Comprehensive Insurance Cover is worth nothing

[zaralitsa]

Hi all.

 

We recently moved to a new house using a removal company A*****. We paid for everything to be packed, all furniture disassembled and loaded on their track and then for everything to be unloaded at the new house and the furniture to be re-assembled. We also bought ''Comprehensive Insurance Cover'', thinking it would cover any damage or loss. We paid over 2k for this job.

 

Unfortunately the shelves from our bookcase and the clothes rail from our wardrobe are nowhere to be found. We contacted A***** who checked with the guys who did our removal and they claim these parts are not in the truck. They are not in our new house, neither in the old one so they have vanished into thin air.

We contacted A***** to claim compensation (we have to buy a new bookcase and a clothes rail) but they refuse to saying the ''Comprehensive Insurance Cover'' covers for damage or loss in transit but we cannot prove the items were lost in transit and their investigation showed the drivers don't have them....

 

I asked to raise a formal complaint and asked for their legal departments information but they refused to give me any info and advised me to go to the police.

 

Is there anything we can do? It's not the value of the furniture, it's that we paid so much money and on top of losing our stuff, they were really rude and unhelpful.

 

Thank you!

Edited April 20, 2021 by zaralitsa

[BankFodder]

First of all, please name the removal company. It's very important and it won't disadvantage you in any way at all.

Secondly, please could you try and produce a recently detailed list of the missing items.

Have you got the insurance policy?

What is the value of the missing items? – Were you at the house when they were doing the packing and the and the items were moved out?

Presumably you went back to the house to check that there was nothing left.

 

I understand that it's not the whole bookcase which is missing – just the shelves – is this correct?

Also, I understand that the wardrobe is there and it is simply a rail which is missing. Is this correct?

[zaralitsa]

Hi!

 

So the company I booked the move with is AnyVan but they outsourced to another removal company. I have no contact details for them.

 

The missing items are only 2 shelves from the bookcase and only the clothes rail from the wardrobe. Difficult to put a price on them. So the bookcase is completely unusable without the shelves, so I would say £20 and for the wardrobe I bought a new rail and a saw to cut it in size so another £15. Like I said, it's not about the value of the of the items, it's the way they have treated us and their refusal to compensate even though we had paid insurance.

 

We were both there when they were packing our belongings but we didn't watch them, so I can't say for sure when/how these items were packed. We did check the house before we left and nothing was left behind.

 

Their insurance policy can be found here: https://www.anyvan.com/insurance-policy.

[BankFodder]

Thanks.

How much did you pay for the insurance?

AnyVan is declining responsibility because they say that the items did not go missing "in transit". They are wrong.

Clearly the removal company took charge of the items and disassembled them. This must be the case because you have received part of the item and it is only part of the item which is missing and that means that they were already under the control of the removal company.
In my view that puts the items squarely "in transit". I am quite certain that no judge would simply say that "in transit" refers only to the time that your items are in a removal van. This is far too limited.

And in fact I notice that in the summary of terms which you have linked us to:
 

Quote

Your cover will start when the goods are collected for transit and cease when the goods are delivered at their final destination.

 

Clearly insurance cover applies from the moment that the collection begins right until the delivery is finished.

However, even if they accepted this point, there are still other ways that they can say that the insurance does not apply to you

Looking at the policy which you have linked us to, I see that first of all there is in excess of £50 and that means you have to pay the first £50 of any claim. According to you, you have only lost about £35.

Are you saying that the entire book case is worth £20? It seems very little to me.

The second thing is that they say that lost items are not insured unless they are listed with their value. Presumably that hasn't happened in your case.

On that basis, it seems to me that the insurance doesn't cover you anyway.

I do agree that I think you've been treated disgracefully and I don't think that the lack of insurance is any bar to making a claim. If you would like a bit of fun, then we can help you make a small claim in the County Court to recover all of your losses directly from them for their breach of contract/negligence.

Of course they won't be used to that kind of treatment – but do you really care? The chances of succeeding if you are prepared to go to the Small Claims Court are better than 90%, in my view. You would have to play a claim fee that you would recover that when you won your case. Of course in the event that you lost, then you would lose that claim fee and also a hearing fee if it got that far.

Frankly, for this kind of money I would imagine that they would put their hands up once you issue the papers and they realise that you are serious and it was going to cost them much more money to defend it then simply to pay you out.

In addition to getting your money back and delivering a slap, you would acquire transferable skills so that you could confidently in the future sue anyone who got in your way.

What's not to like?

[BankFodder]

Incidentally, a brief word – for you, but also for anyone else who visits this thread.
It's a word about insurance.

By requiring you to take out insurance, they are effectively asking you to protect yourself against their own negligence, their own breach of contract or the criminality of their own employees if stuff get stolen.

This is extraordinary and it is part of the culture of the removal business and I have no idea how this culture came about and it is now accepted so meekly as the natural way of things by people who use removal services.
There is exactly the same culture in courier services so that companies such as DPD, DHL, UPS – and particularly Hermes require their customers to pay for additional protection in case the service that they have already contracted for and paid for is not carried out.
Amazing!

It doesn't stop there.
Extended warranties. If you go into any Currys PC World, if you buy any computer or washing machine or fridge from them or anywhere else, some salesman will chase after you and ask you if you want to buy an extended warranty. So for extra money you can buy an insurance which will apparently cover you in case the item you have bought breaks down within a certain amount of time – normally three years or five years.
Incredible! You already have perfectly good statutory rights which will cover you for most of those situations over the foreseeable reasonably expected life of the item you buy.
What they are all doing – whether they are removals, couriers, sellers of white goods and electronic goods, is effectively getting you to pay for rights which you already have under statute or under ordinary contract law.