Hillary wasn’t happy with her insurer’s response to a claim for three windows damaged by a break-in. Should it have replaced them?
What happened
After someone broke into Hillary's home, she put in a claim with her home insurer for three damaged windows. It offered to repair the windows, but Hillary didn't think this would be enough, She thought it would be better to replace them entirely.
The wording in Hillary’s policy said that the insurer would decide whether to repair or replace the property involved in a claim. Her insurer explained this and told Hillary that it had consulted a window repair expert about what would be best in her situation. The expert had said that one window needed cosmetic repairs and the other two needed new sashes to fix the damage.
Hillary disagreed. She told her insurer that the window manufacturer advised customers to replace damaged windows because repairs don’t always stop further attempts to break in. Unable to reach an agreement she was happy with, Hillary brought her complaint to us.
What we said
We looked at Hillary’s content insurance policy and saw that it allowed her to assess whether to repair her windows. However, we thought this would only be fair if repairing the windows was a lasting and effective solution.
To establish whether it was, we compared the responses of the insurer’s repair expert and the window manufacturer. The repairer looked at the damage done to Hillary’s windows and suggested a way forward based on what they saw. The manufacturer’s comments about replacing windows weren’t specific to the damage in Hillary’s case.
We found the insurer’s repairer more persuasive than the manufacturer. We explained this to Hillary and she accepted it, but she still wanted to replace the windows. She said she’d feel safer that way.
Hillary’s insurer offered to pay her what they would have paid their window repairer, including a 20% supplier discount. We felt this was fair.