Locked-in by incompetence

Following on from yesterday's rant, our insurance renewal situation seems to be out of our hands. Talk about kicking us when we're down... and there's nothing we can do about it.

Because the people appointed to help us by our insurance company have taken so long to do anything, our claim is still ongoing, and looks likely to be ongoing for the next six months. Unfortunately, no other insurance company will give us an insurance quote while we have an ongoing case with another company.

So we're stuck with them, they can hike up our premium to almost double (they have), and they can set us a ridiculously high excess for flood damage (they have), and we still have no freedom to choose- they have a complete monopoly on our insurance.

We were a little under-insured on our contents, no-ones fault but my own, so I was relieved when we found we would get enough cash to replace 50-75% of the important things we lost. Now, thanks to the premium hike and excess, I'm going to have to reserve almost half of that money to cover rebuilding in the event of further flooding. So we can probably afford to replace less than a third of our stuff.

Fortunately, once our claim is settled, we'll be able to look for another insurance company, hopefully one with some compassion (none of the other insurance companies we called proposed a significant increase in our premium, or any additional excesses, they just couldn't take our business because of the ongoing claim). At that point, as long as our house hasn't flooded again, we'll be able to use that reserved money to replace some more of our belongings.

Do you suppose they care that they're losing a customer? I've had my credit cards with them for years, almost as long as they've been in business, I had actually just signed up for another one in a bright new color. I always looked to their site first when I needed any insurance or financial products. I recommended them many times to others.

Not anymore. They probably don't care, and I don't suppose it will make a big difference to them that I stop doing business with them now and in the future, or that I bad-mouth them to everyone I know, or that my first thought now whenever I hear them mentioned is going to be an angry unprintable one. But leaving them at the earliest opportunity, and possibly sending other people elsewhere is certainly going to make me feel a little better.

Maybe I'm over-reacting, maybe they're just following standard policies... But why haven't those policies been applied to my neighbours, who I'm going to watch moving back into their freshly made-over houses over the next month or two. That's right, my neighbours are going to be moving in while I try to get one of their people to call me back or to do something, all from my room with whichever set of in-laws I happen to be with at the time.

Somewhere in the middle of this rant (normal service will resume soon, I'm just in a ranting mood right now), I was reminded of a post on the power of good and bad publicity and blogs from smallbusinessbranding.com:-

Bloggers Powerful Source of Advertising and Badvertising

Even so, I'm not sure that naming my insurance company would make much of a difference, and the way things have been going so far, it would probably somehow make our situation even worse. Remind me in six months or so and I'll tell you who it was...