Insurence..

Joey the lips wrote: »

But it always seems to me no matter what you do, there is someone in the insurence company waiting to tell you your not insured or the amount you want you will not receive....

Am I making sense.... Has anyone else experienced this...?

You have to remember that insurance firms are businesses who are out to make money. Just like any other business.

If you want to know more any Leaving Cert business text book will explain to you the principles of insurance.

Joey the lips wrote: »

With due respect thats insulting to my intelligence.. I know the rules of business. My problem is simple... Insurence is designed to protect...The only person it truly protects is its share holder....

Have you any experience....>

I apologise if I insulted your intelligence, that wasn't my goal. I only ment to point you towards an answer to your question.

Insurence companies are not designed to protect you, they are designed to cover your risk for a paid amount. The risks that they cover are laid out and if an accident happens that is not covered by the company then they won't pay. As would be expected under any business.

There are six principles of insurance:

Insurable interest:
One must benifite from the existence of the insured item and suffer from its loss. This basically means that while you may be able to insure your own property you cannot insure your neighbours property.

Indemnity:
One cannot profit from the loss of the insured item. Basically you cannot recieve more money from the insurance company then you have lost. For example if you damage your car for £600 you cannot recieve any more then £600 from the insurance company.

Utmost good faith:
All of relevent information must be provided by the insuree when applying for insurance. The coverage will be declared void if the insuree has been found to leave out information prior to paying the premium. For example leaving out a previous road accident when applying for motor insurance.

Subrogation:
Having paid compensation the policy holder has the right claim the ability to sue the third party responsible for the for the loss. By claiming compensation the insuree loses that ability to sue to the policy holder.

Contribution:
If the insuree holds coverage for the same risk from one or more policy holder then the policy holder has the right to pay only a fraction for the cost of risk. For example if one has motor insurance from three policy holders and is involved in an road accident one can claim only one thrid of the policy from each policy holder.

Average clause:
One can only recieve compensation equal to the percentage the risk was covered. For example if one is half insured one will recieve only half the compensation for a loss suffered.

These are the six principles of insurance and in my mind they are very fair. When dealing with insurance companies if one keeps in mind these principles as well as the idea that the insurance company exists to screw one over then one should be fine.

I hope this helped.

chatterpillar wrote: »

That's some nice copying and pasting you've got going on there. So tell me, how would you go about applying your wealth of information to the OPs particular situation? Do you have any actual opinions/insights of your own on the whole issue?

It wasn't copyed and pasted. I summerised the passage from my text book.

I don't have any opinions in the OPs case because, quite simply I don't know him or anything about his damaged roof or even what company he toke out his policy with !

Since we don't personally know the OP best thing we can do is give him general advice and information. Which I hope I have done in my previous post.

I presume that it's a case of both parties (you and the company) signing a contract. If they are messing you around (and it wouldn't be the first time someone has complained of this) and you feel you have adequate grounds for your position, you could contact your solicitor.