Having taken a look at the attitudes of their home insurance customers Legal and General found that many prefer to throw broken items away rather than repair them.
Asked about electrical items like MP3 players and DVDs, 46 percent of those surveyed said they would throw it away if it stopped working. Slightly more worrying was the fact that 12 percent of people in the Legal and General study said they would throw an electrical item away if the fuse had blown.
On the one hand these results suggest we are throwing away perfectly serviceable items, though many small electrical items are very difficult to repair now, with manufacturers themselves recommending replacement rather than repair. Legal and General will usually replace electrical items that are claimed for on a home insurance policy since they follow the manufacturers guidelines.
Get a quote for Legal and General home insurance at Moneygossip.co.uk.
A fascinating fact about the music festival season is that three out of four people attending them lose possessions while there according to Zurich Insurance.
The study carried out by Zurich found that the typical value of items taken to music festivals by people is over GBP260. The most commonly taken possessions include mobile phones, cameras and MP3 players. The majority of items that go missing are simply left behind, in tents or in bags, with only 10 percent of them being stolen.
Good advice from Zurich Insurance is for festivalgoers to check with their home contents insurer that they will be covered at the festival they are attending. This way at least the financial aspect of losing personal possessions will be dealt with.
According to Sainsburys Bank around 20 percent of UK homeowners are planning major changes to the structure of their properties in the next 12 months, though how many of them realise they should tell their insurer is another matter.
Around a third of those planning their home improvements were nor aware that their insurer should be made aware of the changes. Logically it makes sense since home insurance uses the information provided by the owner to determine the policy cost. If someone then adds on a new kitchen and conservatory for example the insurance company, be it Sainsburys Bank or another, would need to know the changes to make sure they are insured.
It is perhaps easy to forget about home insurance, said a Sainsburys Bank spokesman, since it is not visible and covers the house, but property changes really can change the value of the property and the amount it needs to be insured for. For this reason property owners should advise their insurer of the changes and save themselves problems in the future.