laptop insurance new for old

Hi,

Just looking for some advice on a claim that has been accepted by my house insurance provider.

My laptopwater split on it while it was in the house. The laptop was an IBM t41, model 1gb ram 40gb hard drive. The insurance provider arranged collection of laptop and sent it to a third party laptop repair company for evaluation. They said it was a dead duck.

The insurance company got back to me and said they were happy to pay out on this. So that was good, but they said they checked online and said 700 would be what a similiar model would cost now.

They said they got this figure from laptopsdirect.

So i checked laptop direct and found the model most similiar to mine is

a Thank pad t61 which comes in at 1191.28

Im an IT developer so a crappy laptop is no good to me.

I told them this and they said my laptop was 2+ years old and they not going to replace it with the model above.

My policy is new for old.

I am happy that they are going to pay out as it was my own fault, but on the other hand this is why i pay house insurance.

Do i tell them that i want the laptop replaced with this model or what approach should i take.

Remember you are not entitled to "Betterment", Insurers have to reinstate you in the position you were in before, if technology has moved on, this is not a major consideration for your insurer.

In seconds I found T60's which are closer to what you have than a T61 - cost? €690 incl. VAT for the lowest spec, which still exceeds your T41 - you're being a bit greedy...

Correct. What put me off here, was the fact i contacted lenovo and they told me t61 was the one i should get as a recent replacement for my one.

I purchased the T61 if i was greedy i would have settled for lesser model and benefited from claim, but i just wanted a replacement for the one i lost which at its time was a good spec machine. insurance company were very good they said the t61 was a new model and in line with my polciy so they paid for it. Would your good self have being happy to settle for the lesser model? i doubt it.

But now is now , not at the time....

The specs are what matters , not that is was a top model then.... if you insured a Playstation 2 a few years back and it got damanged would you expect a new Playstation 3 now ?

New for old does not mean "higher spec because technology has moved on". If you want a higher spec model then contribute the extra towards it. The insurers are putting you in the exact position you were in before the loss (i.e. Indemnifying you) which is the purpose of insurance.
With the cheaper model you have lost nothing, gained nothing. Again that is the purpose of insurance.

reddeagle said:

Correct. What put me off here, was the fact i contacted lenovo and they told me t61 was the one i should get as a recent replacement for my one.

I purchased the T61 if i was greedy i would have settled for lesser model and benefited from claim, but i just wanted a replacement for the one i lost which at its time was a good spec machine. insurance company were very good they said the t61 was a new model and in line with my polciy so they paid for it. Would your good self have being happy to settle for the lesser model? i doubt it.

Click to expand...

well I'm typing this on a dual core T60 with 2.5 gigs of RAM at the moment, I don't feel a need to rush out and upgrade my home machine from my Latitude D820, or ask my employer to replace this machine...

reddeagle said:

settle for the lesser model? i doubt it.

Click to expand...

Incidentially, the T series has gone significantly downhill since Lenovo took over fully, so an IBM badged T60 is a better quality laptop than a full lenovo T61.