Household insurance
Repair work
Nobody likes coming home to find that his or her ceiling
is leaking. Apart from Eskimo's anyway, as to them it means
the summer months are coming and they do not need to live
in ice huts any more.
When you do find that your house has been damaged, try
and do two things if possible:
-
Prevent the damage form getting any worse.
If you do not take any reasonable immediate action, such
as turning off the water at the mains, then you may find
that the insurer won't pay for any subsequent damage.
-
Notify the insurer immediately. Technically
the insurance company has to approve the work before it
can be carried out. This will often require a loss adjuster
to visit your property and assess the damage. In practice,
you often get instant approval, especially if the whole
area is affected by storm damage or the work is relatively
minor.
Who to call
Maintenance, repair and emergency building work are very
poorly regulated industries. It can be incredibly expensive
to have this type of work carried out by a short-notice contractor,
with charges of up to £80 for the first hour and similarly
high charges for any further time spent on the work. This
can leave you with a large bill for a relatively small piece
of work. Since the total cost is likely to be lower than the
excess, the policyholder usually ends up paying the whole
lot out of their own pocket. On top of that, there is absolutely
no guarantee that the work will be of a suitably high standard,
meaning further work may be required in the future.
If you need work doing, ask if your insurer can provide you
with a list of tradesmen who they have approved. Various other
companies may also have lists of approved tradesmen. Your
utility providers, credit card companies and even emergency
breakdown services all sometimes have such lists. This is
still no absolute guarantee of quality but you probably have
better odds of achieving a good standard of work, as well
as having someone to turn to should it all go wrong. Affiliated
or recommended tradesmen often work on fixed charges for specific
jobs, so you are less likely to be caught out with a massive
bill for a job that uncovered a problem that was also causing
some related issue and kept the tradesman occupied for several
days and sixty tea breaks.
As a rule, do not use tradesmen who cold call. This is an
opportunistic method of generating business, and the best
tradesmen usually don't have to resort to this.
Standalone assistance
A number of providers now offer a separate policy to cover
minor repair work that would normally not be worth claiming
for, due to the excess on your buildings insurance policy.
For a premium of between £30 and £100 per year you are covered
for a set amount of work that is usually specified in hours
(anything from one to five hours work is normal). This covers
eventualities such as leaking boilers, overflowing drains
and smashed windows. The premium may seem relatively high,
but consider how much higher the charges could be if you had
to call someone out for emergency repair work. You can obtain
this sort of cover from Homelet - click
here for further details.
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