CNS - Canadian Northern Shield (RSA) Home Insurance Reviews

Six months into my policy, CNS has decided that my house is 'worth more' and want to change my premiums. They have super inflated the value of my house by over $200,000 and I could never sell it for what they 'say' is the replacement value, let alone afford the exorbitant premiums. They also make me pay for 'furs and jewellry' in their household contents section and have given me no choice to delete that since I have none of the above. So they are charging me insurance for contents I don't own and say that is the way the package is. Very poor service and unprofessional---that was my experience.

We had a fire in our home. Not a complete write off mind you but significant smoke and water damage. The company who came to take everything away and make it better, wrote everything off except the kitchen pots and pans, plates and cups. In their haste they left out pieces of furniture on their lists of write offs and failed to include specific details about what they were writing off. ie. " ziploc bag of maps", or X number of books, X number of DVDs. So there was no record of what we actually lost. Then the insurance company takes this incomeplete and vague list of write offs and sends the list to another company who uses a random write down / depreciation formula to further reduce the insurance companies liability in the replacement costs. The formulas were very random and did not allow for the fact that in Canada a swim suit or pair of shorts might only get worn once or twice a year and sometimes not even. But the formula says the life of that garment is 3 years. Anything over 3 years old has no value, according to this company who specializes in assessing values for the insuarnce company.
So first the write down company has incomplete lists and descriptions from the clean up company and secondly their criteria for a write down is completely random and irrelevant to the average home owner. Yes companies do write down assets and depreciate items for valuation purposes but families wear and use things until they wear out, at which time they become painting or work clothes. They still have use and value. Not so with this insuarnce companies process. They write down the home owners write offs to reduce their liability, leaving the home owner to bear the loss. It has been over 60 days since our fire and all we have seen is write off lists and now this multipage " assessment list" where they want us to tell them how old the items on our write off list is. Do you remember when you bought that striped wool neck scarf that you still wear once in a while when it really blows? Of course not.... we can't remember when we bought all our clothes. The insurance company saves money by using bad information calculated with bad formulas and decision criteria. They call this customer service? I don't think so.

Premium went from 83$/month to 109$/month REASON we no longer insured our boat with them

Had a jewellery loss claim that was covered by a rider. Found out 2 things. The company had nicely stated they would adjust the insured value yearly (based on market conditions we assumed) so that we would not need to provide yearly appraisals. Thought this was good as we believed an insurance company would have intimate knowledge of the market fluctuations. Turned out this is not true as they claim they have no idea of the market. They increased the insured value of the item every year and hence the premium, from some $7,000 insured value to over $20,000 over those years. When it was lost, all they would cough up was $2,500. When questioned they stated they were not gemologists and had no idea of market conditions. Next was the fact that they stated if we decided to go ahead with the claim, they would not renew our policy. This was due to a previous claim some 2 years prior for a break in, which after the deductible, cost them roughly $2,000. They would not budge from that position even when I stated we had mitigated the loss because of a monitored alarm system which had the police responding in less than 5 minutes. The attitude was that they could care less. Going ahead with the jewellery claim would have seen us blackballed due to 2 claims in less than 3 years. We had no choice but to withdraw the claim and cover the loss ourselves. Given their attitude with regards to a long and previously loyal customer, we insured with another company. I will also be pulling our commercial policy from CNS's parent RSA. A move that will cost them over $9,000 a year in combined billed premiums. The kicker to the above was that even after the multiple emails with CNS regarding the jewellery claim and premium issue, they still sent us a renewal form further increasing the insured value of the lost item by another 7%.
Appears obvious to me that internal communication is completely lacking and that the bottom line report to head office is all that matters.