Just had my house insurance renewal in. Thought I'd be good (like what everyone tells you to do) and ring round a few companies to find out if I can get it any cheaper. Two things popped up:
a) the AA (who are normally very good) asked me for the market value of the house; most companies seem to ask for the rebuild value. I have no idea what the market value of the house is, and it would be a wild guess (and probably wrong). I'm not happy about guessing it, especially if I got it wrong (and they declined to pay a potential claim saying I'd provided the wrong information). I have a reasonably good idea what the rebuild cost is. Needless to say, I didn't take the AA quote any further.
b) My buildings are insured for £125K. A couple of companies quoted for cover with a blanket cover of e.g. £500,000. I felt this was too high and didn't feel like paying a higher premium for being over-insured (and I thought insurance companies didn't like you over-insuring anyway) and asked them to reduce it. Perversely, by specifying the value (even though it was less) this increased the premium! I can see why this might happen (bog standard policy with standard values turns into more expensive bespoke policy when you alter default values) but it's counter-intuitive.
Just two titbits of my exercise this morning.