How many people have no shutters/bars on downstairs windows but still have theft cover on their insurance policy?
I ask because we’ve just gone through the process of changing our house insurance provider (Allianz to AXA) through Fab French Insurance. To start with our risk assessment stipulated we had to have locking doors and nothing about the windows. On going to sign the final contract though I noticed this had changed and now stipulated that we needed to have certified bloc Porte doors and locks and the windows (all below 3m from ground) had to have shutters, bars or be made of security glass. As this was 1 day before the cover was due to start and I had to sign the final document I had to go ahead and sign with the understanding that we weren’t now covered for theft as our windows/doors did not conform. We have double glazed french doors and double glazed windows. No shutters or bars.
We feel quite miffed about this as we went ahead with the policy based on the original risk assessment and weren’t aware at what point the wording changed. Only when Iwas going through before the final signing did I notice that these boxes were now ticked as yes.
I know insurance is a bit of a mine field…but still, we felt slight over a barrel as we had one day in which to decide whether to go ahead anyway without theft cover (though we’re still paying the same price premium!) or risk being without insurance.
We’ve been told that without the triple locking doors and shuttered/barred or security glass windows no insurer would cover us for theft.
Is anyone else in this situation or has been in this situation?
My new house has all those items mentioned including a solid steel door with five locking points and security glass in the thin panel.These are fitted as standard now and all small windows without shutters have security grills fitted. I was also told to shut all shutters completely when going out, even to the shops as it could be argued in the case of a break-in, they were not in place and therefore open to helping the break-in. Times are hard and people are getting desperate to make money, it makes sense to do all you can. Oh and for locking internal doors, my late FIL who was in security always told us never to lock doors inside as they do not prevent theft, in fact you will left with more vandalism to repair from smashed door locks or worse. If a thief wants to get in, he will and no internal door will stop him.
I’d like to jump in the conversation. In the initial assessment you did online you did declare that you had “3 point locks & plain doors”. You’ve signed this (in English) during the application process so BEFORE we actually edited the policy itself. Then you noticed the potential discrepancy after we’ve edited the policy and came back to us with an extra set of questions and pictures to confirm that theft was covered which unfortunately we could not as the type of openings you have would void the theft cover should the thieves break in through these.
Some insurance companies could cover you but there is an extra issue in your case and that is that you are in an “high risk” area so many insurers aren’t operating there and we had to use what’s available on the market not knowing these specifics at first as per your initial statements.
If you think this is not right we never force anyone’s hand and you can get in touch with us to try to figure out a solution.
Best,
PS: It’s an high risk area not because of the people there but because it’s an area with an higher than usual frequency of claims.
Just for information, NOVELIA / Suravenir does cover that kind of risk although they don’t operate in Melena’s region unfortunately.
Also good to note that from a French insurer’s perspective that kind of issue (not having shutters on glass doors or windows at the ground level) is the client’s responsibility and should be declared plainly as otherwise they consider all points of entry are “secured”. Unfortunately this is standard behaviour from almost all insurers in France.
I think this is a very good example of why it is so important to declare absolutely everything from the outset!
In a similar vein, I heard about someone recently who stated that he did NOT have a swimming pool and then was very pissed off when the insurers refused his claim for damage to the swimming pool…. !
I suspect many of us will be checking our various policies… which is no bad thing.
We can all become a little slack about “details” over the years.
EDIT: It was worth checking!! We’ve obviously forgotten that we are meant to garage our car overnight when at home, but we’ve become slack about doing that… I shall have to mention this to OH
I’m baffled about the high risk area as we live in the countryside and to my knowledge I’ve heard of no one in our area who has had a break-in, theft/vandalism past 15 years…I’d imagine in our small neck of the woods anything like that would be ‘big’ news!
Also @cat and @fabien I was very clear about declaring the doors and windows from the outset…I made a point of describing these explicitly in the online application process on the FabFrench website in the comments section and also with the agent I spoke with on the phone…I couldn’t have done more.
I checked the risk assessment when it came through and did the first signing based on that. The final signing had boxes ticked as ‘yes’ that contradicted the information I gave…it was this that gave me pause for thought as both the Fab French and AXA disclaimers were quite clear that anything that was wrongly declared or failed to declared would affect things in the event of a claim.
As @fabien has pointed out it is up to the client to disclose fully such things…which I did.
Yes! My other point really with this post apart from finding out if anyone does have confirmed theft cover with these types of ‘unprotected’ openings was to give a little nudge to double/triple/quadruple check those ‘exclusions’… just because the policy says vol et vandalism is included not to assume that you’re covered!! What a minefield
Also I got used in UK to always checking the text of the policy on renewals in case conditions had changed. In theory anything significant should be pointed out but isn’t always.
Because of GDPR I can’t really answer you publicly without disclosing too much details about you so I’ll address the matter privately from now on. Just about the “high risk” I made 2 posts here to make it clear I was not referring to people (or break ins for that matter) but to the occurrence of claims. Basically you live in an area where drought, severe heat, landslips, storms and all kind of natural disasters are much more frequent or severe than other parts of France and therefore many insurers have backed away from that region unfortunately.
