Questions on how to deal with insurance company...

[Spanky Deluxe]

Hi everyone!

My Dell laptop (Dell 8600) died last week after splitting in two on the way down the stairs. Luckily I was able to extract all my data since the hard drive is easily removed. It was a fantastic machine and I loved it to bits.
Anyway... I'm going through the motions with the Insurance company. Its been specifically listed with a value of £2500 on my home insurance policy since I bought it and I've been paying extra as such for it to be insured. My insurers pass laptop claims onto another company who have had a look at it and say its beyond economical repair and they are contacting Dell for a quote for a replacement. To be honest, now that I've got used to using this iBook G4 that I was going to sell, I'd rather not get another PC and sell whatever I get back from them to go towards other things. I've already said I won't settle for anything that doesn't have a WUXGA screen so hopefully I should get a half decent laptop. Whatever I get though I doubt it'll be worth more than £1000. While the new for old insurance may be ok, I'm a bit peeved that I've been paying to have it insured for £2500 but I'm not going to be getting that value back if you see what I mean.
Should I call my insurers and quibble about this? It was originally listed on my insurance policy because when new I paid over £2500 for it and my insurance only covered up to £2000 on non listed items. Back in March of this year my insurance policy changed to cover everything up to £2500 although my laptop remained listed on the insurance and I carried on paying the higher rate for it. I've never made a claim on home insurance before. So yeah, is quibbling ok? I want to get the most back that I can for this obviously. Makes me wish I bought a PowerBook back then, I'd probably get a new MacBook Pro if I'd done that!!

 

[iGav]

Did you read the small print??? it's like cars... whilst you may have paid £2500 for a car, and insured it at the value, usually, and regardless of the premium you have been paying, they'll only give you the book price... which could conceivably be half that.

Also, many policies may only cover for a an equivalent specification replacement (not a similar costing one) and as technology progresses so quickly now days, what was once a £2500 machine, is now as you say... a £1000-£1500 one.

 

[e²Studios]

I'm not sure if they have this over there but on my homeowners policy i specifically ask for "replacement cost", you pay more for it but if something like a laptop or other electronic device is broken or stolen my insurance company will pay out the cost to replace the item with the current equivelent that was a loss, imho its a lot better than having them depreciate the item.

Ed

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Cheers for the advice guys, I'll wait for them to call me tomorrow and see what I can do.

 

[iGav]

I'm not sure if they have this over there but on my homeowners policy i specifically ask for "replacement cost", you pay more for it but if something like a laptop or other electronic device is broken or stolen my insurance company will pay out the cost to replace the item with the current equivelent that was a loss, imho its a lot better than having them depreciate the item.d

We have similar, it's 'New for Old'... but they don't necessarily cover it for the original value, more technical equivalency if the product is no longer available.

For example I paid something like £3.2k for my first Rev A 500MHz TiBook, and it was insured for that, but by the last revision they were about a grand cheaper, but the specs were obviously better, so I wouldn't have got the £3.2k from them because they could replace it for so much cheaper.

Also they would have tried to match the specs as closely as possible too, so whilst my Rev A was the daddy at the time, they would've replaced it with the 867MHz TiBook, not a 1GHz one for example.

 

[iGav]

Actually it's a similar thing with houses too... whilst your market value of the property might be £200k, it'll be stipulated somewhere in the policy about how much it'd cost to rebuild... which is usually substantially less than market value.