This post is a bit more serious than usual, because I'm not a happy bunny. Like most people who buy in Spain through estate agents, we were steered to a buildings and contents insurance, and because there was so much else to sort out, and the premium didn't seem to bad, we sort of went with the flow. When it came to renewing the policy, we were in the UK, and as we'd set it up on direct debit and it hadn't gone up, we went along with that. Ditto year 3.
Our problems arose in July 2011, when we returned from a 2 month trip to the UK to find something nasty in the underbuild - a freezer full of festering foodstuffs. Apparently, we'd had a power outage, and the freezer contents had thawed, then re-frozen, because the trip hadn't been reset. Don't ask me to elaborate - I don't do technical - but the smell emanating from the underbuild had nothing to do with the summer flowering jasmine.
We came home to a solid block of stuff, which our insurers - one of the main Spanish players - expected us to photograph. Why, I don't know, because you couldn't have picked out what was which with the best will in the world. I explained this over the phone to the very friendly operative, who agreed that a list of the contents and their approximate value would suffice. I agreed to list said contents, and fax them through with copies of our passports and NIE certificates.
I expected to wait a few weeks for the claim to be settled - we are in Spain, after all - but when September came and went with no communication, I headed to the local office. The very friendly - and very fit - guy in the office spent ages on the phone, then told me they needed a copy of the contents, plus passports, plus NIE, all of which had been faxed in July. We did it all again, just to be on the safe side.
Long story short, this scenario was repeated several more times - all for the sake of 97 Euro. I could have written it off, but I wasn't prepared to do that. Think terriers, think tenacity, times it by 10 and you may just be close to my mind set. I paid for insurance, and I wanted the insurance company to deliver what it promised.
I finally got the 97 Euro in my bank account a week before the policy fell due for renewal. Bit of a coincidence, that. I voted with my feet, and went to another provider, and this is what really got me annoyed. The policy we paid for - and had so much trouble making a claim on - was about the most basic there is. The trouble was, we weren't paying basic prices. We now have three times the contents cover, along with several extra benefits, for 70 Euro less than we've been paying for the last five years.
There's a lesson here - don't be rushed into your house insurance. Take the time to do your own research, and check it out every time it comes up for renewal. It hurts to admit I goofed, but it proves I'm only human after all. And if this salutory tale helps someone else, it's - almost - worth the aggravation I went through.
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