Posts tagged home insurance
Mind where you Tweet…
Feb 22nd
Everyone loves social networking, and whether it’s twitter (we’re @adrianflux), facebook, or one of the other myriad social sites out there we are becoming a nation obsessed with the connectivity that the web 2.0 era has brought us.
But there are hidden dangers, and a Dutch student, called Barry Borsbroom, has recently highlighted the dangers of Geotagging your social posts.
Geotagging is where you allow your phone, computer or other device to share your current location with the web service using GPS, allowing your friends, and others to pinpoint where you are at any moment in time. While many applications are relatively benign, and companies as big as Google have jumped on the bandwagon with Latitude, there are circumstances in which this information can be used for less than savoury purposes.
Barry’s site is called PleaseRobMe, and he has created it using feeds from the popular third party Twitter ‘game’ FourSquare, where players accumulate points by tweeting locations that they are visiting and finding locations tagged by other players. No, I don’t get what the point of that is either, but grown men and women are doing this.
What Barry realised is that players, having set a ‘home’ location have given you all the information you need in order to rob them, including the data on where they are now, and how far from home they are. Some are clearly on extended vacations, based on their location updates. Not only that, but a browse through past Tweets will invariably yield useful info about their domestic situation, and lifestyle – all helpful to career burglars.
And with tools like Google Streetview available too, the crims could even ‘case the joint’ virtually.
So always think twice before sharing information online, otherwise you could get a nasty surprise when you get back home to find your home ransacked. Not only that, but, assuming you have home contents insurance (and you really, really should) you’ll be paying increased premiums for years to come.
There’s no need to be unduly worried, but you should always consider who gets access to the data you are sharing. Google isn’t going to rob you, your friends probably aren’t either. But making personal data public could well be a game of Russian Roulette.
Brilliant Insurance Ads
Sep 12th
If only the ads in the UK were as good as these, from Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer of Appeldoorn. Why can’t Churchill, Admiral and Hastings come up with anything remotely as entertaining as these?
"A Direct Line to your wallet"
Mar 17th
That was the headline in the Guardian on Saturday, where Direct Line were lambasted for charging some fellow a much higher rate for his insurance renewal than they were quoting if he had been a new customer.
On the face of it, it looks quite bad by Direct Line. They quoted him a price of £551 when a new customer would have been offered £173. There’s no getting away from the fact that Mr Robert King, 55, is paying too much for his home insurance.
But looking more closely at the story, I can’t help but feel that Mr King is at least partly responsible for his own misfortune here. He’s been with the company for 10 years and in all that time has never compared his home insurance renewal quotes until now. Says he, “I know the advice is to shop around for the best quote,” and so he should, being an accountant.
Funnily enough, on the way in this morning I saw a large billboard from Direct Line promising their renewal premiums for car insurance would not rise in year two. There is a rather vague disclaimer stating that ANY change to your details or your policy will invalidate the guarantee. So 3 speeding points, and a claim (both specifically mentioned) but remember that your guarantee is also worthless if you change cars, jobs, annual mileage, named drivers, postcode – anything really – and it doesn’t matter if the risk goes up or down. I wonder what the percentage of drivers is where no details at all change year on year.
At least they’ve got happy customers supporting them all the way and making supportive videos. Oh, no wait a minute…
Apparently, Mr Daz feels a bit aggrieved with the way Direct Line have treated him.
Norwich Union’s Indian Merry Go Round
Jan 31st
Poor old Norwich Union. It seems that once again their desire to shift as many jobs to Madras as possible has landed them with trouble.
Now it seems that they’ve been forced to move back a few jobs to Norwich, because their Indian household claims staff didn’t understand “cultural differences”. Particular mention has been made of the ‘graduate level’ staff not knowing what an immersion heater does. Presumably, given the rather drastic steps taken, there was no possibility of them being trained either. I suppose they don’t teach basic plumbing and heating on Eastenders.
James Evans, NU’s Media Relations Director, was in forthright mood:
“What we do as a company is see what works and see what we could do better. At the end of the day we don’t want to annoy customers, who we want it to be a good experience for. If something doesn’t work, there’s no point persevering with it.”
But they’re still offshoring another 1,000 jobs to India this year, despite the fact that their own research revealed 51% of their customers were ‘appalled’ by overseas call centres. Now that’s what I call listening to your customers!
If you want to be sure that your home insurance to be handled by someone who isn’t confused by the massive cultural differences between home heating systems, then you could do worse than give us a call on 0800 089 0203, where all of our staff are still based in Norfolk, and know all about household insurance matters. Some of them even watch Eastenders.