Hi, Myles, I agree with your position, as such, totally. The best
insurance is probably the care and commonsense of the owner.
There is a snag though. It assumes a level playing field that does not
generally exist.
Insurers are known (according to news reports and TV documentaries) to
allocate claims on the basis of percentage. That is, it is nothing to do
with the validity of the claim, it is do do with the total insured
amount being claimed in a particular month. If too high, some claims
will have to be refused irrespective of validity. and there seems to be
statistically in such cases to be no customer loyalty consideration, so,
you can throw thousands of bucks in premiums at the insurers over as
many years as you please, and they will still try to deny the claim, if
they choose to. They have the money, they have control. And for medium
sized claims, they can just delay, causing the insured to have a large
legal bill that ends up larger than the claim if care is not taken. The
claim then gets settled as the lesser of 2 evils.
If I had a high value boat, I would be trying to make the odds go in my
favour. Presumably, they will choose excuses that stand a better chance
of being uncontested. I am sure that if my house burned down, and I had
a propane bottle stored in the basement, then the claim would, initially
at least, even if the ignition source was known and unrelated to the
propane bottle, be refused, whereas if a neighbours house with no
propane bottle burned down in the same month, the claim might go through
OK.
It might be that the best way would be a halfway deal, and try to avoid
having items that will give them an excuse. I can't see a windmill being
a problem, as they are in common use, so you could contest refusal to
pay, on the basis of that same common use. But say you fitted a coal
fired boiler, it would probably be prudent to get their approval in
writing ahead of time.
Maybe with an electric drive, you could try to get reduced premiums.
My 2 cents
John
1.4. Re: Portable generators
Posted by: "Myles Twete" matwete@comcast.net electric_barge_boat
Date: Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:46 am ((PDT))
Do people really contact their insurer every time they modify their car,
their boat or their house?
Imagine if each insured did so for each mod.
The relationship between my boat insurer and myself is frankly my own
business.
They only know that the hull is a wooden home-built hull and that the
boat
is powered by an outboard motor and that the stated value is whatever it
is----and the fact that I've probably given them $2200 over the last
14yrs
and had not a single claim. There has been no conversation as to how
it's
actually powered other than an outboard-could be diesel, gas or
electric---they didn't care. They've never asked to see design docs on
the
hull construction, never asked to see that it was wired to meet ABYC.
I didn't contact them when I added a 400watt wind mill (now removed) or
when
I converted the boat to electric, replaced or reconfigured the battery
bank,
swapped the ADC electric motor for an ETEK, changed controllers, added a
Link10, bring a 2nd power supply on board or on the rare occasion when I
bring my Honda genset onboard and for longer trips, an extra 2-gal of
fuel.
I won't be contacting them when some day I swap out the lead-acid pack
for
lithium batteries and the last thing I expect to ever do is contact the
Coast Guard regarding any of this. Would you call your insurance agent
or
the police if you installed a cruise controller on your car?
--
http://www.fastmail.fm - Or how I learned to stop worrying and
love email again
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