House Insurance
- Thread starter SkyRider
- Start date
Insurance cost is only partly about your individual risk factors. After all if anyone could really say what those were—who would be robbed or have their house burn down—all insurance would be individually tailored and would just amount to pre-payment. Insurance works because the risk is pooled among a very large group from which there will be only a relatively small number of expensive claims. Then on top of that, once insurance companies went from being co-ops to shareholder owned for-profits there was that p-word to factor in.
Like they say, shop around, and bargain; but don't imagine your meritorious record carries real weight except in that context. The number of fires your neighbours have had, and how fast the response time was, likely weighs more.
Like they say, shop around, and bargain; but don't imagine your meritorious record carries real weight except in that context. The number of fires your neighbours have had, and how fast the response time was, likely weighs more.
Just 10 percent?
Mine has fucking doubled in the last 3 years. No word of a lie. I've never made a claim of any kind, always pay on time in full for the whole year.
TD Meloche Monnex.
I phoned to complain and initially they lied to me and said that "rebuilding costs had increased" blah blah blah. I told them that was bullshit. Finally, exasperated with me, she put me through to a suit (I assume.) He was honest with me and said that they had lost money on home insurance for the first time due to huge losses in the stock market. (Ok, so now they're telling the truth.) In a nutshell, they take your premiums and use the cash in the market. They lost their shirts, so now they have to recoup the money. Fuckers.
I tried shopping my policy around, and I found cheaper, HOWEVER, Monnex has my auto policy and no-one could even come close to what I was getting there. The difference was far more than any savings on my home policy (and the 2 policies are tied together in terms of discounts and umbrella policies).
So, I reduced my home coverage. I used to have the "platinum policy". Now I just have the "gold policy". It's all bullshit as they will not tell you what is NOT covered. They only tell you what IS covered. (Huge difference.) In fact, they will REFUSE to tell you what is NOT covered. (I asked them for a list of what is not covered and they refused.)
So I reduced my coverage, and I raised my deductable to lower my premium.
My logic was simple. I'm not going to make a penny enny claim. Ever. Not worth the increase in rates. I'm only afraid of 2 things. 1. Fire and 2. Some idiot slipping and falling and suing me (liability). I'm not really worried about theft because I have fuck all of any value in my house. I have 0 jewelry, no watches, TV? Fuck, take it. I can buy a new one for less than what my insurance company would pay me. Computer? Do they still steal desk tops? Really?
Burst pipe?
I can fix it myself. Ditto water damage (there's one they LOVE to make you worry about.) The only water damage I'm worried about would be a sanitary sewer backup. That's expensive and there they limit you to 50 grand anyway. If I leave a window open and it fucks up the drywall, I can strip the wall and fix it myself for a couple of hundred bucks. So why pay 200 bucks a year for "water infiltration" (which is what the fuckers call it).
3 years ago, my policy was 600 bucks.
2 years ago, 800 bucks
1 year, 1000.00
This year, it was 1,200, so I raised the deductable and got rid of BS add-ons that I don't need and put it back to 1,000
Mine has fucking doubled in the last 3 years. No word of a lie. I've never made a claim of any kind, always pay on time in full for the whole year.
TD Meloche Monnex.
I phoned to complain and initially they lied to me and said that "rebuilding costs had increased" blah blah blah. I told them that was bullshit. Finally, exasperated with me, she put me through to a suit (I assume.) He was honest with me and said that they had lost money on home insurance for the first time due to huge losses in the stock market. (Ok, so now they're telling the truth.) In a nutshell, they take your premiums and use the cash in the market. They lost their shirts, so now they have to recoup the money. Fuckers.
I tried shopping my policy around, and I found cheaper, HOWEVER, Monnex has my auto policy and no-one could even come close to what I was getting there. The difference was far more than any savings on my home policy (and the 2 policies are tied together in terms of discounts and umbrella policies).
So, I reduced my home coverage. I used to have the "platinum policy". Now I just have the "gold policy". It's all bullshit as they will not tell you what is NOT covered. They only tell you what IS covered. (Huge difference.) In fact, they will REFUSE to tell you what is NOT covered. (I asked them for a list of what is not covered and they refused.)
So I reduced my coverage, and I raised my deductable to lower my premium.
My logic was simple. I'm not going to make a penny enny claim. Ever. Not worth the increase in rates. I'm only afraid of 2 things. 1. Fire and 2. Some idiot slipping and falling and suing me (liability). I'm not really worried about theft because I have fuck all of any value in my house. I have 0 jewelry, no watches, TV? Fuck, take it. I can buy a new one for less than what my insurance company would pay me. Computer? Do they still steal desk tops? Really?
Burst pipe?
I can fix it myself. Ditto water damage (there's one they LOVE to make you worry about.) The only water damage I'm worried about would be a sanitary sewer backup. That's expensive and there they limit you to 50 grand anyway. If I leave a window open and it fucks up the drywall, I can strip the wall and fix it myself for a couple of hundred bucks. So why pay 200 bucks a year for "water infiltration" (which is what the fuckers call it).
3 years ago, my policy was 600 bucks.
2 years ago, 800 bucks
1 year, 1000.00
This year, it was 1,200, so I raised the deductable and got rid of BS add-ons that I don't need and put it back to 1,000
It's all over the map, I got less than that for an increase and never in my life ut in a claim, but it depends on the company, area you live in, etc...as companies determine their rates on stats and their poor returns on their investments due to the poor worldwide economy, so the common folk have to make up for the shortfall.
Heard on the news yesterday that a 2 year old child drowned in a neighbour's pond. The neighbour is facing criminal negligence charges and will probably be facing a civil lawsuit as well.
Of course they sold the whole movement from policyholder-owned to shareholder-owned companies on the basis that the income from invested premiums would keep them low. And oddly enough, at the very heart of the financial implosion that's made everyone's money of questionable value was … AIG, an insurance company! Insuring all those diced and divvied up loans no matter how bad or risky, so no one—not even them—could lose.
But we did.
I made a "home improvement" recently that required added insurance, and my company quoted me an additional $350/year, which I knew was horseshit. So I shopped around and ended up saving $1000 on the original amount. Crazy industry.
There is no insurer in Canada that operates, or more specifically, is allowed to operate anything like AIG did.
Fucking horseshit. Because they can't make money they jack up the premiums. The sad thing is they all do it because there is limited competition.
Absolutely. But the 'I' in AIG still stands for insurance, and when the chips are down, even the largest insurer, farthest removed from my piddling little daily concerns and yours will depend on the widest pool of shared risk takers to cover the liability and bail them out. That'd be every one of us taxpayers.
The flaw in that model—and we can argue until the cows have taken over the living room whether it's a necessary flaw—is that we taxpayers don't share the billions in eventual profits AIG makes. But this is a thread about the sort of insurance we do directly need and benefit from. the insurance on our homes.
I want to know why in the age of global finance we still need a myriad of penny-ante little home insurance companies each with a small and costly risk pool. I want to know why they haven't done more to reduce their risk by further improving building codes and standards. Sprinkler systems come to mind for starters, but then so do wooden houses covered with waterproof skins so they become tinder dry. Legally sold battery operated smoke detectors are another. For that matter smoke detectors so bad they are inactivated and destroyed by their owners who can't take an uninterrupted shower. Years ago Underwriters established a lab to do such stuff. But that was then, when insurance companies were owned by the policyholders.
Could it be the insurers don't give a shit whether your house burns down, as long as they profit? I'd suspect anyone standing in the ashes would prefer a different mission statement.
