I have been burglarized many times in up and down scale neighborhoods. The thieves would break the window, the lock, what ever, take what ever they wanted regardless of the beeping thing on the door, or any prevention measures we had taken, and I still had to call the insurance company etc., but also -- fix the window, door or whatever. So, when we moved to France and heard about all the burglaries, we decided we would be very careful. Here, they put steel shutters on all the windows of their houses, iron railings and surround themselves by 6-8 foot walls. Why you ask? Not because the thieves are so prevalent, oh yes, there are thieves, but because the insurance industry insists on all of these items in order to honor the insurance policy. Do they tell you that up front? No....
Let me back up. When we moved here, my realtor was very concerned that despite being surrounded by the locked front door/wall and the extra thick glass on the front door, etc. we didn't have every inch of the house covered with shutters. She called the real estate company who said it was ok, the house passed some kind of inspection. We bought our renter's insurance and that was that.
Then, on the night of Easter Sunday, we were one of several homes in the hood that were burglarized. Pat was sleeping on the couch when the thieves came in, took my purse and his cell phone and wallet (note - the blinking light on your cell phone is a beacon to a thief in the night). How did they get in? Well, we had not locked the front door because the lock was sticking and well we didn't. But Pat was asleep not 3 feet away from the door. Did I mention he sleeps like a rock?
Anyway, fast forward, we get a police report, they say, "no break-in, you didn't lock the door." The insurance company says we don't cover anything that isn't a break-in. We said, we were home, the front door (to the street) was locked, the thieves climbed the wall, we should be covered. So we try to contest it. The insurance company said they don't believe that we have a wall around our house, and so they will come and look. It takes them 7 weeks to provide us with an appointment to examine the wall around our house.
Their conclusion is - because we don't have shutters on every window, and the front door with it's 4" glass and amazing new lock does not have a 3 point restraint lock, and because we don't have an alarm system and sensor lights -- they won't insure our belongings. In fact, they said our policy wasn't in effect when our house was invaded. They state this the Friday afternoon, before we leave for a two week vacation on Sunday. But we say, you wrote this policy in November of 05 and have been charging us all along. That is of noooo significance to them (though we will find out later that is....) No, you must make these changes to have any coverage at all.
I told Pat what change we would make if we were in the states... We'd change companies.
I don't have a conclusion yet. We are going on vacation. We are hopeful no one will break in while we are gone, and we will lock the door, but the truth of the matter is that regardless of what we do, the insurance company will not cover us for some reason (i.e. the alarm wasn't set, the shutters were closed, but not locked, the wall is missing a few tiles at the top, the grass was too long...). We have heard from enough people to know now, the Bad Easter Bunny was the insurance agent.
