Removals insurance, and the clause nobody warns you about

The quick answer. Removals insurance covers your belongings while a firm packs, carries, transports and unpacks them. It is not the same thing as your mover’s liability, which is what your contract gives you by default. On our Terms, liability splits two ways: declare the value of your goods and you get Standard Liability, capped at £25,000 with a £100 excess. Declare nothing and you get Limited Liability, which caps compensation at a fixed sum per item that is far below what most household goods are worth. Declaring a value is the single most important thing you do before moving day.

We have completed over 10,000 moves and we are rated 4.6 out of 5 from 110 Trustpilot reviews. We are members of Approved Movers in the UK, and we only work with overseas agents who are members of BAR or FIDI. Every figure below comes out of our own Terms and Conditions, so you can go and check the clause yourself.

So what is removals insurance, actually

Removals insurance is a policy you buy that covers your things while they are in transit. Riveting stuff, I know. Stay with me, because it gets worse before it gets better.

Liability is a completely different animal, and it is the one that catches people out. Liability is what your mover’s contract already promises you when somebody drops something, and it is almost never as generous as the word “insured” makes it sound. [Puts on the reading glasses nobody asked to see.] The two words get used as though they mean the same thing, mostly by people who would rather you did not look too closely at either of them.

Here is the part that matters. Every reputable UK mover has to give you one or the other, because the British Association of Removers makes it a condition of membership. Its Code of Practice says that where insurance is not arranged, then “subject to a declaration of value by the Customer, the Member must accept liability under the terms of the Removal Contract”.

Read that again and notice the trapdoor sitting in the middle of it. Subject to a declaration of value. Four words, and they are load-bearing for your entire move. I have now read that sentence roughly two hundred times and I still think it should arrive with a small warning noise attached.

There are two routes, and the bad one is the default

[Gestures at my sofa, which I believe to be worth £800 and which my wife refers to only as “the beige situation”.]

Clause 9 of our Terms and Conditions splits in two. Clause 9.1 is Standard Liability, and you only get it if you hand us a declaration of the value of your goods. Clause 9.2 is Limited Liability, which is what happens when you do not, and it is the default because doing nothing is always the default. Nobody wakes up and chooses Limited Liability. They simply never fill in the form, which is the same thing wearing a nicer coat.

Standard Liability is capped at £25,000, and we will go higher if you ask us in writing beforehand. Limited Liability has a cap too, and it is nothing like £25,000. It is a fixed sum per item, it is set out in clause 9.2.2, and I would gently suggest reading that clause before moving day rather than after it.

I read that clause three separate times because I assumed I had misread my own company’s contract, which tells you roughly how much faith I place in my own reading. I had not misread it. Per item means per item: the sofa, the wardrobe and the box of plates are each capped at the same modest figure, regardless of what any of them actually cost you.

And before you decide this is us being stingy, go and read the liability clause of every other mover you have had a quote from. Every one of them has the same two routes and the same kind of cap, because this is how the industry works. The difference is that most of them would rather you found out on the day. [Whistles innocently while pointing at everybody else in the industry.]

The declaration of value is the whole game

So you fill in the form. Well done, genuinely, you have just done the single most valuable five minutes of admin in your entire move, and you managed it without a spreadsheet, which is more than I did.

Now do it properly, because there is a second trapdoor. If the value you declare turns out to be lower than what your goods were actually worth, our liability is reduced “to reflect the proportion that your declared value bears to their actual value”. Which is contract language for: declare half, get half. Declare £20,000 of belongings that were really worth £40,000, and your £6,000 claim quietly becomes £3,000. Nobody tells you at the time. The arithmetic just happens in a room you are not standing in.

For a move abroad there is an extra step, and it is clause 9.3.1: we only accept Standard Liability on an overseas move if you give us a detailed valuation on the valuation form we provide. Not a note. Not a text message saying “about thirty grand’s worth, mate”. The form. I am aware that I sound like a man who enjoys forms. I do not. I have simply watched what happens to the people who skip this particular one.

The honest summary: declaring a value is tedious, it costs you an evening, and it is the difference between a claim and an anecdote.

What a payout is actually calculated on, and it is not what you think

This is where I lose people, so I will say it in the plainest words I own. You are not getting a brand new one.

Clause 9.1.2 says a claim is paid as “the cost of their repair or replacement whichever is the smaller sum, taking into account the age and condition of the goods immediately prior to their loss or damage”. Three separate things are happening inside that sentence and every one of them costs you money. It pays repair or replacement, whichever is cheaper. It knocks off age. It knocks off condition.

So the beige situation is not an £800 sofa. It is a seven year old sofa with a coffee incident on the left cushion and a dog’s strongly held opinion about the right one. [Points at dog. Dog remains unrepentant.] Depreciated, it is worth a couple of hundred at best, and then the £100 excess comes off that. My imaginary £800 payout has become a genuinely sad little number.

Then there is clause 9.1.3, which is the one that properly surprises people. Break one chair from a set of six and you are paid “a sum equivalent to the cost of that item in isolation, not the cost of that item as part of a pair or set”. One chair. Not one sixth of a matching set you can no longer match. Anyone who has ever tried to buy a single chair from a discontinued set of six will recognise that as its own special kind of funny.

None of this is us being difficult, by the way. It is how liability is calculated right across the industry, and it is precisely why a separate insurance policy exists and why people buy one. Insurance can be written new for old. Liability almost never is.

The seven day clock, which is the bit I would have tattooed on something

If you remember one thing from this entire post, and frankly I would be flattered, please make it this one.

Clause 12.1 says that for anything visibly broken, you tell us in writing at the time of delivery. Clause 12.3 says that for everything else, you tell us as soon as you discover it, “and in any event within seven (7) days of delivery of the goods by us”. Seven days. One week. The same week in which you will be hunting for the kettle, arguing about where the telly goes, and discovering that the previous owners took the lightbulbs with them. [Why. Why would you take the lightbulbs.]

You can ask for longer, and clause 12.4 says consent “will not be unreasonably withheld”, which is about as warm as a removals contract ever gets. But the request has to reach us inside those same seven days, so the clock is still very much the clock.

Here is why I am banging on about it. Not one competitor page I read while writing this mentions a claim deadline at all. Not one. They will cheerfully tell you about storage insurance from 29p a week, and then let you wander off into day nine with a cracked wardrobe and no claim. The trade body’s own code says a member must draw your attention to “liability and the time limit for making claims”, so consider your attention drawn, loudly, by a man who has run out of other ways to say it.

The practical version: walk the house before the crew leaves, open the boxes you actually care about in the first two days, and put anything you find in an email. An email is writing. A phone call is a nice chat.

Who packed the box decides who is liable

This one is fair, which makes it much harder to be funny about, but I will give it a go.

Our Terms accept liability for loss or damage while the goods are in our physical possession, and also while they are in somebody else’s possession if the damage came from “our failure to pack the goods to a reasonable standard where we have been contracted to pack the goods that are subject to the claim”. Read the end of that clause slowly: where we have been contracted to pack.

So if our crew wrapped your grandmother’s dinner service and it arrives in pieces, that is squarely ours. If you wrapped it, at eleven at night, in a copy of the Sunday paper, having told yourself that plates are basically flat and how much can really go wrong, that one is yours. I say this with enormous sympathy and a box in my own loft marked FRAGILE in my own handwriting, containing what I can only describe as gravel that used to be a lamp.

If you would rather hand the whole problem to somebody else, that is what our packing service is for, and it has the pleasant side effect of putting the liability where the expertise is.

Moving abroad, where the rules grow an extra layer

International moves are the reason this page sits on an international remover’s website rather than a local one, and there are three things no domestic guide is going to tell you.

One, the valuation form. Covered above, but worth repeating because it is the step people skip: clause 9.3.1, Standard Liability on an overseas move requires a detailed valuation on our form.

Two, customs. Clause 9.3.2 says we do not accept liability for goods “confiscated, seized, removed or damaged by Customs Authorities or other Government Agencies” unless we have been negligent. Which is not us ducking. It is that a customs officer in a foreign port is a force of nature, and no removals firm on earth can insure you against a man with a clipboard and statutory powers. [Have you ever tried arguing with one. I would not recommend it.]

Three, there is a list. Clause 9.3.3 names countries where liability for loss or damage is not accepted, including Gambia, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, Lebanon, Angola, Cambodia and Vietnam. If your move touches one of those, you want that conversation before you book rather than after. We will have it with you straight, because the alternative is having it later and worse.

And one more, which is less a rule than a mercy: clause 13.1 means we are not liable for delays in transit unless the delay is our fault. On a sea route of six to twelve weeks, with a port strike and a weather window somewhere in the middle of it, that one is genuinely out of everybody’s hands. Our international removals page carries the real transit times country by country, which is a better use of your evening than refreshing a tracking page.

Does your home contents insurance already cover it

Sometimes. Which is the single most annoying answer available, and I apologise for it.

Plenty of UK contents policies include cover while you move, some include it only if you pay extra, and a good number only include it if a professional firm does the work. [So the man with a van and his mate called Degsy may technically void your policy, which is a sentence I am enjoying considerably more than Degsy will.] Then there are the usual carve-outs: jewellery, money, documents, and anything the insurer has decided counts as a “valuable”, which in my experience is defined as whichever thing you were most worried about.

So do this, and it takes one phone call. Ring your contents insurer. Ask whether you are covered during a move, whether it depends on using a professional remover, and what the per-item limit is. Write the answers down. Then compare them against your declaration of value and cover the gap, rather than paying twice over for the same sofa. [The beige situation does not deserve two policies. It barely deserves the one.]

Removals insurance: frequently asked questions

Does my home insurance cover my move?

Sometimes, and the conditions vary widely between policies. Many UK contents policies include cover while you move, some charge extra for it, and some only cover you if a professional removals firm carries out the move. Call your insurer and ask three things: whether moving is covered, whether it requires a professional remover, and what the per-item limit is.

What is a declaration of value?

A written statement of what your goods are worth, given to your remover before the move. On our Terms it is the condition for Standard Liability under clause 9.1. Without it, Limited Liability applies and compensation is capped at a fixed sum per item under clause 9.2.2, which is far less than most household items are worth.

What happens if I declare too low a value?

Compensation is reduced in proportion. If your declared value is half the actual value of your goods, our liability is reduced to reflect that proportion, so a claim pays roughly half of what you expected.

How long do I have to report damage?

Visible damage must be reported in writing at the time of delivery. Anything else must be reported in writing as soon as it is discovered and within seven days of delivery, under clause 12.3. You can request longer, but the request has to reach us inside those seven days.

Will I get a brand new replacement?

No. A claim is paid as the cost of repair or replacement, whichever is the smaller sum, with the age and condition of the item taken into account. The customer also pays the first £100 of any claim under Standard Liability.

Are boxes I packed myself covered?

Only where we were contracted to do the packing. Our liability for packing failures applies to goods we packed. Items you packed yourself are not covered on that basis, which is one reason people hand the fragile things over.

Is a move abroad covered the same way?

Not quite. For goods going to or coming from outside the UK we accept Standard Liability only on a detailed valuation completed on the form we provide. We do not accept liability for goods seized or damaged by customs or government agencies unless we were negligent, and clause 9.3.3 lists countries where liability is not accepted.

What is the excess?

The customer pays the first £100 of any claim under Standard Liability, per clause 9.1.4.

Declare the value, then stop thinking about it

That really is the whole job. Fill in the declaration, do it honestly, keep a copy, and then go back to worrying about the lightbulbs like a normal person.

If you are moving abroad and you want this done properly, including the valuation form and a straight conversation about what your cover does and does not reach, our international removals page explains how we work, and get a quote puts you in front of a real person who will walk you through the declaration rather than emailing you a PDF and hoping.

Over 10,000 moves completed, rated 4.6 out of 5 from 110 Trustpilot reviews, and a contract we are happy to quote back at you line by line.