Not careless enough for cover

My friend had parked on our small drive beneath a wall with a lip separating his car from a piece of rough garden. I had specifically asked him to park there as I thought it would protect the car while I cut the grass behind the wall with a strimmer.

Unfortunately it appears that the strimmer lifted some form of missile, probably a small stone, which shattered the rear onside passenger window. Mortified by the incident, I arranged for the window to be replaced at the earliest opportunity at a cost of £325.

My insurer is Policy Expert Home Premier and the cover I have is home insurance – buildings and contents, which includes both garden cover and visitor’s personal effects, each to a limit of £1,000. My personal excess is £100. Why then will the insurer not pay up? AB, WILTS

Your insurer said the replacement window was not covered.

Your friend’s motor insurer told him that, were he to make a claim, he would be subject to his policy’s excess and a claim would also affect his noclaims discount.

Your insurer responded that your friend could attempt a claim against his motor insurance for your insurer to reimburse his insurers.

However, Policy Expert came back to me saying that, if your friend’s motor insurer attempted a recovery, it would fall under the liability section of your household policy. It said, “The liability element covers an individual if they are to blame for damage or injury. For a claim to be successful under the liability section of a policy, a policyholder would need to have behaved in a negligent way. However, from our review of the circumstances, we cannot hold Mr B negligent in any way. In fact, Mr B himself confirms he took steps to protect the visitor’s car by

asking them to park beneath the wall on the drive.”

You toyed for a while about taking this further but in the end decided not to.

either. So I requested, to simplify things, that it close the account as, clearly, it is not easy to manage with no communication. I wrote about this again and still have had no reply. TA, SUFFOLK

You wanted me to arrange for you to be able to deal with Post Office Money via the local post office counter to close the account, in which there were only a few pounds. The Post Office says it is not possible to close an account in this way.

Its spokesman added, “Unfortunately, our customer had sent correspondence to an address that is no longer in use, so we did not receive his original request to close his savings account. The customer did also try to contact our customer service centre, but unfortunately was not able to provide all the necessary security details, which meant we were unable to assist him on the call.

“When the customer emailed us, he provided

details of an account which had been closed in 2015, which led to some confusion – and when we tried to speak to our customer to clarify this, he was not able to speak to us.

“We were only able to identify the correct account details for the customer from the information provided in the customer’s correspondence to Telegraph Money and, as per the customer’s wishes, we have now closed the account and returned the remaining balance to him via cheque.

“We apologise that this has taken some time, but we needed the correct information before we were able to sort this out for our customer.”

Without giving the right details it is impossible to have an account closed.