Home contents insurance for an apartment may sound like a bit of a scam however this is not the case.
You’re paying maintenance, body corporate fees, blood tributes to the Capital. A lot of money is flowing into your apartment as if your wallet was nothing more than a place to keep your Blockbuster membership card than actual money. So why bother with that type of insurance?
If you live in a nice enough building with potted plants in the lobby and special elevators that only open once an eye retina scan is performed (like in the movie Blade Runner), it would seem that the things inside your home are safe. Theft is a small possibility, but not enough to worry about. Your biggest concern may be about fire damage if your VCR (people still have VCRs, right?) suddenly decides to commit suicide.
Imagine this.
You’re a first-time babysitter minding your neighbour’s baby while he/she goes shopping, because let’s face it, shopping with a baby is not fun.
All of a sudden you find yourself face to butt with a dirty diaper. This baby apparently ate half an onion with red meat dipped in vegemite because that’s exactly what it looks and smells like. You clean the helpless baby to the best of your abilities.
Now you have to get rid of the diaper. The odour is way too pungent for it to go into the trash and half of your nose hairs are already singed from trying to change the baby. Burning the nappy is not an option, nor is throwing it out onto the street.
So you say to yourself “hey, I poop too…and when I poop, I do it in the toilet where it flushes down into the sewers…that is where poop goes” and decide to flush the nappy down to Satan’s basement.
No one could fault you for your line of reasoning, except maybe the department of sanitation, any plumber, your own mother, the building manager. Actually everyone, to be honest.
By the way, this happened. I kid you not. The nappy was flushed, poop and all, from an apartment on the 17th floor causing 4 floors below to flood. Hopefully we don’t have to explain why flushing a nappy down the toilet is a bad idea, but in case an explanation is necessary, be aware that home contents insurance can help you.
So the moral of the story is this. In this scenario, apartment contents insurance can help you if your apartment was unlucky enough to get flooded – or if you were the perpetrator. It’s best to guard yourself from your own stupidity or sheer bad luck. At worst, it’ll help with those nasty looks you’ll get in the awkward elevator once word is out that you’re the nappy flusher.