Home insurance, lightning damage ?

Mountainsandh

Hi all, we had the (electrical) storm pretty bad on Monday, and we must have got hit by lightning as our satellite (Sky), internet, phone line, and solar panels' box are all gone. A house fuse was gone, but even now it's fixed, nothing's working.
We're not sure about internet and phone yet, hoping that it might be a line fault for phone, and a problem from the provider's side for the internet, but we haven't had any news from either since Monday when we reported the faults.
We're going to upgrade Sky anyway, so hopefully shouldn't pay too much for that. We're hoping to have our plumber in soon to look at the solar panel box.

We haven't rung the insurance yet, wondering will it cover the costs, and should we keep the old "boxes" (router, etc...) in case they want to inspect them ?

Thanks

Keith186

You should ring them straight away, there might even be a claim condition that you have 24 hours to notify them. It will state this in your policy. I;d ring them sooner rather than later to be on the safe side.

You should keep the old items as proof. The Ins co. will most likely send an inspector to check that damage actually occurred. Inspector will send report to ins co then you get the cheque if it's all in order.

Mountainsandh

Thanks for the reply Keith 186. I think we might not claim after all. I bought a router for 50 euros and it's working, Vodaphone is due to call in, hopefully we won't have to pay a bomb, we're going to upgrade the Skybox and thus avail of a promotion, and the solar panel box is not as expensive as we thought, so hopefully, it won't cost too much overall.
Still going to keep all the old boxes for now, just in case.

We're going to try and get surge protection for all the "pluggable" bits now as well, we're in a pretty exposed area.

kkelliher

For the record it is covered by all insurance policies under the Fire, Lightning earthquake and explosion insured risk.

the corpo

Just out of curiosity, I had a Playstation destroyed by the lightning strike last week. It'll cost abou 300 or so to replace, but is there any point making a relatively small claim like that on house insurance?

coylemj

the corpo wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, I had a Playstation destroyed by the lightning strike last week. It'll cost abou 300 or so to replace, but is there any point making a relatively small claim like that on house insurance?

Probably not, they will recoup the cash in increased premiums over the next few years during which you won't be able to move to another company because nobody will quote you after a recent claim, it's how motor and house insurance works. Effectively you have to cover yourself for small claims like yours.

the corpo

Aye, and I forgot about the excess too. bah!