I had my washing machine insured with D&G for over 8 years, never needed to call out until recently.
First call out the engineer did a few things that he hoped would fix the machine, unfortunately it didn’t, and made it more noisy, other problems also continued. Requested another repair. This engineer said he would need to order a new cabinet and control panel, wait another week, still no real
Issue at this point as the machine was still usable, just extremely noisy, and took longer to complete a cycle than it was supposed to.
Engineer arrived the following week with parts, attempted to fit the machine, still wasn’t fixed. He told me he thought the new control panel was now faulty and left in a hurry after telling me I won’t be able to use the machine now until he comes back and he didn’t know when that would be. I was left with water all over the kitchen floor and a broken machine with a half filled drum of water.
Spoke with customer services who were extremely helpful and said they would write the machine off rather than have me wait more time just to find out the machine can’t be fixed on the next visit.
As my machine is over 8 years old, that model is no longer available so I was offered a list of alternatives.
All alternatives don’t come close to the standard of machine that I had.
They base the band for replacement value on how much your machine would be worth at the time of it being written off. That has never been made clear to me. We have 4 appliances covered with domestic and general and every time I have taken out a new policy I have been informed that if the item can’t be fixed they will replace it with a product the same or to the same specifications as the current item.
So when it comes to a washing machine, as long as the drum capacity matches what you currently have, they believe they’re meeting their conditions. So I’ve insured a £750 machine for over 8 years, the last 12 months payments were £19 per month for the washing machine alone, and now I need it replaced, I’m offered a replacement to the value of £389. A £400 machine is never going to be the same specification as a £750 machine, but D&G don’t care. They don’t care that it’s actually the engineer that broke the machine entirely and that we’ve been without a machine for over 3 weeks now.
I will be cancelling all policies with domestic and general for all items now. Absolutely pointless paying for the protection when it’s not what they lead you to believe when you sign up to the policy. Complete waste of money over the last 8 years. I wish I had just saved that money each month over the years to replace the machine myself. So I am now left having paid insurance for the last 8 years to be let down by them when we needed the cover, and given the lowest band value to replace my current machine, so I will need to spend hundreds on the upgrade fee to get anything near what I had before. I’m gutted and feel very let down by them.
And now to top it off, I’ve chosen a replacement to only find out I have to wait over another week, so that will be over 4 weeks in total with no washing machine.
Had I not had insurance through D&G for the item, I would have replaced it myself straight after there were problems and not left without. Not sure what I’ve actually been paying for.
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