On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 Spider wrote:

My neighbour's old tree fell over and damaged my fence. It was not
windy and the 30-foot tree's roots had obviously rotted and gone. How
should I proceed with getting my fence repaired?

1. Get my neighbour to fix it?
2. Claim on my buildings insurance. In this case should I get his
insurance details so my insurance company can recover costs from his
company? How do i recover my £100 excess? Will my premium increase as
a result of my claim?

I would advise a preliminary chat with your insurance company, who deal
with these things all the time. You *will* need to talk to your
neighbour, of course, but knowing where you stand regarding insurance
cover must help with that. If our tree had damaged our neighbour's
fence, we would have approached them immediately with offers of help or
invoked our insurance cover. Alas, not everyone has an easy
relationship with their neighbours. If you have, don't risk souring
it; you still have to live with them.

The danger with mentioning it to an insurance company is that they keep
it on record and increase the premium anyway even if you don't make a
claim. It happened to me. It took several weeks and several phone calls
to get it removed.

It was Saga if I remember correctly. They also increased my car
insurance from £400 to £700 after making a claim seven years ago even
though I had insurance protection and it was a no fault accident. When I
complained they said that it was because of a general increase in
premiums. That really was a "saga" which went on for about four months
and about a dozen sides of A4.

I went to another company.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK
http://rance.org.uk