Insurance - credit where it's due..

Aviva were really good when my car was written off in fairness. Couldn’t really fault them and didn’t have to haggle to get a fair market value.

What sort of insurance claim? Accidental damage to specified items on home insurance, or something else?

I didn't know that was a thing you could have insured. What did you do to managed to write off your bike just by crashing?

Heal soon!

I bought a car for my daughter to use - it was a 2 year old VW Up! bought from a VW dealership... so not exactly cheap!

14 months later a young lad pulled out of a side street into the the side of her car and it was written off.  The insurance settlement was £16 more than we paid for it 14 months before!

I was happily surprised 🙂

What sort of insurance claim? Accidental damage to specified items on home insurance, or something else?

Accidental damage on specified items away from home.

What did you do to managed to write off your bike just by crashing?

Carbon framed bike. They were looking to replace it like for like but none in stock anywhere so they gave a cash settlement.

Heal soon!

Thanks, my hip is the size of a football! Well probably a baseball now as it’s gone down a bit.

Aviva were great when I wrote off my Fratello frame back in 2020, sorted on a week.

Again, specified item on the contents policy.

Worth noting that they wouldn’t cover my ripped clothing as I didn’t have unspecified items away from home cover. I have now added that onto next year’s policy for an additional £50.

I’ve sent some stuff back to Rapha though to see if their free repairs service is any good…

On a similiar note Churchull have always been excellent for us. We had in the space of about 2 years a small house fire, a written off car, and 3 decent size bike-theft breakins and every time they were fast, easy, and paid out more than we expected. Like, I literally itemised the bike stuff and said "this is how much it was worth", decided just to be completely fair and say what I wanted, and they said "No you fool, have 50% more". It was like negotiating with David Davis. Not the cheapest but worth it imo.

Great experience with Admiral. My HiLux was stolen from my driveway, 67 plate with 78000 miles on the clock.  Police told me three HiLuxes were stolen in my town the same night.

Admiral simply asked me to send them the keys and the V5 and went through their process. Now Hiluxes  are pretty sought after so I looked for a valuation online which varied between £14k and £16k from Motorway, Philip
Schofield et al.

A search of Autotrader told me I’d need to find £20k for the same age and spec. Prepared to do battle and fully expecting them to offer me the trade figure I was gobsmacked to be offered £19750.  It became clear they didn’t cover or include the hardtop in the figures. What’s more they only covered £200 personal effects, so I mentally wrote off the £600 binos, £700 dog box, £300 Paramo Jacket, and thought I’d need to find a used hardtop and load liner.

Admiral settled the claim and subtracted the outstanding premium, but the day the money landed in my account I got a letter saying my truck had been recovered.  Admiral said it was theirs now but I was welcome to see if any of my belongings were still inside.

Jackpot!! Everything was still in it, and I was able to strip out the £500 load liner which fitted straight into the replacement.

on replacing the truck they credited me the outstanding premium which they had subtracted from the payout as I was insuring like for like.

can’t fault that as a service.

came on here to praise argos pet insurance.  13 year old jack russell.  paid out on his heart scans for dodgy ticker, but only for a year.  then he had to have 27 teeth out because of abscesses 🙁  looked at the policy, 'doesnt cover any dental work'.  ahhhhh b0ll0cks, thats a grand down the swannee then.  thought we might as well put a claim in anyway and they paid!

i fear they want their money back tho.  just had next years renewal through.  gone up from £500 pa to over £1200!  think we may as well self-insure at that price :-/

Aviva were really good a few years ago when we were burgled. They just asked for a list of what had been stolen and paid the money into my account. Unfortunately later on I realised a few more things were missing but I'm not sure if should have gone back to them. They also paid for the locks on our car to be replaced as they'd stolen one of the keys.

Just had a renewal quote from Adrian Flux for my van £850 up from £550 last year. Quick search on line and got a policy with Aviva for £450!!

Your insurance provider sounds actually decent. Every time i've had an issue (helping family with thefts) its been a drawn out and absolute nightmare process that I wouldn't wish on anyone, and we keep meticulous anal level of records of everything and everywhen, if we hadn't would have been rejected and left with zilctch.

UK theft of vehicles, cars, motorbikes, farm equipment, plant, bicycles and a few other key items are absolutely out of control. The only logical reason I can believe police are told/underfunded in this area is by insurance company lobbyists, after all their business is to make money between the lines on our risks, and/or the value of the tax (insurance and VA) generated by the UK insurance industry is high enough, that when business is good, its good for the HMRC. Am I wrong?

Either that or various crime groups from within our own country and plenty of others that have set up shop here are having a field day because as British people, we just let everything slide because we are too nice.

Does anyone know the M&S Aviva single bike limit / total for all bikes?

Our bike insurance is due and wouldn’t be against switching the house insurance at the same time, at the moment our home insurance doesn’t have high enough limits.

Single bike limit on the Standard policy is 10k and if you specify the most expensive bike then all other bikes are also covered. If you opt for the Premium policy then the limit is 15k. I’m not sure how many bikes in total can be covered but they are easy to get hold of on the phone so I would ask…

Great thanks, I’ll get a quote 🙂

I’m not sure how many bikes in total can be covered but they are easy to get hold of on the phone so I would ask…

If you do have a lot of bikes then I strongly suggest you don't do this. They were utterly staggered to find out how many bikes a friend of mine had when he phoned them and they wouldn't cover him any more

Aviva were good(ish) with my garage payout. It got ram raided and the back wall was totally stoved in. Their first offer was £7k and we settled at £12.5k. The third party adjuster kept missing items and undermeasuring. No problem when I pointed stuff out but it was a big help I work in construction.

Did the work myself for £1200 and kept the rest.

Before;

Now;