Hi Brett,
Fair point about call center staff at Insurance companies...but it is not appropriate that due to their unintentional illadvise someone could end up with wrong policy is it & being advised over the phone you won't be able to prove advise given... at the claim time as well.... That's why i think policy documents should be as basic as could to be avoid any queries/confusion.....
Brett, for the strata titled unit for above mentioned AAMI policy wat's best way to find how much contents cover required, any suggestion/tips...
i wonder if similar sort of fact sheet is available for VCAT (Victoria).
It's absolutely not fair, but not an easy one to solve. Remember when they legislated that all policy wording had to now be "Plain English" wordings. Yeah right. They are probably better than they were, but still written by lawyers and unfortunately far from what most people would consider Plain English.
That said, they are not easy to write as if there is anything ambiguous it will at the end of the day favour the Insured, hence they (lawyers) need to cover it off in the most detail possible. I know everyone believes that Insurers will do anything to get out of a claim, which can have some merit, however it's also true that there are a huge number of people that will try to exploit insurance policies and get paid for things that they shouldn't, so you end up with this vicious circle.
If everyone on both sides were honest and fair it would be a whole lot easier, but that's never going to happen.
In regard to how much contents, unless you can absolutely determine what you need to cover and for how much and ensure that doesn't change during the life of the policy, personally I would always opt for a policy that includes "up to" a sum insured that would more than cover it. For an unfurnished property the "up to $50,000" that is included in numerous landlord policies (not just ours) should be easily sufficient. This way you don't have to work it out exactly and there is no risk of "overinsuring".
In our case, if there is a claim for something that we consider "should"
be covered by the Body Corporate insurance (such as a kitchen), we would get you to give us a copy of the decline letter. This way it becomes possible for us to include items that may not have been covered by the Body Corporate for one reason or another.