edited, please see post 2 for info

My first ever home insurance claim...

Hi, my DS managed to crack the TV screen last night. I called M&S this morning and my claim was swiftly approved. A couple of hours later I had a call from BeValued and after a couple of minutes on hold they said they would replace it. They found the exact model on the Argos website and offered me the current selling price minus excess (£230). Pretty swift I thought.

Roll on a couple of hours later and I receive a call from M&S who now tell me they are refusing the claim based on details from back in November.

(What happened in November, my other DS chipped the screen. I called to enquire about a claim but decided against it as the excess wasn't worth paying for the minor annoyance of the chipped screen. You couldn't see it with the TV on anyway.)

Back to today and M&S have obviously found these notes and explained they were refusing the claim as the damage from November had progressed and caused the damage I now have. I queried this, asking who decided the incidents were related and basically are they accusing me of insurance fraud. There were a few more words than that but that's the gist of it. M&S went away to speak to BeValued and after an hour or so I called back for an update. I asked for a complaint to be raised and was informed it had already been done, the calls would be listened to, their supervisor was involved etc etc

Current status is that I have a phone appointment at 10am on Friday with BeValued to speak to a claims handler, and Maintenance Direct are going to contact me to arrange to either inspect the TV or collect it. They assured me this is normal, but I'm not so sure given that at 1030am this morning they had already offered me a settlement. I get the feeling this whole phone appointment/ inspection thing is on the back of the notes from November.

Is it normal to have a phone appointment and inspection when you make a claim, or is it a case of guilty until proven innocent?

Two threads merged and both posts left visible as the second one contains more detail than the first and all information is relevant

ims

Sounds all a bit silly to me. The people handling the claim need to have a think for a few minutes and realise they are being stupid. It is a relatively modest claim for a replacement TV. So what if the recent accident had caused the previous damage to be made worse, to the extent that it now needs to be replaced. We are not talking about a claim for a TV that is worth say £2000, where the original damage could have been repairable. No inspection is going to reveal that the latest damage has caused the un-repaired TV to now need replacing, rather than repair. The different between the cost of replacement and repair would probably not be that different anyway. Plus now they are adding extra admin costs, which are totally unnecessary.

In this situation, I think I would try speaking to the claims manager about the way their department is dealing with the claim.

I had a response to my complaint and they said the representative i spoke to was wrong to flatly refuse the claim. They assured me it's standard practice to inspect the TV and have this call with the claims handler etc, but I'm beginning to doubt that.

Is it standard practice to inspect every claim, or do they think i'm trying to make a fraudulent claim? If it isn't standard practice, I may consider escalating my complaint regarding the way it has been handled and complain to the ombudsman if you think it's worth it.

Also, they originally offered me a settlement pretty quickly, but M&S told me they were wrong to do that. Again I think they're lying.

For such a minor amount of money (in the grand scale of things) it's actually left me feeling sick

Having a TV or other damaged items inspected is standard practice and therefore you have no basis for a complaint about that. The only reasonable complaint you can make is about the way they have handled the claim to date. i.e giving you the wrong info. But that complaint can easily be handled by M&S and in my opinion perhaps say £50 in vouchers would be adequate compo.

Some Insurers arrange for their preferred replacement company to inspect items and then replace the item with a set period of time. Gone are the days, when you make a claim and the Insurers just pay out.

Each company has different proceedures, the fact that your claiming for a tv which was probably beyond ecconomic repair after claim no.1 has allowed confusion.

Really they should be telling you claim no.2 would be unsuccesful, but go ahaead and reopen claim no.1, don't let them rip you off with paying 2 excess's, but let them inspect, even if you went to the FOS, the FOS would not get in their way of investigation, just probably award £50.00 like UB67 has suggested.

Were they also offering a lesser replacement model as per your first headline?