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Problems with insurance for your home and belongings?

Date published: 21 March 2025 Contents insurance : Category Gadget insurance : Category Home insurance : Category

Find out more about the types of complaint we’ve seen about insurance that covers your home, contents or gadget insurance. We share our top tips to avoid problems and how we can help if you have a complaint about your insurer.

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Having trouble with an insurance claim? You might be unhappy with the payout you've been offered after making a claim, or your claim might've been turned down altogether. 

If you feel your insurer has treated you unfairly, you can ask us to investigate your complaint. 

Before you buy insurance

  • If you're planning to buy insurance – such as content, gadget or buildings insurance – you should always:

    Check the small print

    Always check the small print and the terms and conditions of your policy. Know what’s covered, what isn’t, and for what’s expected from you. Just because something isn't excluded doesn't mean you're automatically covered.

    Review the policy terms before renewal

    A renewed policy is a new contract of insurance. The policy being proposed may have changed, and so might your circumstances. So, check you have the cover you need, including revisiting the level of cover you need.

    Know what’s actually covered

    Buildings and contents insurance aren’t the same. Buildings insurance covers the structure of your home whereas contents insurance covers the cost of repairing or replacing the items in your home, and sometimes those items while they’re away from your home. Gadget insurance can cover things like theft, loss and accidental damage to your device (including when it’s away from your home). Check your policy to know what’s covered. 

How we can help

Sometimes things can go wrong when you buy insurance or make a claim. If you feel your insurer has treated you unfairly, you should complain to them first.

If you’re not happy with their response and want to take your complaint further, we may be able to help.

Here are some examples of complaints we’ve seen and how we’ve helped. They'll give you an idea of how we look at complaints and – when we have – what happened next.

  • Sadia got a new phone. Sadia’s mum bought the phone for her, but Sadia paid the bills and it was linked to her email address. 

    Unfortunately, the phone was stolen. But when Sadia made a claim on her mobile phone insurance policy, her insurer turned down the claim. The insurer said the phone was owned by her mother. The insurer said Sadia had to own the phone she was making a claim for. 

    Sadia didn’t think this was fair, so she complained to the insurer but remained unhappy when they wouldn’t change their mind. 

    What happened next? 

    Sadia got in touch with us and asked us to look into what had happened. Overall, after we reviewed the details, we didn’t think the insurer had treated Sadia fairly, and asked it to reconsider Sadia’s claim. 

    Read the full case study

  • Mohammed took out a new home insurance policy, which allowed him to cover individual valuable items. One of these was his wife’s gold bracelet. He got it valued and told the insurer how much it was worth.

    A few years later, the bracelet went missing, and Mohammed made a claim to get it replaced. The insurer assessed the claim and found that the cost of replacing the bracelet was nearly double what Mohammed had stated years before. So, the insurer offered to pay Mohammed the value he had originally put down. 

    Mohammad didn’t think this was fair. He felt the insurer should cover the full value of the bracelet. 

    What happened next? 

    Mohammed got in touch with us and asked us to look into what had happened. After a thorough investigation, we felt the insurer was acting fairly and in line with the terms and conditions of his policy. 

    Read the full case study

Bringing your complaint to us

Our service is free and easy to use.  

When you bring a complaint to us, we’ll listen to both sides and weigh up all the facts such as the policy’s terms and conditions. After we’ve finished investigating, we’ll tell you what we think and explain how we reached our decision. 

If we think the insurer treated you unfairly, we’ll tell them to put you back where you’d be if they hadn’t made a mistake. We might also ask them to make an award for any distress and inconvenience caused. 

Bring your complaint to us