I know it's dangerous.......

[clogs]

Thinking that is.......
I was thinking of those poor souls in Kent and elsewhare with destruction of their houses.......

lying awake thinking about it, it may be a good idea to video ur entire house and workshop showing all items and tools....
it's hard enough to make an insurance claim anyway but with video proof it will certainly help and esp with the Ombudsman if the claim goes that far....

Thinking that if the same happened here how I could I explain that I have 2 x 27" iMacs and a host of other expensive Apple products just for a start....
Apart from 2 molten blobs where the comps used to be....!!!!!!!!
then what about all the other stuff.....TV's, leather sofa's no need to go on....
it's not hard to spend a fortune in a simple bedroom on furniture, let alone the rest of the house....even fridges, washer's of clothes and pots.....
Can u supply recipts for all items in ur house right now....???? .....Nope, neither can I......what about if ur house was gutted....??????.

The vid's can be stored on the cloud and added too or upgraded when ness.......

Sorry for being alarmist.....but try to get em to replace ur dads wooden planes.......!!!!!!!
It's just an idea.....

 

[MikeJhn]

Arn't most of these fires an act of God i.e. weather.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

One of these large ones is thought to have started in a compost heap.

 

[clogs]

my point is how do you prove what you own, regardless of fire or flood....

 

[Geoff_S]

Receipts, photographs and a list/spreadsheet.

What is amazing is how much it all adds up to!

 

[Jameshow]

More dangerous though is letting the misses see the true cost for such little output!!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Years ago now a friend had a hydraulics fitter do some heavy plant work for him. He'd not long had his van emptied and my friend asked how he got on with the insurance claim. He said he had good insurance, he had put in a claim for £15,000 which they'd paid (thinking he'd lost about £13,000 but knew he'd not have remembered everything). My friend saw him a few years later and mentioned it again. Oh, the chap said, it cost me £1000s. I had tools there that I used maybe once once in a couple of years - expensive tools, but I had to have them - and it wasn't until I went to use them I realised they weren't there.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

More dangerous though is letting the misses see the true cost for such little output!!

When you wish to buy a tool, ask your wife whether she'd rather you spent £100 on the tool or paid £100 to someone else for doing the job. Mine accepts what I have spent on tools - in the last 40 years with the exception of a few electrical jobs and a stove installation we've not paid anyone to work on our houses.

 

[Tris]

That's a good idea, and not just for everyday stuff. If you video things like the kids paintings, photos you don't have digital copies of, all the little trinkets, knick-knacks and stuff with the unseen value, at least you have something as a reminder. As an old colleague was fond of saying 'faintest record is better than fondest memory'

 

[MikeJhn]

One of these large ones is thought to have started in a compost heap.

Someone's compost heap, not maintained/monitored, fault of owner or back to act of God, could be an interesting claim.

 

[ajs]

Up until a couple of months ago I was actually a home insurance claims handler so I will make a few points here.

Forget the act of God exclusion - it doesn't actually feature in most current policies and even where it does it very limited where it can be applied. The Ombudsman will throw out rejection of a claim on it except is the most unusual circumstances. Those fire claims - it doesn't fit the bill.

The insurer will certainly want evidence of the losses. Ideally that means receipts but photos are acceptable. Ideally yes you do want a good inventory. Lot of work to prepare but for smaller items I'd say spread out the contents of each toolbox and photograph them as a group. For large claims such as those fires we'd put a loss adjuster on them rather than desk assessment. They'll be able to see the remains of much of the equipment on site which constitutes proof of the loss.

Photos of big ticket items - ideally an overall view of each and a close up of the equipment label. That gives us the make and model number straight away as well as possibly the serial number - we wouldn't use that but it's proof of ownership if stolen equipment is recovered.

IT equipment - save a full listing of the machine's specification. For Windows machines save a fully expanded view of Device Manager. For Macs type "dmesg" in a terminal window and save the output.

For mobile phones, book down the make, model and storage size of the phone. Also critically the phone's IMEI number - we didn't use serial numbers for anything else but there's a number of background checks we do for mobiles. Enter "*#06#" on your phone's dial pad to find it out. We wouldn't accept a phone claims without an IMEI - no ifs, no buts.

Of course this is all the gold standard, claims handlers do tend to be realistic but at times it does depend on the discretion of the individual handler. Generally accessories that go with a larger item will be taken on trust, as will smaller items (e.g. screwdrivers) as part of a larger claim.

One of the handler's skills is actually identifying evidence to support a loss which does vary on the handler. I'd often be willing to accept bank statements in place of receipts if the supplier is specific enough (e.g. for tools a charge to Screwfix or Axi is fine, one to Argos or Amazon probably not). If all else fails I'd accept a user manual for the tool but I know my colleagues often wouldn't. For all these things we'd consider the claim in the round rather than the evidence for any specific line item.

 

[D_W]

To take pictures of everything is sometimes difficult, though the value is obviously proven.

many of us now have phones that will take high resolution video, and if you can do something to prove at least how recent it is (a magazine cover, etc, something to look at), it's not difficult to pretty much cover your entire collection in 20 minutes or less opening every drawer and every box and taking a quick video which you can take screen shots off of if needed.

I do this before we leave for vacation each year. Not because I think something will be stolen, just because it's a habit.

You don't have to deliberately explain every single thing in the video, you can pause the video later, if needed, to write down or expand on what's actually in it. And if you don't need to, then no time wasted. if you can open and close drawers and look through racks at a moderate pace covering things that should be noted individually because they are so valuable, and it would take hours,....well.

....I think you have another problem just as big as the insurance thing, because you'll never recover the value for the stuff later - especially if you've never sold anything, and neither will your heirs.

 

[TRITON]

I reckon its a great idea.
Last time i had builders in i photographed my workshop, as theres always bits you dont notice till they go missing.

The window fitters fecked off with one of my pozi 2 screw drivers last time they were here. I wasnt taking any chances

You know what builders are like. Bunch of thieving barstewards.

 

[ajs]

Sorry just another couple of thoughts on insurance.

Firstly if you have a detached garage or workshop check the limit on outbuildings cover - it's often only a couple of grand or so by default.

Also be wary on trade tools exclusions - that is something that varies by policy but many exclude tools used on your job. If that applies to your policy some tools will automatically be considered trade tools - the common case was for anything from Snap-on which we'd reject because they don't sell to the public. Also some whole categories of tool - we'd recognise hobbyists can use industrial tools but one claim I remember throwing out was for fibre optic tooling. My rationale was "You say you've spent £400 on these tools just to do the two fibre links on your home network. Sorry but I don't find that credible."

 

[baldkev]

Just dont store your evidence on your laptop it'll have to be emailed to yourself or in the 'cloud' or something

 

[Transit80]

When you wish to buy a tool, ask your wife whether she'd rather you spent £100 on the tool or paid £100 to someone else for doing the job. Mine accepts what I have spent on tools - in the last 40 years with the exception of a few electrical jobs and a stove installation we've not paid anyone to work on our houses.

Im of the same mind, everthing Ive paid someone else to do has gone wrong.