Home ownership, joys of, ctd. It occurred to me to check the renewal quote for our house insurance and - fancy that! - it was up 27% on last year's. On calling them, I found no sign of flexibility or haggle room, so have moved the business elsewhere, for a premium a good 10% lower than we paid last year, let alone the inflated renewal quote. It's clear what's happening: the insurance companies now rely on low, come-on, introductory quotes, and rely on inertia and/or 'Oh, I don't want to make a fuss, dear!' to hammer people in year 2 et seq. It seems to me that this discriminates against the unassertive members of the elderly community, and against people who lack the wit and energy to kick over the traces. If you make a claim, you tend to find that, when renewal time comes round, the underwriters decline cover: the time-honoured mutual risk-sharing principle of the insurance industry is a dead letter in these post-Thatcherite times. Well, being for the time being a time-served and active member of the geriatric delinquent tendency, I'm not having it, OK? And I expect, if I'm spared, to be telling you the same story next year.
That's not the only cage I've been rattling today. I've been round to pester our hedge-trimming man, who has been busy the last week or so sawing up trees that fell across drives, sheds, croquet lawns, orangeries etc during the recent little zephyr. Hoping to see him next week.
Not immune ourselves to harrassment, I got a snottygram yesterday from the neighbour in Another Place about the lack of progress on repairing the end wall. Given that we have had the fragile bits of rendering taken off, hence that there is no longer an immediate risk to his roof, I'm getting seriously close to telling him: MYOFB. The essence of his comments is to bad-mouth our builder (of which I'm perfectly capable myself, le cas échéant) because we declined to use his preferred man.
I slapped some paint around yesterday, and am consequently a shade less anxious about the piece I've been asked to do, which involves a complex task of perspective and lighting. Version 1, on canvas, is somewhat stalled, but what I'm learning in the course of Version 2 might help me to get it flying again. Version 2, (on paper, since the complex perspective and detail dictated a preliminary pencil drawing) is beginning to take shape. I might have a crack at a Version 3 while we're closer to the subject next week, though the brevity of the visit may dictate otherwise. On verra.
1 comment:
Insurance companies hold all the cards though. Even if you are a paid up member of the 'I'm not standing for that' brigade, if you've had a claim then it's hard to switch to someone else for less. And if that claim included the word 'subsidence' in it (however wrong that description might have been) then, even if that claim was over 10 years ago, most companies will refuse to quote and if they do give you a price you'd better be sure you are sitting down when you read it.
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