Help on an Insurance Claim

[Kevin]

I temporarily put a large number of my prints and negatives into a storage unit earlier this year. Unfortunatley the company's internal guttering systems froze and subsequently burst soaking some 484 negative sheets.

I'm presently liaising with the storage company's insurance assessor to at least recover some of the value of the damaged items. I put a claim in for cost of the films, professional processing in regard to the negatives and a nominal value for each damaged 16" x 12" print; the assessor has subsequently asked me to provide a written, independant valuation for these items.

Can anyone please advise where I might obtain such evidence?

Unfortunatley the limit of the cover is £5000, so in my opinion, it will in no way cover the cost of the materials, let alone the heartache of losing some 12 years of black and white photography. As the negs were only in storage for a few days whilst I moved house, I never thought to insure them seperatley....lesson learned

Hopefully someone out there can point me in teh right direction to get this matter resolved.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[ajmiller]

Nightmare! Sorry to hear this. I found this company when a friend of mine wanted to value some antiques although they didn't end up using them so I have no direct experience. From their website it appears they may do insurance too -

http://www.townleyvaluations.co.uk/index.html

good luck

Tony

 

[Rick A]

You may find yourself having to file against the owners in small claims court to recover the balance of the amount lost. At least thats how it works here in the States.

 

[pentaxuser]

Tony has summed up my sentiments exactly. Bad luck just doesn't describe it

pentaxuser

 

[Steve Smith]

You may find yourself having to file against the owners in small claims court to recover the balance of the amount lost. At least thats how it works here in the States.

UK small claims is for up to £5,000 so unless there is a way to legitimately split this into several claims, I don't see any benefit over taking the insurance money.

The £5,000 figure would have been included in the original contract and/or terms and conditions so unfortunately, I don't expect that the company has any further liability anyway.


Steve.