I had an unfortunate experience with my US health insurer, years ago--just giving this as an example of what can happen with insurance. I was out to lunch, and had ordered a salad with chicken, and I began to choke on something in the salad, probably a small bit of chicken bone. Fortunately there was an crew of ambulance paramedics at lunch who came to my aid! I sought medical treatment anyway right away to make sure I was OK--which I seemed to be. Months later, my insurance company denied coverage for my annual PAP smear, saying I had a pre-existing condition. When I asked for an explanation, I was told that due to choking on a chicken bone I now had some kind of gynocological condition (!) that prevented them from covering my PAP smear.

Mind, I am no biologist, but even I could reason out that there was NO possible connection between a chicken bone choking incident and a routine wellness check...yanno, the knee bone connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to ...etc....I made a complaint to the insurance oversight administration, who wrote a scathing letter to the insurance company, who promptly decided indeed they should cover the test after all...

Moral of the story: was the person handling insurance claims that dim? Its hard to imagine. Were they hoping I would not insist on coverage and just let it go? If enough of these small bills are not covered by payouts from the company, it probably adds up to a large sum. Its hard to know what the motivation or cause was for the denial, but since then I have looked askance at insurance company coverage and always inquired to get in writing reasons for denials of payment.

They're far from dim. They have "Avoidance" departments dedicated to comparing your claim against the small print and using creative licence where necessary to make sure they don't have to pay out. As Olivia says, the biggest con of all is medical insurance which is extremely difficult to get a successful claim on (only one in 5 claims ever succeeds). Basically, if you went to the doctor as a child with, say a cough, they would use this as grounds to saying that you were pre-disposed to having a lung condition as an adult and not pay out if you got ill that way (as a friend of mine found out). Suffice to say, I'll not bother with helath insurance, thank you.

It wouldn't be as profitable as it is if they paid out to everyone that deserved it. No wonder people are so cynical.

Also had my laptop stolen last month when my flat was burgled and I was kicking myself for not being insured. The burglars had got in through an open bathroom window at night and my flatmate was asleep in his room at the time! Would insurers have paid out though if I had been insured??

the same happened to me when someone stole money from my room.

I am with Endsleigh. Whilst I was at the gym I had my keys, mobile, wallet, and car stolen. The car was recovered but I lost everything else. The laptop that was in the boot was not recovered - this belonged to the university. Their insurance excess was £1000 so I was VERY lucky they replaced it (they have too much money at the moment!)

Fortunately, I back up my work every day to a memory stick; however this was stolen too! However, I did make a DVD backup a few days earlier and kept it at the university.

The biggest loss, though, was a database which resided on my C drive, I did not realise it was not being backed up. It had all my notes about the papers I have read, perhaps 85-100 of them.

Every day I still suffer inconvenience from this. I still have not had my car back because Endsleigh are SO slow to authorise the repairs - all it needs is new locks/keys. We need the car for a family holiday so I have had to give the garage the go-ahead myself and hope that they agree to it.

The lessons I learned were:

• When the insurance renewal comes up, look around ... don't just go with Endsleigh.
• Do a daily backup which is kept in a different place to the laptop.
• Make sure everything is being backed up.
• Don't leave laptops in a car boot. This means I will have to drive into town, use the gym, drive back home again to collect the laptop, then drive back into town to catch the train to uni, what joy...
• You can't trust lockers in leisure centres.

Our office was burgled yesterday; phones were taken from handbags.

Security were brilliant and took all the details, and said we would be entitled to a new, digital lock on the door. But bloody pen-pushers in the admin office have refused on grounds that fitting new locks is "too expensive". As opposed to replacing stolen stuff?

Gah.

Here's an interesting tit tip bit that I picked up from a lady pal that works for the Police. When your Insurance company contacts the Police re your incident (say a burglary) all they get is the Crime Number. Nothing else. No other details. So whatever you tell the Police isn't passed on. If the Insurance company tries to make out that it knows all the details that the Police took they're fibbing. One to bear in mind when you're next thinking of committing Insurance fraud (now where's that canoe).