FOOL'S EYE VIEW
Beware Of The Small Print

By Jane Mack (TMFJane)
September 10, 2002

Rowan Atkinson is probably most famous these days for Blackadder and Mr Bean but long before he made his name as someone unimpressed by cunning plans or as the man of many faces and no conversation, he used to do a rather good live stand-up comedy show.

I saw it once and remember, in particular, a rather amusing song he did called "That's Why I Hate the French". For some reason it sprang to mind on Sunday morning when we discovered that our car had been broken into on the last day of what had been until then, a rather wonderful holiday. We were in Calais, you see.

I'm not quite sure why the opportunist thief missed the vast quantities of tobacco and cigarettes that were packed in a box underneath a rather nice leather jacket nor do I understand why he nicked four bottles of Frexinet Cava when there was real champagne to be found in the suitcase. But I suppose when you've spotted a sizeable cardboard box containing nearly £1,000 worth of CDs, then you haven't really got the ability to scarper with much else.

Well, when you're spending a fortnight in a little cottage in the Ardennes, you need a lot of music, don't you?

Never mind, I said to my husband. We've got travel insurance so we'll be able to replace them. In theory!

First things first – phone the insurance company's 24-hour emergency hotline to find out what to do. No answer. Phone again. No answer. Phone again. No answer. I tried seven times and was only finally able to get through four hours later when we hit Maidstone.

(I've heard that insurance companies will do anything they can to avoid paying out but not answering the phone is taking things a bit too far, don't you think?)

Anyway, we had a vague idea that, in order to make a claim on our insurance, we had to report the smashed window and the theft to the police so off we toddled to the local Gendarmerie. Mais, non, said the nice gendarme. Allez à la police en Angleterre. Are you sure, I said? Mais, oui, he said.

Five hours later we walked into our local police station back at home to be told that they couldn't deal with anything outside the Thames Valley. Great!

It's not that we expect them to do anything, of course. It's just that the insurance company say they require a written police report as some sort of proof that the incident happened. The fact that the car insurance people have repaired the window isn't apparently enough.

Anyway, they've sent us a claim form and have suggested that we send a covering letter explaining why there's no police report. I suppose we can also enclose the photos we took of the smashed window in the passenger door and the gap left by the missing box of our favourite CDs. And they can have the phone number of the manageress of the hotel we stayed in so she can confirm that we dragged her outside to the car so she could be a witness. It was her, after all, who told us the car would be perfectly safe where it was parked. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to provide them with the original purchase receipts for each of the 84 CDs we lost!

I have, naturally, re-read the insurance policy – all 19 pages of it – to see how else they're going to get out of re-imbursing us and I'm just puzzling over the bit that states that we are not covered for...

d) more than £100 in total for Personal Effects stolen from an unattended motor vehicle between the hours of 9pm and 8am or, if the theft occurs at any other time of day, unless the vehicle is being used to travel between different points of overnight accommodation.

The theft occurred during the night so presumably that means we're not covered. Or does it? We were overnighting in Calais so maybe that means we are covered.

And regarding that police report, the policy states that we're not covered for:

b) loss or theft of Valuables, Personal Money, Passport and any item valued over £100 unless reported to the Police within 24 hours of discovering the loss and a written report obtained.

Hmmm... does that mean we don't actually need a police report after all seeing as each individual CD can hardly be described as a 'Valuable' and each one was worth less than £100? If you can figure it out then, for Heaven's Sake, please let me know on the General Insurance discussion board, would you?

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