On December 10th last year we came home from visiting my partners parents to find the back door smashed open and a trail of destruction through our house. In our absence some domestic burglars had smashed their way in and gone through every room in the house emptying out drawers and cupboards and strewing our things all over the floor. The house was freezing cold as the wind howled through the broken glass. I had that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach wondering what exactly had gone that is irreplaceable.
We called the police who told us that there had been so many burglaries that day we'd have to wait our turn and it could be anything up to 48 hours before they could come. They asked us not to touch anything that could have fingerprints on. We started trying to figure out what exactly was taken without moving anything that could possibly be finger-printed. Most of my stuff that had gone appeared to be jewellery. The boxes were thrown on the floor but as requested by the police I didn't touch them until they had a chance to check for prints. We then called our insurance firm LV= and reported the burglary, they said they'd get someone round to board up the smashed door as soon as possible. We told them what we thought might be missing but it was hard to tell unless we cleared it all up which we had to wait to do.
I was fairly shaky about what was missing mainly because I couldn't immediately see a pair of gold earrings that my late father had given me on my 18th Birthday. I'm sure anyone who has been burgled knows the horrible sick feeling of so desperately wanting to lay your eyes on an item of such extreme emotional value that nothing else matters. I hated the thought of some dirty hands rifling through all my stuff to decide what they wanted to take or not, but most of all I just desperately wanted my earrings.
The next morning the police came round and finger printed what they could but the burglars had worn gloves, as they had in the other 10 or so houses in our neighbourhood that they'd hit that day. At this point we were allowed to clear up and properly figure out what was gone. As I picked up empty jewellery boxes I began to get together a list of things that were missing. I was surprised that my laptop and iPad were left on the table but the police had told us that Apple products now have such good tracking that domestic burglars know not to touch them. They only really go for cash and jewellery these days.
Sometimes I still stay in Central London if I'm gonna be too late for the last train home and I keep a handful of things at my old flat. Before submitting our insurance claim I wanted to double check that any bits of jewellery weren't there. To my great joy I found my earrings that my dad had given me at the flat and with that massive emotional hurdle out of the way I went about trying to find photos (if there was no receipt) and values for the things that were missing. Once we felt we had a total inventory and accompanying photos of each item we sent in our claim to LV=.
There was nothing of any great value in the claim. I know I catalogued the items primarily by sentimental attachment, earrings from my stepmother, earrings from my god-daugher, a necklace from my siblings for my 40th Birthday etc etc. The only item of any significant value was my boyfriends watch and he called and discussed how to value a rare vintage item with them before we sent the claim in. Having done all this we realised a couple of weeks later when we were trying to locate it that the portable DVD player had gone from the cupboard by my bed and we'd missed this and added it later to the claim.
We then waited. As it turned out we waited a long time. We checked in with LV= as to why it should take so long and they said something about needing some paperwork from the police. So we waited some more. We then got informed that our claim was being referred to a special claims investigator. At some point during all this LV= sent us an apology for the delay and a cheque for £100 compensation for the claim taking such an extraordinarily long time. We waited for what had been 5 months since the burglary and then the 'special claims investigator' came back and said that as there was a discrepancy between what we had told the police was missing before we were able to really touch anything and clear up and check everything thoroughly and when we had subsequently done this, they believed we were liars with a fake claim and we had to justify our behaviour. It took LV= six months to ask us this question about a claim that had been submitted in December last year.
We were furious and wrote to the CEO and Chairman of LV=. We know they received the letter as the Chairman of LV= looked at my boyfriends Linked In page and doesn't have his account set to hide his personal views. The CEOs office wrote and basically told us to piss off and write to the Financial Ombudsman if we are not happy. This kind of duplicity clearly goes right to the very heart of those who run LV=. I suspect the vast swathes of people who they try and fiddle out of their claims means they have a constant avalanche of complaints and they have become deaf to it.
I had a look on the LV= Facebook page at how they describe themselves and it says this:
At LV=, we're all about helping people insure the things they love. This is something we care passionately about and we hope it shows in the way we work with you.
The deep hypocrisy of this statement makes me feel very, very angry. I'm not sure where we go from here. The claim is less than £2000 but I feel angry that these bullies think they can behave like this. They readily took our money to pay for for home insurance and now refuse to honour the deal we entered into. I have grown to hate them. I also don't want them to get away with this behaviour.
I would love to hear from anyone working in the insurance industry who might have information about how many people find out there is more missing once they have cleared up the mess from a burglary, than in the first few minutes when they call the police. This is what LV= claim is the evidence as to why our claim should be rejected. I bet its what happens in the majority of domestic burglaries. I would also be keen to hear from anyone who has taken an insurance company through the Financial Ombudsman and whether it was worth doing. Any advice on what we should do next would be much appreciated. Corporate greed is one of the evils of our society these days and I don't believe anyone should let themselves be bullied, however big the company.
