Personal insurance advice urgently needed for full timing

[Vixter]

Help! We are now Full Timing in our substancial, middle-aged Clou Liner. We overcame the problems of buying secondhand in Germany, MOT-ing, registering, taxing and insuring Big Brian, but we have just discovered that we have NO insurance cover for our personal posessions!! Our motor insurance is for the vehicle and up to £3000 of motorhome equipment, NOT our personal bits and bobs. Our house is being let unfurnished, so we only insure the building, we don't need contents cover because our furniture is in storage. We already have medical insurance. I have tried to tack on personal posessions to our motor insurance - no joy there. The agent who deals with our house (building) insurance cannot help either. I even phoned Norwich Union direct and asked the question - you can guess the answer. There HAS to be some way of getting cover for our posessions - any suggestions?

[michele]

have you a barclay card or a Credit card that would not help. Sorry this is probably not much help. Have you considered swopping your MH insurance to a company that will do the lot's ie personal possessions ?

[Mel E]

Most of the leading motorhome insurance brokers that advertise in MMM will add personal possessions to the motorhome policy - indeed, many of the better policies already include an amount (usually insufficient) for personal items, but the amount is usually extendable. Try Bakers, Comfort and Safeguard, for starters.

[Vixter]

We were grateful to get cover at all, Bakers of Cheltenham were great - big motorhome, 365 days cover etc, can't change now!

[michele]

Vixter Sorry are you saying what I think you are saying (ie The other companies said no so you ended up with Bakers and obviously that's where you have to stay but they cannot insure your personal possession's If so where ever you are now Can you not insure in that country ?

[johnsandywhite]

:-D Hi Vixter. We have been Full-Timing for 6 years now. We have never had any personal effects, medical or any other kind of insurance apart from the Motorhome. We must have saved enough to buy all that may have been stolen by now. Just a thought. ;-)

[Brian Kirby]

[QUOTE]johnsandywhite - 2006-08-04 5:38 PM :-D Hi Vixter. We have been Full-Timing for 6 years now. We have never had any personal effects, medical or any other kind of insurance apart from the Motorhome. We must have saved enough to buy all that may have been stolen by now. Just a thought. ;-)[/QUOTE]

Sorry to go off topic, but what do you use for internet/e-mail access, and does it work abroad?

[johnsandywhite]

:-D Up until going over to the USA. We have always used a Nokia Mobile Phone (pay-as-you-go) and Data suite. Mainly for emails. While we were in the USA we used Wifi. We hope to use that more in Europe. ;-) We have never had a problem anywhere we have been in Europe with connection. We also buy a P-A-G sim chip in Spain. We have used both Vodaphone and the Movistar chips in France, Germany and Holland. ;-) BTW. I also have OnSpeed. Which speeds up the connection. (lol)

[Brian Kirby]

Thanks

I take it the mobile was used as a modem for a laptop? 

What is your approx connection speed, please?  I ask because I experimented with a mobile a few years back and it was painfully slow and very expensive.  I assume you don't find this? 

I also had a number of problems with accessing e-mails since the e-mail transmissions were identified (correctly) by the networks as data transmissions, and some blocked/couldn't handle these.  Is this a thing of the past?

Finally, I had difficulty with ISP access from abroad, and had to phone the UK number for access.  It was a dial up, however!  Are you able to connect to a UK broadband service?  If so, I'd love to know which and how.

Thanks, and apologies for all the questions!

[johnsandywhite]

:-D Hi Brian. I had no problems with data using the Mobile phone as the Modem both here and in Europe. Yes it was painfully slow. Supposed to be 9600 but more like 800 to 1200bps. But it was adequate for emails and the odd surfing. OnSpeed helps quite a bit. It was not expensive on P-A-Y-G using it in the evenings and weekends mainly. WAP and GPRS are much faster. But Wifi beats the lot. We were using it for phoning the UK and within the USA with Voipbuster (FREE for most calls). ;-)

[Vixter]

To keep this thread going... I have an Insurance Agent looking for me, two days later & still no luck In theory, ANYTHING can be insured - just HOW, I need to know In desperation, Vixter

[Brian Kirby]

Have you tried Comfort insurance?  The advertise in MMM.  I have found them excellent and helpful to deal with.  You'd probably need to switch your 'van to them, but their offering can be extended to allow 365 day overseas cover for the 'van, and you can enhance aspects of the cover against additional premium.  I believe this includes personal effects.  If it's the onlyone you can find you'll just have to apologise to your present insurer, and cancel.  You should get a refund, possibly not full, but of that gets you what you need, and you can' get it elsewhere, I guess you'll just have to chalk it up to experience!