Bee in Lavender

Another lovely sunny but windy day, not quite warm enough for a t shirt without a fleece. I spent a morning in town getting my hair cut, doing some shopping and getting a quote from NFU for home and contents insurance. I recently had my renewal quote from John Lewis which had gone up by 23.5% to £664.34. Having spent over 30 mins doing a quote with an agency staff member who didn't appear to know much, she gave me a quote of £1,017.96. You might now be thinking I live in a mansion or have a poor claims history, but I live in a 3 bed bungalow and only have one relevant claim in the last 5 years of just under £1k for damage from a burst pipe 2.5 years ago and I've got insurance to protect my no claims discount so that is a max 5 years. This afternoon I tried to get an online quote from LV - first the website lost my details, then it wouldn't save them on the 2nd attempt, then on the 3rd attempt it wouldn't give a quote as there was a discrepancy! I'm pretty sure I know what this is, JL told me when I queried it that due to an error on their system, the burst pipe claim is incorrectly recorded as 2 separate claims - part on contents and part on buildings. Also LV didn't have a claim category on the drop down list for home emergency cover - I've also had 2 claims in 5 years on that (although that normally doesn't count as a claim for policy pricing or no claims discount assessment). Complicated or what! 

My boiler service for tomorrow was cancelled this afternoon - another poor process as HomeServe do a 'forced appointment' to book it on their system, then when this eventually comes out to the company concerned, they can't do that date - the same thing happened last year. An annoyance made worse by HomeServe sending a text for feedback on how the engineer did, the day before the first appointment was due! Companies are absolutely abysmal at customer service these days, unfortunately they all seem equally bad.