her that I did not belieive that to be the case, she said it was my responsibility to read through the policy and if I wasn't happy then to send it back. I pointed out to her that she had it in front of her and she couldn't tell me what the limit was. (what chance did I have) I asked her where on my documentation did it state that I had a limit of 13000, she couldn't find it so transferred me to another department. In total I was transferred to about 4 different departments. I was eventually told that as they could not find the limit they would send me a policy booklet. I received this the next day and found it to be random and not specific to my policy.
I phoned customer services on Monday and asked again what limit I had on my insurance, I was told that I was insured for 36,261!!!! and she said she could not find the limit but guessed that as Crawfords said my limit was 13000 then it would probably be a third of this amount rounded up.!!!!! I was on the phone for about 1 hour asking where it stated that my jewelery was only one third of my amount of cover, and also why she seems to think the amount of cover is 36,261 when it states on my policy 50,000???? Eventually the phone went dead, I called back (I have now learned to take names), and could not get her as she was always on a call. I eventually got hold of her and she said that there was a typing error and that under the "` Accidental Damage" heading there should have been a space as the rest of the paragraph does not relate to Accidental Damage but to the entire insurance limit. She then put me through to some one in claims, and he felt that if he read this out to me enough times and put emphasis different words each time that I would agree that there was no mistake on the policy, they also said that if I felt that I did not have enough cover it was Lloyds fault. I pointed out that I agreed to this policy with the wording as it stands. He said that there is nothing that they could do and that my limit is only 13000.
I think that the fact that I spoke to several people at Norwich Union(about 5) who had this information in front of them, they work in the insurance industry and deal with customer policy inquiries all day, and they could not decipher this policy wording, not one of them could tell me what my limit was, this just compounds the fact the the policy is at the very least misleading.
I'm not sure where I can go with this, hopefully I can do something about it as it seems really unfair. I would not have agreed to a cover that would not pay out enough to replace my lovely items. It's not as if contents cover is required by law and I had to have it. I wanted it in place to cover my valuables.
Thanks
Caroline