I am in the process of buying my first house and the best quotes seem to come from Axa (heard alot of poor reviews about claims), Ehome (never really heard of them) and sheilas wheels (great reviews on price and customer service but not much about from people who have claimed !!!! Any advice appreciatedCan anyone advise a good but cheap home %26amp; contents insurer for the UK ? Anyone used sheilas wheels ?
Congratulations on your new home and well done for taking the time to do some research. A few tips on the companies you've mentioned will I think give you a bit of insight.
In the UK insurance internet market you get two types of business... the insurers themselves ..like AXA, DirectLine or Aviva and 'distribution channels' like Ehome and 'Sheilas wheels' who sell the policies and (mostly, but not always) administer the claims, but don't actually carry the risk, they just get paid a % on each policy sold.
It's a bit like buying a tin of baked beans.... you can buy them from Tescos, Asda, Sainsburys or your corner shop ... but they are nearly all made by Heinz !
As an insurance example... say you buy a policy from Sheilas wheels....'Sheilas wheels' is part of 'esure' which sells policies underwritten by ...want to guess ??? You got it ....AXA (and 1 or two others) !
So buying insurance through 'Sheilas wheels' you could well end up with an AXA policy and Ehome (who no-one has heard of) sells policies on behalf of Aviva, one of the world's largest insurers.......confusing huh.
So to answer your Q if you want to research Sheilas Wheels I'd look at esure's customer performance. They also do the Halifax/HBOS house insurance, so any comments on them relate to Sheilas Wheels as well.
That said, I really don't put much store by those on-line reviews. I know they have good intentions and all, but they fail on two very major points (and quite a few small ones) in my book.
1) People are much more likely to post a negative than a positive... that's just human nature, so they can skew towards a company looking bad.
2) They don't give you any idea of % performance....
e.g.
Company A has 1,000 customers and 15 complaints or a 1.5% complaint rate.
Company B has 100 customers and 5 complaints or a 5% rate
Which is worse ? On a review site Company A will look much worse as it has 3x more complaints, where in reality it does a much better job than Company B.
After years of working in insurance I honestly believe that how well any claim is dealt with has more to do with the individual dealing with it than the company. Like any job, some claims handlers are great, some are not so great and some are just bl**dy awful.
However, in the UK we have very strong 'Treating Customers Fairly' laws in insurance, so you will get what you are entitled to even if at a worst case you have to fight a bit.
My advice would be to decide on the cover you want, and then buy the cheapest that offers that level of cover, remembering to check what's covered, what isn't, and the excesses so you get a true comparison.
CheersCan anyone advise a good but cheap home %26amp; contents insurer for the UK ? Anyone used sheilas wheels ?
I just signed up with Liverpool Victoria or LV for buildings and contents cover. The main reasons were that their cover has been rated 5 out of 5 stars by Defaqto (an independent financial research company) two years in a row and they were cheaper for us than most other providers. I did use moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com first to gauge an average price then compared a short list against this.
The best way you going to find cheap home and contents insurance is by comparing. Check out theycompare.co.uk, confused.com etc to compare your home insurance quotes.
We are with paymentshield and they are really cheap - they do a blanket cover for buidings %26amp; contents so we didn't have to get the house valuated for its sum insured. Good luck.
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