We were burgled in the first week of October. The thieves (one of whom has been charged and was in court this week) took a bunch of small, portable electronic items and all my jewellery worth anything that wasn't actually on my fingers or around my neck. Oh, and to pre-empt any suggestion that we might have prevented the burglary in some way - they gained admittance to the house by somehow opening a kitchen window that had been locked. We've now got locks on locks and a full alarm system.
Since early October we've been trying to get our insurance claim sorted out. We're insured via Northern Rock with AXA, and they use a loss adjuster company in Gateshead called Crawfords. They in turn go to expert companies to assess the value of the stolen items. So far we've received a replacement iPod and what was supposed to be a pair of replacement headphones, although what went was a pair of studio quality Sony cans and what they've sent is a pair of cheap earbuds to use with a Walkman. We're still waiting for some other replacement items. They've quoted us a cash settlement offer for some of the other items, but not all (why not all? Who knows? I've written twice and had no reply). The jewellery "experts" called me in early November for a full detailed description of all the items and have today written with an offer - which turns out not to be a cash settlement, but instead either an offer of their jewellers creating items for me or a voucher.

So I suppose my question is - have any other UK 'catters had dealings with loss adjusters and is this time scale typical? Because it seems to me we've been left hanging for weeks with no communication at all, the communication there has been has been very poor (we've had to give detailed descriptions to each company at least once each, despite the existence of photocopiers and faxes and email attachments) and we're generally totally hacked off with the lot of 'em. Bad enough to cope with the intrusion of the burglary without feeling totally unsupported by their bureaucracy and system.

Disgusted of Pontypool