The insurance policy won’t cover me!

Can you please help me here.

I bought a television last year around June. Around December, while I was at work, two unknown men came to my house and told my son that his mom told them to come and collect the TV for repair.

I reported it to Broadhurst Police and they provided me with a police report and I submitted it to the store. After that they gave me a letter telling me that their insurance doesn’t cover that kind of theft. So, I have to continue paying the instalments. Is this fair?

No, it’s certainly not fair. But it is the way these things work.

When you buy things on hire purchase, the deal usually includes an insurance policy that covers you against the theft or destruction of the goods you’re buying. However, there are several problems with these policies.

Firstly, they’re incredibly expensive, often several times more expensive than a normal household insurance policy you could get for yourself from an insurance company. It’s always better to get your own policy and then use that to cover any goods you buy from the store. The store is required to allow you to do this.

Secondly, there are restrictions hidden in the small print of the policy that it seems they forgot, or chose not to tell you about. One of them is that the insurance against theft usually says that it only covers theft when there’s a break-in, when there’s been forceable entry. It doesn’t cover the sort of con that you experienced.

And then there’s the final problem, the final insult. You do still need to continue paying the instalments, even though you don’t have the television any longer. That’s because it’s what it says in the agreement you signed.