It never hurts to ask

January 21, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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You may remember that I wrote about insurance a few days ago in my post Are you really insured? 

One of the stories I related came from my Friday morning radio programme Simply Living with Jill Bonanno and was about a lady who’d had her handbag swiped.

Jill recently spoke to a lady who had her handbag stolen while she was out. She did the right thing and cancelled all her cards but as her bag contained items that would identify her home address and her house keys she decided to change all her door locks.

Unfortunately her insurance company didn’t cover the bag or any of the items in the bag because it wasn’t at her home at the time.

During Friday’s programme we had a talk back caller tell us about his experience with an insurance company.

Bill had a different story. He had four quad motor bikes. When the two smallest ones were stolen from a locked shed, his insurer told him that they didn’t cover quad bikes. Bill politely stood his ground and will now have the bikes replaced. Apparently they do cover quads up to 250cc.

The lady who had her bag stolen was listening to our programme and decided it was worth another call to her insurance company. She called, politely stated her case, and now her insurer is going to cover everything, including the new locks for her home.

I wonder how often we just give up on something when a phone call or an email could change things for the better.

How many times do we buy defective products and just put up with them when we could get our money back or get a better product? How many times do we accept the word of the first person we talk to, rather than standing our ground and politely taking things a little further?

I’ve been amazed by the helpful responses I’ve recieved at times when I’ve simply taken the time to respectfully ask the right people the right questions. I’ve had products replaced or money returned. Sometimes I’ve been more than compensated for the failure of a product or a service. It doesn’t happen every time but it does pay to take things just a little bit further sometimes.

Have you got any stories of businesses who have done the right thing when you’ve complained?



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Are you really insured?

January 18, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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Do you know what your insurance policy covers and what it doesn’t?

If your keys were stolen would your insurance company pay to have your locks replaced?

Many of us feel secure in the knowledge that our homes, contents and vehicles are insured but when the time comes to make a claim will we be caught out by the fine print?

Simply Living

Life Skills Trainer, Jill Bonanno, joined me this morning on 98.5 Sonshine FM for our regular Friday morning radio segment, Simply Living. We talked about a variety of things but one of the major issues we discussed was insurance.

Jill recently spoke to a lady who had her handbag stolen while she was out. She did the right thing and cancelled all her cards but as her bag contained items that would identify her home address and her house keys she decided to change all her door locks.

Unfortunately, her insurance company didn’t cover the bag or any of the items in the bag because it wasn’t at her home at the time.

I know that some policies do cover such things but it’s really up to each of us to know what our policy does and doesn’t cover.

Lock up your bikes

During the programme this morning we took a call from June who said that she found out the hard way that her bicycles were only insured while they were locked up at her home. She now has full insurance on her bikes wherever they might be.

Bill had a different story. He had four quad motorbikes. When the two smallest ones were stolen from a locked shed, his insurer told him that they didn’t cover quad bikes. Bill politely stood his ground and will now have the bikes replaced. Apparently, they do cover quads up to 250cc. Strangely enough, they won’t cover the damage the thieves did to the two bigger quads while pinching the smaller ones because they’re bigger than 250cc.

Bill also found himself out of pocket on a recent holiday. His vehicle insurer refused to cover the cost of his broken windscreen because he hadn’t informed them that he would be taking his car above the 26th parallel. Weird.

Make a list and check it twice

The advice Bill gave is to write down everything you want to make sure is included in your policy and have your insurance company confirm that you’re covered.

Have you ever been caught out by the fine print of your insurance policy? Do you know what is and isn’t covered?

You can listen to today’s Simply Living segment using the audio player at the bottom of this post.



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