How they screwed me for £40k (so far!) 

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You are a lawyer having access to the law and in your title you are being "screwed".You can just imagine how many common people getting "screwed".

Twelve years ago we had a fire in an industrial building and had a claim of £200k Our broker was supposed to represent us against the insurers and their loss adjusters but didn't make our case adequatedly and we had to accept a £154k settlement which left us considerably out of pocket. It was only afterwards we discovered that the broker was a subsidiary of the insurance company so would obviously be favouring the insurers. Bunch of crooks!

As a member of the public, this shows we don’t stand a chance against any business anymore.

I insured my 3 horses for a decade and had never made a claim One horse had an injury and it cost nearly £1000 in vets bills. I contacted the NFU and was told that my horses were too old to pay out on. They had continued to take premiums years after my horses were 'too old' and knew how old they were. They refused to pay out or even refund the premiums that they had taken in bad faith. Insurance is a racket. My car insurance has gone up over 65% since last year. I've ever had a claim and have full no claims. they are trying to raise the money from petrol and diesel motorists for EV conflagrations. Sick of it now.

if BBB is getting screwed by insurance imagine what normal people go through that dont know the law n stuff, shocking

You won't believe the state of the property. Landlords: Yes we will.

It's amazing how quickly they can find documents when it's in their favour yet try to loose them when it's in your favour.

This happened to me years ago with a married couple. They destroyed a property, smashed walls, smashed electrical sockets, broke the cooker, fridge and hoover and left with 12mths rent outstanding. Which is why I sold all my property in UK and invested overseas.

I have little faith in any insurance company now. They cannot be trusted and will always look to find a way to screw you over, even if it means lying through their teeth.

Ooof! Probably picked the WORSE person to try and screw over! Give em hell Daniel! 😂

Appears the more loyal to companies you are the worse you get treated .

A lawyer complaining about being screwed is peak Irony 😂

The insurance company deserves to be named now. They are being disingenuous and making you fight for them to honour their contract. You shouldn’t have to do this. This company is not acting in good faith.

I once had a dispute with a leading Mobile phone company. I called them and was billed 23 minutes for that call. Later there was a dispute over detail in that call, subsequently I requested the transcript. The tape recording lasted 21 mins and had been redacted. When I contacted them back to claim either the tape (21 minutes) or my phone bill (23 minutes) was inconsistent and one must be wrong, so I had been overcharged or the tape tampered. They immediately compensated me for their "error".

The age-old business model of insurance companies is to take your money, and not give it back.

British law protects criminals first, workers last.

British property law is a joke

This is why you never auto renew and always take the cheapest quote. All insurance companies are the same. All will screw you over.

A friend had his house trashed by tenants while he was abroad on a contract for three years. The tenants? Two middle-aged teachers. Unbelievable.

I used to do a Landlords gas safety inspection at a property for an elderly lady. She had the property refurbished to a very high standard. She had a single mother as a tenant paid by you and me. She was paid the rent from us , then she had to pay the rent to make her feel good. She sub let the house to 2 men also. She had the house for over 2 years and paid no rent. She pocketed the rent money plus the sub let money. The worst thing was the tenant wouldn't let me in to do the Gas safe certificate. Apparently if no certificate was issued and something went wrong the landlady was held responsible? Unfortunately the landlady has died out of pocket and stressed whilst suffering from cancer.

Trying to ripoff a RU-vidr that happens to be a barrister is not a good idea. 😂

I leave my 3 bed rental empty now as it has been trashed several times and the law is the enemy of the little landlord!

In nearly 30 years of having various insurance policies I've found them all to be a bunch of con artists.

I owned an engineering business. We were burgled and 150k of property stolen. The insurance company refused to pay out because they claimed a door that had been bricked up and plastered over for 100 years, hadn't been declared. We ran out of money fighting them and had to close making 4 people redundant... after paying premiums of over 900 quid a month. Complained to the ICO.. they did nothing.

I love going to war with insurance companies. I learned from my mum, record everything, keep the receipt and recap phone calls with an email with a mistake in your favour. They will correct it. I've had so many try to deny something was agreed over the phone and then i've got an email from them that says something different. I do that with all my official phone calls. Saved my ass so many times.

The days of renting out are drawing to a close. The new rules are utter madness.

We dutifully paid home insurance premiums without any claims for over a decade We were hit by a storm and an isolated gust flew through ripping much of our roof off (and the house opposite us) It was difficult to find a roofer because they were all working flat out fixing storm damage BUT our insurance company denied there was a storm! They said there was ‘lightning’ and ‘rain’ & a weather station miles away from us said the wind speed wasn’t ‘fast enough’! Unfrickenbelivable! Oh & then when we went through the complaints procedure with the goal of proceeding to the Ombudsman they threatened us that if we did they would retract our insurance altogether & put in record that we’re uninsurable with Any Insurer. In writing! When confronted over this threat, they dismissed it as an ‘error’ and an automated letter The audacity

Most insurance companies seem to have defaulted to the position of rejecting claims and then waiting for the customer to dispute them, which many won't have the means or will to do. I knew an assessor who was disgusted by the company he was working for because he became aware that the number one priority of his job was not really to assess the value of a claim, that was the last thing they wanted, but to find absolutely any way of the company wriggling out of paying a claim out. He obviously parted ways with that company ASAP.

I've been in this exact same situation. Not with a house I was renting but friends. They ended up in 28ks worth of debt from unpaid rent and damages. There was faeces smeared over the walls, the kitchen had literally been smashed to pieces and they had made a small bonfire in the living room, seriously! The roof was black with soot. We even found evidence of them locking their children in rooms with rope tied to the door handles. There are a lot of scummy people out there.

Tenants are too protected , how the law doesn't make them pay for it

Insurance companies and banks are like someone who will loan you an umbrella. Until it starts to rain, then want it back....

Another example of being fully insured unless you make a claim!

That sounds like an Insurance company to me, the fact you are legally forced to have one for some things is just robbery forced by Law, quite clearly MPs got mates in the Insurance market.

Breaking news: Barrister finds out that insurance companies are crooks! As if we didn't know it... :) The same happens when you make a complaint against your council and they investigate it themselves and conclude that they did nothing wrong. Or even if they agree if a person did something wrong they won't disclose which kind of punishment they would apply.

I helped my sister sort out a similar issue. Tenants stopped paying rent, took months to get them out, and then we found the property had been used as a cannabis farm. She had also previously lived in the property, so they had used some of her mail to steal her identity and take out loans. The insurance was extremely unhelpful, but all our family pitched in to help her sort the house out. I'm an electrician so sorted out the bypassed meters and crazy wiring they had put in. The house was never re-let and she sold it rather than risk this hassle again.

An insurance company trying not to pay out.... in other news water was found to be wet.

I've not had any insurance since 2008, when there was water damage and I think it was Abbey did everything to get out of it and when they finally yielded they came around and said you have to pick on of these types of carpet, the cheapest, most shabby looking carpet ever. Similar thing happened around that time with 'gas boiler insurance', it broke down and they refused to pay for anything 'due to the short length of time I had been paying insurance'. A complete scam.

I had a nightmare with Direct Line over a L&T policy. Total waste of time and money, and their captive lawyers DAS are totally awful. Complaints escalated to the respective regulators and Ombudsman

It’s what insurance companies do. We buy their products in good faith and yet they force one to haggle if making a claim…name and shame ….

When the phone call starts.."this phone call will be recorded for training and monitoring purposes". Damn right it is being recorded, by me.

My granddaughter pays £1200 a month for her flat always payed on time and always left the place clean, how these tramps get them it's mind mind boggling, she has a real hard time getting one to begin with.🙄🤔

Getting screwed for £40k Sounds like my experience with HMRC

Auto-transcription takes seconds, so they are liars.

There is an increasing number of cases where insurance companies are trying to ‘wriggle out’ of their obligations. Especially life a terminal insurance cover. This is a serious issue currently. Insurance companies are doing everything to not pay out. It’s almost saying insurance is now a waste of time and money.

Are they using the same lawyers that the Post Office relied upon?

When i came up against a corrupt insurance company i was so adamant that they would honour the "Contract". I went to local reference library & studied the law. We went to 2 solicitors who said we would not win the case. Long story short "They paid up". I did however learn the difference between going directly to an insurance company or a broker. If you have time it would help the public if you could explain the difference. We were lucky we went direct to the company to take out the policy. I did however study law for 6yrs & at the end of my studies my tutor was horrified i would not go 4 a law degree. I realised the more i learnt the more i realised how corrupt our laws are. I therefore became a renegade McKenzie friend & have never once regretted my decision. Good luck with ur insurers

Zurich have refused to pay out for damage to our machinery to the tune of approx. 2.5k stating that the damage to the road was not there just before Christmas. Big pothole.

You don't need to name them. It's EVERY insurance company. Does not matter, house, contents,car, motorcycle.every insurance company will try and screw out of , paying out..

BBB, Incredible story !!!! Thank you for sharing, all the best.

What is the betting that the insurance company cannot locate the data required.

My buy to let insurer refused to support my legal case (supposedly covered by the policy) against a tenant who left the property in a terrible state. All we claimed out of the deposit was the cost of cleaning the property ready for re-let. Approximately 50% of the deposit. The tenants solicitor sister decided to challenge this and our insurer stated that we weren’t covered for this. It took 4 years to sort it out and cost us £20,000. Sheer madness. The judges felt sorry for the tenant and found against us. The law is an ass. In future I’ll forgo the deposit and put it down to experience. Finally I’m sure you already know that such costs can be claimed against tax.

Welcome to our world Mr Lawyer. Watching your progress with interest.

'We won't pay up' said the insurance company. Sounds like par for the course!

Any claim with an insurance company is like drawing blood from a stone. Withholding, redacting and censoring your own info to avoid a claim just seems outright criminal. I hope you haven't told them about your YT channel because we need to see how they normally act without the threat of bad publicity.

The ICO rules required me to wait 30 days for a satisfactory response before I put a complaint in. Then I didnt receive an update from the ICO for months. They're not very efficient.

When my daughter passed away due to an unknown heart conditions at 4 weeks old, our insurance didn’t pay out the £30,000 children’s critical illness insurance add on on my policy because she died on the last day of the deferral period, not the day after.

Insurance scammer company and scum bucket tenants - a nightmare combo.

Something that catches many people out. If you have an oil fuelled boiler, most insurers won’t cover you for ANYTHING associated with the boiler or the pipework, which includes hot & cold water pipes and leaks, leaks from underfloor heating pipes and any fire or damage that they can attribute to the boiler.

Had the same thing happen to me, including turning it into a “grow house”, the police gave me a crime no and did absolutely NOTHING,

My friend had a claim refused because he didn't get his chimney swept in the last year, the claim was for a burst water pipe and on the other side of the house from the chimney.

I’d love to see the reaction when they find out they messed with a lawyer.

So sorry to hear your bad news. Keep your heads up.

I had a similar issue with the insurance company "Could not find any record of my call" I got a copy of my bill and proved I called them. They paid out.

Insurance companies first action after a claim is filed is to search for any reason to get out of coverage.

Insurance companies employ a whole team whose sole purpose is to find any excuse to avoid paying out a claim. They give you the run around hoping you will eventually quit. If you feel you are in the right, don't give up you will eventually prevail but it might take some time.

Shock horror! An insurance company trying to get out of paying what they owe.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Tenants trashing a property is not rare, I’ve known two colleagues who had a flat trashed, and the costs in todays money would have been of a similar amount One tenant was living in a flat having burnt his house down. The flat was managed by an estate agent while the owner was working abroad. He paid for the premium option and the agents had not carried out checks as re quired. He could not afford to go to court. The damage was incredible, the tenant was clearly mentally deranged.

A friend of mine rented a house out to a very lovely couple. That payed there rent on time every month then they move on. When he when't to see he his property he got a shock that had two young kids and the soiled nappy were stuck to the ceilings of most off the rooms. He did the property back up and sold it vowing never to rent out a property again.

As my commercial and consumer law lecturer at University told me: The claims department is in fact the avoidance department. Staff are trained to avoid paying out if at all possible.

The law is an ass.

I think I will believe the state of your property... I had a similar experience 2-3 years ago. £11k owed in rent arrears. House trashed. Needed new kitchen, new flooring throughout, all walls painting, new en-suite. I took them to court myself having issued Section 8 & Section 21 notices, which I won. They left the place with the front door open and some homeless person had set up there but he had gone by the time I visit. Fortunately, a good friend of mine & his family needed a house in that area, so we did a great deal where they offered to renovate the place for a low rent.

Show them this video and say, “You know who I am, I’ll see you in court!” Let’s see how fast they backpedal at that point!!!!!! And do disclose, post resolution, who the wriggling insurance company is so we can all avoid them!

My shared wall in the loft was damaged when the dilapidated building next door collapsed,my insurance would not pay anything so I cancelled it and have not had any for 10 years. Fuck them.

Renting.....always a massive headache

I took out household insurance years back, I did it over the phone, answered all their questions honestly, when it came to making a claim, they asked me lots of questions again, one of them being “does anyone in the household have a criminal record” I answered yes my son, they told me they couldn’t pay out because I didn’t disclose that when I took the policy out, I argued that I wasn’t asked so how could I tell them that if I didn’t know it was a question, and why would I say no at the time, just to say yes now, I asked them to go back to their recorded call, and indeed I was not asked the question, and they paid me out!

We had the same but for £30K. We had a fire and they tried everything to wriggle out of it. We were lucky that we had bought the insurance through a Broker who was so helpful and threatened to withdraw all his business from the insurance company if they did not cover us. They blamed us for the fire - the Fire Brigade confirmed that it was not done deliberately and was a faulty electrical appliance. They wanted us to claim against the maker of the product! We got there in the end but it was a traumatic incident and completely broke the small amount of faith I had in insurance companies.

This is the reason I stopped renting out my properties.

The amount of damage you have to accept as wear and tear, to get your bond back is beyond ridiculous. I could't be bothered with the stress.

I was told back in eighty one the insurance companies main policy is not to pay out , nothing has happened since to disprove that fact .

Unless you’re able to own several properties, buy to let just doesn’t seem worth it. My husband and I scrimped and scraped to get a deposit together for a property to let out. I have chronic health issues, so this was my insurance/pension. The property was in Durham and we were not, so we were paying an agency to rent it out and get quotes for maintenance. We ended up being tenantless for a suspiciously long time and started receiving letters from the council. Unfortunately my condition had flared up and I’d had spinal surgery. We asked another agents to visit and the damage was horrific. They’d taken all the copper piping and so left bottles and bags of excrement and damaged the property top to bottom. Due to me being so ill we didn’t have the energy to sue the agency etc, but had to get into debt to get the house returned to a lettable state. Not all landlords are well off.

Sounds like a a nightmare. If anyone is in a position to sort it though, you are.

Absolutely scandalous! - I can't wait for the follow up.

It's world wide - we just began the process to sue - we got less but no court costs when they coughed up

My parents inherited a tiny terrace from my grandma and rented it out AFTER spending some £12K modernising it (long ago). The tenants paid rent for a bit then simply stopped. It was 6 months before they left and they had torn up even the carpets and so on. They simply moved to another rented house in the town. The horrible twist: the tenants were TEACHERS, not just the usual scumbags who pull this stunt. My parents could not face such crap again and were forced to sell it.

Hope it gets sorted out asap. Thank you for informing us Daniel. 🇬🇧👍🏻

Landlords have all the laws against them. We lost £8000 by tenant not paying rent.

Insurance companies lie. Take them to the cleaners.

NEVER agree to phone call transcripts. Insurance companies ALL edit them heavily to remove anything that proves liability. You are legally under GDPR entitled to an actual recording of the call in its entirety. From the waiting in the queue upto the moment you hang up. Refusing even once to supply such a recording (there are no legal excuses at all, not even "staff was a newbie" etc) It is an automatic GDPR fail, and the company will be subject to an automatic fine if you complain. When you make your Subject Access Request, specify you want ALL records related to yourself, AND recordings of any and all calls.

Ah, the portable goalpost policy.

Welcome to what the rest is normal people have live with everyday living in the UK. RIP of Britain. You have not lobby and paid of the right Tory MP

This is the Monty Python insurance sketch: "You unfortunately plumped for our Never Pay policy, which if you never claim is very worthwhile.". Dealing with a home insurance claim killed my father, I firmly believe. If you think you already hate them enough, you don't. They can always get worse.

The law in Britain is broken. It's simply not fair or fit for purpose. It needs a complete overhaul. As someone mentioned before, if it doesn't work for a clued up person like yourself what chance do the rest of us have?

If you are late making a payment to them they will be quick to remind you, if you need them to pay you, they will do everything they can to delay or avoid the payment. Insurance companies are only slightly less dishonest than politicians (of any party)

To redact something they might of aswell put up a big red sign saying we f@#$ed up!!

Back in the days of when energy companies could break into houses to shut off meters my old boss broke into one house and after shutting off the meter decided to use to loo. Biggest mistake he ever made. The property was a five bed council house, freshly done up for a family six months before. There was still plastic wrapping on the toilet bowl from it's installation, it had never been used. In the bath was a massive load of excrement, they'd been dumping in it instead.

As an IT person, this is interesting. When the DPA and GDPR came in, many companys were blissfully unaware of the implications with respect to SAR and their obligations. This included whether their systems and processes were capable of compliance, so things like if their web chats or messenger conversations could be recorded. It was depressing the number that didn't or couldn't do this either for audit or compliance purposes. Some even said they'd take situations like this 'offline'.

Recording conversation is legal in my jurisdiction as long as at least one party is aware of the conversation being recorded. Accordingly, I record my conversations when I can. It saves A LOT of headache dealing with slimy companies and people.

As a habit I always screenshot webcasts when they take place.

I remember a while ago reading a case regarding a unemployed person that secretly recorded conversations via in person and also on the telephone,then that one day a dispute arose,so the person decided to take action,to my surprise the judge allowed a transcript of that conversation ......the person in question won there case,in the article i remember the judge said if the transcript was going to be argued he would allow the audio file to be played..... This is exactly why you should record you conversations