Insurance Crooks

In real life I'm not much of a gambling man. For me this translates to generally not buying insurance of any sort unless it is either a legal requirement or the impact of not having it would be horrific. I have insurance for my motorbike as I legally have to. I have contents insurance for my house as that's a lot of money if I need to refit my entire house. I don't ever take out the stupid extended warranty insurance on electrical goods because stuff generally lasts long enough to replace if it dies usually negating the cost of insurance in the first place.

On the one occasion I had to deal with an insurance company I found it a horrifically stressful situation. I'd written off a motorbike after only owning it one week (yes, I rode it like an idiot and deserved to crash). I had cracked ribs and a broken thumb, which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things, but the most painful part was trying to have the insurance company pay out. They were adamant that the second hand bike I owned one week had lost 50% of its value. What they were offering was some twisted version of 'fair market price' yet there was no replacement for my bike at that price anywhere on the second hand market. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing they eventually paid me something and I ended up a third of the value out of pocket. This strengthened my distrust of insurance companies.

Conversely, and somewhat ironically, I've found insurance companies in New Eden to be particularly amiable. Not only will they pay you exactly the value of the policy you took out on your ship, even though you wilfully took the ship into harms way, they will even pay 40% insurance if you forget to insure the ship. I always thought real life insurance companies could learn something from New Eden insurance. Always, that is, until I lost my Gnosis in lowsec the other day.

Killmail Insurance Estimate

Actual Payout

The top image shows the estimated payout from the killmail generated when my Gnosis was lost. As you can see it's a fairly reasonable 10 Million ISK, considering I didn't insure it. The bottom image shows the notification text for the actual payout. A whole 2 ISK! I'll try not to spend all that at once, thanks very much.

Seems my dream of real life insurance companies learning from New Eden may be going the wrong way and the crooked tendencies of real life are merging into New Eden instead.