House insurance help any advice

[alethea]

Hi there,

We recently had a disaster with our floor to ceiling tiled bathroom and subsequently 1 wall and a bit of another need re-tiling. The old tiles are discontinued and the insurance company will only pay for the cost of re-tiling the damaged walls. So basically we need to pay for the rest to be done as we don't have a matching items cover on our policy annoyingly, or have random mismatching tiles.

We have tried arguing this with the insurance company and they are not giving way and the quote to get the rest of the bathroom done is quite a lot. Has anyone any advice as to whether it's worth continuing to fight this, I've written below the clause in the policy that they refer to.

In settling your claim we will not:

pay for the cost of replacing or changing undamaged parts of the buildings which belong to a set or suite which have a common design or use when insured damage happens to another part or area of that suite or set and replacements cannot be matched and repair cannot be carried out satisfactorily.

[Senor Chevalier]

You would have to argue that set or suite applied to sanitary ware for example but not tiles. I suppose it also comes down to what constitutes "parts of the building". If they take this to an extreme they could fix a crack in a wall and only replace the individual tiles that straddle the crack rather than the entire wall. This would seem quite unreasonable. However, if they will cover the repair to the whole of the damaged walls but are drawing the line at additional undamaged walls then this seems to be broadly in the spirit of the clause (whilst obviously irritating).

Sounds more like a case of you having insurance that is less good than you hoped than a case of them trying to shirk their responsibility under the terms of the insurance to me (not a lawyer).

What do the tiles look like, can you find something close?

[H]

From my basic knowledge gathered from studying an insurance claims handling module at the moment, I think that they are within their rights to decline to pay for the rest of the undamaged tiles to be replaced. I know it seems unfair, but that is a sets and pairs clause you have quoted and it does allow them to only pay for the damaged section and if the rest doesn't match then unfortunately that is down to you to sort out. I could be wrong, but pretty sure they are within their rights to decline. You can appeal to the Financial Ombudsman, but you need to write to your insurer and get their final reponse first before taking it further.

[alethea]

Thanks for replying, i am thinking it might be a bit of a lost cause I did mention that you wouldn't just replace a part of a carpet and is tiling not the same principal. Bit think Might be clutching at straws.

[Marmora Man]

Aletha,

Agree - I think you're on a losing cause. A carpet is a singular "whole" item. Tiling is a collection of several, matching, items. If the carpet were damaged the whole would be replaced - but not undamaged wallpaper that no longer matched the carpet?

The insurance company is paying to restore the utility not the decor of your bathroom.

That said, years ago we were burgled and the insurance company offered to replace the stolen jewellery with items from H Samuels high street dealer in tat. As many of the stolen items were specially designed gifts, or inherited from granny & grandad with sentimental rather than intrinsic value (how could an H Samuels pair of cufflinks / brooch replace grandad's / grandma's inherited cufflinks / brooch that he / she bought in Cairo in 1941 etc etc) we eventually argued successfully for a proper cash sum rather than a one for one replacement - with the cash we scoured markets and dealers to replace our lot items. If you settle for a reasonable cash sum you might be able top redecorate most, if not all, with little extra expense.

[peterstorm1985]

Hi Aletha,

I've been phoning round for contents insurance and set or suites clauses seem to be creeping across all areas as the standard. We have the same colour carpet throughout the ground floor of the house so it's always something I check. It used to be pretty easy to find a policy that would replace the whole lot if a bit gets damaged in one room, but now I've been getting lots of responses in the negative or that it would be considered on a 'case by case' basis. I had a conversation with one broker and your situation was almost exactly the example he gave me. It did occur to me that the fashion for 'feature walls' may be a problem as it seems to negate the whole room idea of wall-covering.

There are still companies who will cover sets, or repeated decoration, but the premiums are a lot higher.