Home insurance (coffee + PC != good)

L33

L33

L33

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1 Apr 2003
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As the title says, I found out the hard way that coffee and pcs do not mix :(
I put down a full cup of coffee on the very edge of my desk as I was looking away (I know, I'm an idiot!) and it immediately tipped over onto the PC at the side of the desk. 2x80mm fans in the top panel quite evenly distributed the coffee around the inside of the PC to the sound of a few loud pops and the strong smell of burning components.

Luckily we have accidental damage cover on our home/contents insurance so I contacted our insurer and they've arranged their contracted IT company to come out and collect the machine.

My Q: Has anyone any experience of PC insurance claims? I'd like to know what to expect in terms of replacement/payout as I'm 99.9% sure there is nothing salvageable from the PC, all components are covered in congealed coffee. Our insurance policy states 'new for old' but obviously I dont want to end up with a 'new' £200 celeron dell desktop as a replacement ;) I realise some parts such as the graphics card are no longer manufacturered so wonder what would happen with those?

The most annoying thing is the loss of data. I left the HDDs 'in situ' and connected them to a USB > SATA converter and none of them even spin up. I do have some backups but they're over a month old. My own fault, I'll certainly learn from my mistakes!!

PC Spec is(was?) as follows:
Lian-Li PC65 aluminum case
Antec truepower 500w psu
Gigabyte 965P DS4 motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 cpu
2x1Gb PC6400 DDR2-667 ram
XFX 7900GTX XXX graphics card
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
3x 80Gb maxtor SATA2 8mb cache hard disks
2x Pioneer DVD rewriters

Thanks for any help/advice :)
 
just done the same thing at work. except the HOT tea went all over my lap = me in a wet suite...

prepare to battle and challenge your insurance company they will try to give u naff components wherever possible,

Reciepts/invoices at the ready tbhj!
 
I did this before a few years back, Mine was coke. And it did the same, my pc was worth about 600 they gave me £1000 and they even let me savage some hds out because i said i will try and recover data. They gave me two options, To either have a voucher for A Competitor or money in bank. I had money in bank and bought a new pc.

Just make sure you fight your case!

good luck Phil
 
As stated above be prepared for a good hard fight with your insurance company, most of them dont understand PC's et al and will try and fob you off with a cheap replacement model from somewhere like A Competitor etc.

Good luck mate and I hope it all works out for ya :)

Bry.
 
This happened to a mate of mine, although his went boom because of an electrical power surge. As mentioned they will try and fob you off as they don't really know much about PC's and considering your rig you will want the same (if not better :D) components. Good luck with the claim and dont go down without a fight !
 
Thanks for the comments & info guys :) I'm hoping I won't get messed around too much but who knows :confused:
I've attached a printed specification to the side of the PC, and explained on the phone to the company that is doing the inspection that it is not your average off-the-shelf packard bell. I'm quite happy for them to either replace it with identical parts or equivalent parts (of my approval!), or a cheque for that amount. Luckily it is a 'specialist' computer claims handler and it would appear so far that they understand the difference but I suppose I'll have to wait and find out for sure!
 
This should be pretty simple really; the parts are still available (GPU may be difficult to get or not made at all) so I can't see your insurer making too many really silly offers.

The problems tend to come with PCs that are 1 to 2 years old; where none of the parts are still made...

That's when the fun starts.
 
Its understandable why you have to fight to get the right replacement now, as in the past so many people have used insurance claims as a 'cheap' way to upgrade an old computer.

But as long as your claim is justified, and you dont say oh yeah, this 486 was top of the range 10 years ago, so I expect a Quadcore Kentsfield as its like for like replacement, etc, then it shouldnt be a big problem.
 
I had my system replaced by the home insurance, they offered me a voucher for the blue shirt people so you just pick what you want and pay the excess at the checkout, you dont get much though they will try and give you the worst spec at first but you can be sure you will get an ok system out of it the problem is nearly ALL of them wont give you a cheque, its either a voucher or a repacment delivered, i would be suprised if you get the option to buy the parts you want as mine was a home build and they wouldnt do that with me and i ended up with a packard bell. I never got charged the excess though which was a bit of luck, so basically the PB is gonna be a 2nd pc and im just goning to buy another home build.
 
Well, finally had the first 'offer' from the repairers. They got a replacement specced by a 'specialist gaming PC builder' (yeah, sure).

My (dead) system
Lian-Li PC65 aluminum case
Antec truepower 500w psu
Gigabyte 965P DS4 motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 cpu
2x1Gb PC6400 DDR2-667 ram
XFX 7900GTX XXX graphics card
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
3x 80Gb maxtor SATA2 8mb cache hard disks
2x Pioneer DVD rewriters

Their 'equivalent'
Aopen midi tower case with 350W PSU
MSI B965PNF motherboard (never heard of it?)
Intel Pentium D 915 Dual Core
1Gb Kingston PC5300 DDR2 ram
MSI NX7950GX2 graphics card
Sound blaster XFI Fatality with Live Drive
Windows XP Home edition (why?!?!?)
Logitech keyboard and scroll mouse (wtf?!)

I've asked them to go away and come back with the same parts or better. I said I'm happy with the sound card, the rest all needs to be changed.
:rolleyes:
 
  • That PSU won't power that system
  • The Pentium D is a bodge job dual core processor, let alone the architecture is not as efficent as Conroe
  • Nice of them to offer you less RAM in terms of size and quality.
 
Don't accept anything other than the equivalent or better.

I remember years and years ago when out pc got surge damage from our neighbours getting hit by lightning, we got a machine of twice the spec :D
 
L33 said:
Well, finally had the first 'offer' from the repairers. They got a replacement specced by a 'specialist gaming PC builder' (yeah, sure).

My (dead) system
Lian-Li PC65 aluminum case
Antec truepower 500w psu
Gigabyte 965P DS4 motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 cpu
2x1Gb PC6400 DDR2-667 ram
XFX 7900GTX XXX graphics card
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
3x 80Gb maxtor SATA2 8mb cache hard disks
2x Pioneer DVD rewriters

Their 'equivalent'
Aopen midi tower case with 350W PSU
MSI B965PNF motherboard (never heard of it?)
Intel Pentium D 915 Dual Core
1Gb Kingston PC5300 DDR2 ram
MSI NX7950GX2 graphics card
Sound blaster XFI Fatality with Live Drive
Windows XP Home edition (why?!?!?)
Logitech keyboard and scroll mouse (wtf?!)

I've asked them to go away and come back with the same parts or better. I said I'm happy with the sound card, the rest all needs to be changed.
:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

U should also be happy with the graphics card. Tell them to keep the sound + graphics and replace everything else. Also where is the HDDs and DVD-RWs??
 
steve258 said:
U should also be happy with the graphics card. Tell them to keep the sound + graphics and replace everything else. Also where is the HDDs and DVD-RWs??
Click to expand...
That graphics card is way inferior to a 7900GTX-XXX!
I'm more than happy with the sound card, its an obvious upgrade to mine and I did mention this to the guy I spoke to.

On the spec list was '2xSATA 80Gb and 2xDVDRW'. No details. Somehow they've lost a hard disk, and I'd at least like to know the make of the components!
 
Typical insurance company, they just want to fob you off with what 'they' or a 'specialist PC builder' - re purple shirts I think, say is as good as what you had previously :mad:

Stick to your guns and insist on at least equal spec or better, the longer it drags on then maybe you can push for a better spec, due to the amount of time its taking to sort it out - they may fold if you keep on at them :)

Good luck.

Bry.
 
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