posting to forums may invalidate your insurance

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

To my mind certainly around here there is no industry qualifications as to who can work on your boat. The exception is butane Gas installations. An insurance company attempting to deny claims due to DIY issues would (a) have to point to a policy clause limiting such work it could not argue there was an” expectation. “ of professional install as the concept has no meaning.

I have never heard on this side of the pond , of claims being denied unless the policy has specific exclusions which the policy holder transgressed

The one case I am aware , was a boat sunk at its moorings due to a cheap Jabsco filter cracking due to being frozen, even though the owner has agreed that the boat was never “ laid up for the winter “ and the policy acknowledged that. The insurance company argued the appropriate course of action was to shut the seacocks abs this wasn’t done.

After a somewhat lengthy court case the insurance company lost.

As stated, in most cases, it's difficult to determine the insureds intentions and knowledge of standards...If it's not clear cut and the claim is small, it's typically not worth the fight and the standard response is to pay out even if there is a good chance they would win in a fight. They might issue a denial and hope it goes away but as soon as it escalates to lawyers, they usually just pay out. They might delay a bit spending no effort, so there is a little pain on the insured's side and they might try to negotiate a lower payout similarly hoping the other side sees an easy win as more profitable.

Also, keep in mind, the OP's story is about the insurance company choosing not to renew the insurance. That's a whole different ball game and is more of a business decision as opposed to a legal determination.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

It was she who told me, "the insurance company is in business to make money for the shareholders."

It's not for nothing we call all for profit companies, "for profit" companies! It's making a massive assumption that a company with a profit motive by definition doesn't uphold its obligations or screws It's customers. My company "is in the business to make money for the shareholders", with me being the shareholder. Does that mean we must presume that by definition I must be behaving somehow unethically or not honoring my company's obligations?

An insurance company can, hard as some may find this to believe, pay out claims in accordance with the policies they've written, and still make money for their shareholders. Or to put another way, the fact they make money for their shareholders in no way reflects on if they pay claims when they should.

There are two utterly nonsensical terms I wish we could all agree not to utter here, "built to a price point" and "in business to make money for the shareholders"

[Shanachie]

For those who think insurance companies are fair and forthright, here's an interesting article. Admittedly, it is from a biased source -- an attorney who sues insurance companies for a living -- but he also has a unique perspective on how things are done.


https://www.natlawreview.com/article...ance-companies

[JAFO]

Originally Posted by Sam Woodbridge

Hard for me to fathom big insurance companies or either small would venture into looking into forums.

You apparently seriously overestimate the difficulty and/or time involved in doing such a check. For anyone with good search-engine skills and some basic information about you, it's trivial.

To expand on this...

Originally Posted by Sam Woodbridge

Samatha Woodbridge - New Mexico

Sam Woodbridge - Wyoming

Samantha Woodbridge - Texas

If I search on 'Sam Woodbridge, Wrangell Alaska, Beneteau Oceanis 38.1' (all information your insurance company would have) a few of your posts in this forum immediately come up. I can further then easily limit the search to just this, and/or other popular boating forums (and even specify which regions or countries, and even what time-period I'm interested in, if I wish), and if I also limit the search terms to just your name, then pretty much every post you ever made here turns up, in a neatly arranged list with no irrelevant fluff (like other people's posts) included!

Total time required, less than 60 seconds. Then I could just scroll through the listing, looking for any significant words or thread titles.. a few minutes work at most. Now try explaining to me why any claim assessor worth their pay wouldn't do just that?

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by Shrew

They would have to somehow get the court to subpoena the user records from the forum to conclusively match the user name with the policy holder

I did suggest that in my initial post. I appreciate the clarification.

[Dogscout]

Originally Posted by JulienPete

I guess that goes for Shoddy driving in a car accident?


Or Shoddy handling of a hammer accidentally dropped that breaks something.



Just saying!

Are you a licensed driver? Are you a licensed electrician? Just saying!

Was the relay installed on purpose or by accident? Just saying!

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Dogscout

Are you a licensed driver? Are you a licensed electrician? Just saying!

Was the relay installed on purpose or by accident? Just saying!

Can you show us a marine insurance clause requiring all electrical work be done by a licensed electrician? Or any clause invalidating marine insurance by virtue of what was installed or how? Just saying?

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

Can you show us a marine insurance clause requiring all electrical work be done by a licensed electrician? Or any clause invalidating marine insurance by virtue of what was installed or how? Just saying?

I've never heard of a "Licensed Marine Electrician" and Land based electricians are not trained in the intricacies of 12V, 24V, 32V and 120V, 240VAC systems that are all mixed together with ELCI's, galvanic isolators and Isolation or polarity transformers..

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

Can you show us a marine insurance clause requiring all electrical work be done by a licensed electrician? Or any clause invalidating marine insurance by virtue of what was installed or how? Just saying?

It's likely covered under a more vague statement about ensuring appropriate maintenance and repairs are completed.

Basically, you have to make a good faith effort to have the repair completed properly.

Generally, electrical work is expected to be completed by licensed electricians (or at least under their supervision). If you take it to your marina shop and they have some yabbo do it wrong, you can at least claim you made a good faith effort under the presumption they were qualified and knew what they were doing.

If you do it yourself, you have no background demonstrating competency and you muck it up bad, it's hard to claim you made a good faith effort to do it right.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

It's likely covered under a more vague statement about ensuring appropriate maintenance and repairs are completed.

Basically, you have to make a good faith effort to have the repair completed properly.

Generally, electrical work is expected to be completed by licensed electricians (or at least under their supervision). If you take it to your marina shop and they have some yabbo do it wrong, you can at least claim you made a good faith effort under the presumption they were qualified and knew what they were doing.

If you do it yourself, you have no background demonstrating competency and you muck it up bad, it's hard to claim you made a good faith effort to do it right.

Again for what, the 4th time on this thread alone, do you have an example of this type of clause? You say "electrical work is expected...", expected by who and under what contractual language? One can't just unilaterally decide that something is "expected", insurance is a contract and any "expectations" need to be listed. Since it appears this particular "expectation" is not, then it doesn't exist and has no impact on any actual insurance claim. It certainly doesn't exist in any policy I have had.

It's amazing how quickly this kind conventional wisdom passed down from tall tales people have heard on the dock breaks down when those passing on the "wisdom" are asked to actually quantify anything. And amazing how doggedly they stick to it even though it's based on nothing more than tall tales they've heard on the docks.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

Again for what, the 4th time on this thread alone, do you have an example of this type of clause? You say "electrical work is expected...", expected by who and under what contractual language? One can't just unilaterally decide that something is "expected", insurance is a contract and any "expectations" need to be listed. Since it appears this particular "expectation" is not, then it doesn't exist and has no impact on any actual insurance claim. It certainly doesn't exist in any policy I have had.

If you are looking for a list of requirements detailing every type of work and the exact qualifications requried...you won't find it. That's not how it works. The contract would have to be hundreds of thousands of pages long to cover every possible type of work and exactly what is the correct way to complete it. Instead, they will use phrases like "industry standard", "reasonable effort", etc...

It sounds nice to say if it's not spelled out in crystal clear language, it's not part of the contract but when the poo hits the fan, you will be sitting in court explaining why you thought you could rewire your boat with zero experience with electrical wiring and those generic contract terms will come back to bite you (maybe not you personally if you have a professional background to do the work...of course, then you may be held to a higher standard if you made an obvious mistake).

As stated previously, if it's not clear cut, the insurance company typically won't press too hard but if you do something colossally stupid, they can and will try to deny the claim and even if they lose, don't be surprised when they decide they don't want you as a customer in the future.

PS: I get where you are coming from in terms of writing a contract. I too, prefer to spell expectations out but that presumes you can reasonably spell out everything that needs to be clarified. But it's just not practical for an insurance contract to spell out every eventuality.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

If you are looking for a list of requirements detailing every type of work and the exact qualifications requried...you won't find it. That's not how it works. The contract would have to be hundreds of thousands of pages long to cover every possible type of work and exactly what is the correct way to complete it. Instead, they will use phrases like "industry standard", "reasonable effort", etc...

It sounds nice to say if it's not spelled out in crystal clear language, it's not part of the contract but when the poo hits the fan, you will be sitting in court explaining why you thought you could rewire your boat with zero experience with electrical wiring and those generic contract terms will come back to bite you (maybe not you personally if you have a professional background to do the work...of course, then you may be held to a higher standard if you made an obvious mistake).

As stated previously, if it's not clear cut, the insurance company typically won't press too hard but if you do something colossally stupid, they can and will try to deny the claim and even if they lose, don't be surprised when they decide they don't want you as a customer in the future.

PS: I get where you are coming from in terms of writing a contract. I too, prefer to spell expectations out but that presumes you can reasonably spell out everything that needs to be clarified. But it's just not practical for an insurance contract to spell out every eventuality.

I wasn't asking for that at all. I simply want to see a clause, any clause at all, that says a policy is invalidated by how maintenance in general is or isn't done, however broadly worded. Or even a general clause requiring some kind of "good faith" would be a start. You don't have to specify every potential instance in a contract for sure, but you certainly have to at the very least introduce the basic concept.

As I have said, every time I hear this kind of tall tale I ask for evidence of such a clause and after now more than a dozen times asking and looking at a dozen of my policies over the year I am still getting nothing but vague explanations with not a single example of actual policy clauses. Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that such clauses don't exist, and this is effectively a cruisers urban legend, which unfortunately we don't have Snopes to dispel. And as I know from trying to dissuade my dad of his dearly held urban legends, people who came of age before a certain time when things could be easily verified for some reason just doggedly stick to these things no matter their inability to provide evidence they are true.

But really, if you can paste a copy of the clause you're referring to from your insurance, I will happily be persuaded that I just never asked the right person. In fact I would love for you to be the one who actually looked this up instead of just insisting it was so, and proved me wrong

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

It's likely covered under a more vague statement about ensuring appropriate maintenance and repairs are completed.



Basically, you have to make a good faith effort to have the repair completed properly.



Generally, electrical work is expected to be completed by licensed electricians (or at least under their supervision). If you take it to your marina shop and they have some yabbo do it wrong, you can at least claim you made a good faith effort under the presumption they were qualified and knew what they were doing.



If you do it yourself, you have no background demonstrating competency and you muck it up bad, it's hard to claim you made a good faith effort to do it right.

Unless the insurance company makes such a provision in the policy , it cannot simply “ invent “ a reason not to pay out.

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

If you are looking for a list of requirements detailing every type of work and the exact qualifications requried...you won't find it. That's not how it works. The contract would have to be hundreds of thousands of pages long to cover every possible type of work and exactly what is the correct way to complete it. Instead, they will use phrases like "industry standard", "reasonable effort", etc...

It sounds nice to say if it's not spelled out in crystal clear language, it's not part of the contract but when the poo hits the fan, you will be sitting in court explaining why you thought you could rewire your boat with zero experience with electrical wiring and those generic contract terms will come back to bite you (maybe not you personally if you have a professional background to do the work...of course, then you may be held to a higher standard if you made an obvious mistake).

As stated previously, if it's not clear cut, the insurance company typically won't press too hard but if you do something colossally stupid, they can and will try to deny the claim and even if they lose, don't be surprised when they decide they don't want you as a customer in the future.

PS: I get where you are coming from in terms of writing a contract. I too, prefer to spell expectations out but that presumes you can reasonably spell out everything that needs to be clarified. But it's just not practical for an insurance contract to spell out every eventuality.

I can speak only from my personal experience after hundreds of insurance claims investigations. Stupidity and incompetence have been covered under every situation I've been involved with.

Damage with malice or due to fraud is a separate conversation and even there is let slide by the undewriters unless there is a significant sum involved or it would cost less to prove than the value of the claim. Their lawyers are way more expensive than yours.

[Dogscout]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

I wasn't asking for that at all. I simply want to see a clause, any clause at all, that says a policy is invalidated by how maintenance in general is or isn't done, however broadly worded. Or even a general clause requiring some kind of "good faith" would be a start. You don't have to specify every potential instance in a contract for sure, but you certainly have to at the very least introduce the basic concept.

As I have said, every time I hear this kind of tall tale I ask for evidence of such a clause and after now more than a dozen times asking and looking at a dozen of my policies over the year I am still getting nothing but vague explanations with not a single example of actual policy clauses. Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that such clauses don't exist, and this is effectively a cruisers urban legend, which unfortunately we don't have Snopes to dispel. And as I know from trying to dissuade my dad of his dearly held urban legends, people who came of age before a certain time when things could be easily verified for some reason just doggedly stick to these things no matter their inability to provide evidence they are true.

But really, if you can paste a copy of the clause you're referring to from your insurance, I will happily be persuaded that I just never asked the right person. In fact I would love for you to be the one who actually looked this up instead of just insisting it was so, and proved me wrong

As I said in Post #37 of this thread. Faulty Workmanship is stated in my policy as what is not covered.

You would certainly have a better case, requesting coverage of a loss if the work was performed by a professional rather than a do-it-yourself hack.