Insurance is a mug’s game. It begins with a sensible attempt to guard against catastrophe and escalates into risk hysteria. With the onset of the cold weather, I only wanted to take out some simple cover on my radiators, but I ended up in a frantic scramble to insure myself against everything bad or even just mildly annoying that could possibly happen to a human being, ever.
Last winter, my boiler broke down so I made sure it was heavily insured this year. Naturally, therefore, my boiler did not break down this year. My radiators leaked. Or rather one of them leaked and fell off the wall for good measure.
I rang British Gas who confirmed that I had opted out of radiator cover so I took the hit and called Tony the plumber. But as I’m really good at insuring things after the catastrophe has happened I also rang back and took out the radiator policy, just in case lightning strikes twice, which it won’t now I’ve paid for it. I also asked them to cover me for leaking pipes. As my builder recently drilled into the water main while mounting a shelf, I thought it prudent to shut this particular stable door, too.
So, with insurance for boiler, radiators, pipes and drains, what possible household catastrophe could I now be vulnerable to?
As if by magic, the question was answered by Barclays sending me details of a new bank account featuring no fewer than 15 must-have insurances, including something called HomeSOS. On initial reading this looked like the cover I already had, but the nice man at the call centre informed me that it wasn’t anything like my existing policy because: ‘This insures you for all household emergencies to do with domestic appliances, and also covers you for rats, wasps’ nests and other vermin.’
‘Holy Moses,’ I thought. ‘My current insurance doesn’t cover me for wasp-related incidents. I need some of this.’
Within minutes I was the lucky owner of two household emergency policies for all things plumbing-orientated, along with additional cover for exploding toasters, self-combusting washing machines and damage wrought by invasive insects.
Thus relieved, I asked the man to talk me through the rest of the cutting-edge minor inconvenience and snowball-in-hell policies on offer. I opted gratefully for a special kind of cardholder protection which insures you against losing your handbag in a foreign country and needing your keys, passport and mobile phone replacing. I’m not entirely sure how you contact them if your phone is gone, with their number inside it. You’re meant to store a card with the details on it somewhere separate from your handbag, but what happens if you put it in your suitcase in the hotel room and burglers break in and steal it? There must be another policy for that.
I also took out extended warranties on my household appliances; gadget protection which insures my laptop, camera, satnav and mobile phone (again); airport insurance which entitles me to use the first-class lounge of any airport I happen to be in precisely six times a year; RAC breakdown cover (to add to the breakdown cover I already have with a less famous company — well, you can’t have enough roadside assistance, can you?); legal insurance which entitles me to call a helpline in a, er, legal emergency; worldwide travel insurance including ski cover which insures the skis and boots I don’t own as I hire them; and, finally, a lifestyle management service which does something or other to do with booking theatre tickets for me if I’m too busy to ring the theatre myself. The only thing I refused was the children’s healthcare cover so I expect pregnancy and some sort of child-based health emergency to hit me imminently.
You would think the man at the call centre would be happy with all this. But he sounded deeply unsatisfied. ‘Do you have cover for identity theft?’ he asked, accusingly. I started to feel the urge. ‘No, I do not have this,’ I thought. ‘Jeepers creepers. I must get it.’
Then I saw the light. ‘Hang on,’ I told him. ‘So I’m paying my bank £17 a month in charges, but if I want to make sure no one steals all the money out of my account, it’s £70 a year extra?’
He confirmed that this was the case. I informed him that it seemed to me that if I added together the cost of all these insurances I could not arrive at a figure lower than the likely cost of any of the imagined disasters actually happening, or indeed quite a few of them occurring at once. I asked if he had any policies which would protect me from people selling me insurance. But he didn’t know of any. Shame.
Comments