Basil Fry & Reviews 20

Very poor experience dealing with Basil Fry & Company on a motor claim after being a client of theirs for the last number of years.

The process was lengthy and frustrating, with repeated delays, inconsistent information, and a lack of proactive communication. I often had to chase updates myself, and there were multiple points where key details around repairs and claim handling were unclear or miscommunicated.

In their final response, they acknowledged shortcomings in communication but denied responsibility for the wider issues, attributing most problems to Aviva and other parties. From a customer perspective, this meant a lack of accountability and a difficult claims experience overall.

Given the impact and the way the claim has been handled, I have escalated the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

I will update this review once a final outcome is reached.

Do not USE them: RCS and Removal Claims Services. and ReloUK who introduced us to the Removal Claims services.
RCS have been dragging their feet since we put in a claim July 2025. About a month later The claims adjuster asked to provide date stamped photos which were already supplied in July and stated they need evidence of purchase receipts. When confronted Dec 2025 where in the T&Cs does it say we have to supply receipts. They said I have misunderstood. They claim that they use EBAY to generate the second hand value of the goods as evidence.
I have now asked them to provide me with evidence on all the items and how did they come to a figure of £238.00 payable to us (Total Amount claimed £2k)
Claim is not settled yet.

When you go away you think putting your household items in what’s meant to be secure storage is good thing to do!
Well we put out whole household items in an expensive storage to go away.
This is a secured storage where there is meant to be CCTV, high fences and security gate where you need PIN to get into the storage facilities. On a Saturday afternoon we had a phone call telling us that your storage had been broken into but nothing to worry about everything is safe and secure and we have security on the site so all looked after. We couldn’t get to the storage as it’s closed Saturday afternoon till Monday morning.
When we attended the site Monday morning, unit was trashed and our stuff was broken, stolen and on the other site of the facility! I easily got other side of the fence and into the unit and there wasn’t anyone to notice me! That how well it was looked after. Facility manager was on holiday so so someone else helped us to move our items to another storage. There were a lot of items stolen or trashed. Items like children memory boxes etc and had sentimental value to us as well as other expensive items.
We didn’t hear anything from storage company till we contacted them to find out what’s happening with our stolen items.
When you signed up you have to take up protection insurance so we took minimum 4k as didn’t know we were going to get burgled this is 8k for 2 unites.
Now after long time we were told this wasn’t insurance but enhanced liability cover! And as value of stolen items was more that what was covered therefore claim service people wasn’t going to pay full amount claimed but as little as possible! The funny things is the persons dealing with claim job title is Claim Adjustor!

We are thinking to take legal action against bothe Storage facility and claim services for not paying what was claimed.

I made a complaint to insurance provider so I can go through the next step. As expected they are not paying up and telling us you can’t even refer this for Insurance Ombudsman as this is not an insurance policy! It is clearly states on invoices we get monthly “Protection “ so if this isn’t insurance what is it? Either way the attitude was you either accept what we give you or leave it. It’s disgusting!
We left a review on their Google please please be mindful if you want to use this company.

Thanks

Removal Claims Services is appalling. Try to make you settle claims at undervalue. Fail to reply to emails.

I hope you are lucky enough to never have to deal with these cowboys. They add a cheeky (although they say it's standard) clause to the contract that says:

"The Remover’s maximum liability to you is the second hand value of the item i.e., the monetary amount you could have expected to receive if you were to have sold the item immediately prior to the loss occurring."

That means, if anything breaks during your removal... you are not actually getting your money back depending on the item!! Or you would have to go finding examples of recently sold items on eBay, which will be heavily discounted, to try and get a fraction of your money back.

This is absolutely ridiculous. I had to unfortunately deal with them because a removal company damaged my mattress. Despite me declaring the value of the item on the removal inventory list, I was offered £100 for a £600 mattress!! After much hassle they increased the offer to £175.

Imagine if something really valuable but hard to put a price on breaks on your removal (like artwork). Good luck!

As your removal company who underwrites their insurance policy. If it's these cowboys - get away.

RCS (REMOVALS CLAIMS SERVICE) are a firm of loss adjusters used by Safestore UK to deal with claims arising from loss or damage whilst your goods are in store with them.
Safestore are happy to sell you 'store protect' at £35 a month, but when you need to claim it's handed over to RCS to deal with.
Safestore Winchester was flooded in August this year and my £600 king size mattress suffered water damage.
Photos were taken and I submitted a claim having spent £210 on insurance premiums over 6 months of storage.
RCS emailed me out of the blue asking me to provide a 'ballpark' figure for the total replacement value of my goods in store.
I thought this strange as I wasn't claiming for the whole lot, only for the 1 item.
I complied and came up with a 'ballpark' figure of £6750, but I should have guessed it was a trap!
I received an email next day saying that as I had under-insured my items (apparently a 6k figure was the maximum sum assured) they would deduct a percentage from my claim,as per their terms and conditions, and then further deduct £50 as an admin fee, meaning I would need to find another £250 to replace this mattress with a similar one.
I had no idea my sum assured was 6k, particularly as it was 6 months ago when I took out the policy.
I believe RCS deliberately led me into giving this 'ballpark' figure as they then had a 50/50 chance of my figure exceeding this 6k limit giving them cart blanche to cut my payout, due to the small print.
It seems to me like a good cost reduction ploy to limit their payout.
If the agreement is on a new for old basis then £350 as opposed to £600 is not good enough.
I told them I would contact the BBC ' Rip off Britain' programme and give a 1 star review on trustpilot and they threatened me with legal action.
So not only have I suffered flood damage to my property whilst in storage, I've lost £250 and a king size mattress, but they are threatening me with legal action for bringing this to the attention of the general public.
I should be suing them.
Don't buy 'store protect' from Safestore, get insurance from a proper insurer who will pay out if you should suffer an event and need to claim.
They now want to see receipts for a 6 yr old mattress......
Don't touch RCS with a barge pole.
Their poor rating on Trustpilot is for a good reason.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

Claims adjuster was incredibly rude and unhelpful.
We have done many international moves and in the past the insurance companies always arranged for quotes for repairs. However, Jo Nicolson, our adjuster with Basil Fry told us we needed to get quotes ourselves. When I asked for help doing this because one of the items was complicated damage to a clock she told she would not help and I just needed to use google. By far the worse customer service in any of my 9 international moves!

Do yourself a HUGE favor and stay away from this company, they are fraudsters.

I recently moved across country and purchased insurance through them. (actually from the moving company who really "sold" me on the insurance) upon needing to process a claim for lost and damaged goods, the insurance adjuster was not interested, and offered us $50 for our loss. Our claim of damaged, broken and lost goods equaled 900.00 and our insurance policy was up to 8,500.00.

The moving company lost and broke items totaling over 900.00 after carefully reading the find print, we were covered in our claim under the contract or so we thought until hey refused to pay out on the claim. Their claims adjuster fabricated and deviously attempted to make it seem as though we were lying. These were important items to us-heritage items which are not really replaceable. The adjuster was unhelpful and her replies made it clear that we didn't have coverage for items, what a joke, we outlined each and every item. And the Shipping company packed our items handpacked our items! Her continued replies were filled with scheming intentions. oh and lets not discuss "depreciation" what a farse this company is, shameful they should be out of business.

We truly believe this is an insurance fraud scheme, whereas they take your money but never have any intention on paying you and devising sneaky ways to try and get out of paying any claim.

As all the other reviews state this is an appalling company. DO NOT USE THEM. We plan on suing them for damages, contract obligation and distress. It has been gross misconduct by a company. Stay far away and read all the other reviews for this company

Absolutely Appalling Company.
Didn't know how to enter No Stars.
Suffice to say that , without exception all reviews speak for themselves.
The time spent on writing a full report, backed by numerous photos, together with damaged cartons, which had been handled in such a negligence manner, as to even break ceramic items , not only stored in a carton, wrapped in bubble wrap, and placed in a secured tin box, to be told, you packed it yourself, so invalidates the claim, is preposterous.
I could go on infinitum , but after 30 removals, with the majority of our household goods, packed by ourselves, and not one Insurance claim, until this occasion, and the total claim was below £500.00, whilst you may have your own Insurance Co, check who your Removal Co uses, before engaging them

Incredibly slow. They got me to most of the work and kept asking me for the same information over and over again. Then they asked why I had given the information tgey had asked for. In the end they declined to pay for the repair of a handpainted religious icon on the grounds that it had no signature- icons are never signed. It has taken almost 4 months to reach the stage of being offered a payment.
This is a really horrible company.

I had to work with this company for my insurance claim. As a matter of fact, I had to do lots of work on my end besides submitting insurance claim forms and supporting pictures, documents. Some additional work I think would've been their work such as mapping all the pictures in a separate excelsheet and items in the initial valuation form are done by myself. I seriously doubted about their ability to work as an individual company.

One of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. Delay and obfuscation all the way. Took days to reply to emails and constantly have to battle them for every penny, out of pocket and out of patience with this awful awful company.

Consider private insurance if you are moving abroad

Beware. J Randall in particular.

This is a joke my health is an issue to them a woman named jo Nichilson says am a liar, a hzve a to spill my whole life to try and get them to get my items refunded, should need to know my buisness says my health an issue and that my time has lapsed because i dont keep well, the papers will here of this my kids and me left way nothing, i have money to renew but i will not as its not me who is lying about my goods am so infurated this company makes you feel like a liar, my issues and my doctors dont lie. Lets see what a court ssays

Absolutely dispicable, money grabbing company!
First they claimed we packed it so they won't pay because we everything packed by you will be excluded. They still take your money upfront and don't go "hey, you packed everything so this is useless" no, they take your money and afterwards remind you of line XX.
So, in our case we didn't pack it and we could proof it so they found another excuse of "hey, you didn't mention it so it's not covered (fair) so we will give you £50 for a frame [that costs way more than that] BUT there will be a fee of a £100 so at the end, we regret to inform you, that we won't pay a cent"!

Spare yourself some trouble and anger with them and just look for someone else. Looking at the other reviews here, they are really as bad as I made the experience with.
I hope this helps people to spend their money wiser than we did! Good luck with you move!

I would give this company no stars. Very dishonest company. Poor and unprofessional at all stages and take forever to process claims. Used eBay as a way to estimate value of goods damaged and tried to force me to settle.

I shipped my belongings from the UK to USA with GMS, when my belongings arrived there was over £2000 worth of items destroyed. I sent multiple emails to Gms to get compensated for how much I’ve lost but instead they moved the case to this company. My experience with emailing this company has been nothing short of a nightmare, I’ve sent emails where I haven’t gotten replies and others which took them 2 weeks to respond to and I can’t even ask any questions about my case. When they actually got around to talk about compensating me, they decided to compensate me for a few items and they only gave me £40 for each item, totaling to £340 for £2000 worth of stuff destroyed.
Please don’t business with this company, they are horrible and I wish no one else has to deal with them.

Shocking service they are expensive and dishonest.

They ask you to value your goods and write a premium based on that figure then when comes the time to make a claim they use some random not agreed valuation and refuse to pay your claim in full.

If you store your goods before delivery in your destination country although the goods are in secure storage they demand a premium "for continuity of cover" and it is an excessive charge.

Avoid this company, they are recommended by PSS removals!

I concur fully with the other reviews regarding this truly dreadful organization. Appalling and arrogant customer service, make derisory settlement offers and do not listen to reason. Also very unclear as to who they actually represent in any claims and only start to listen when you involve the Financial Ombudsman (tip: don’t bother with the Furniture Ombudsman in any claim - complete waste of time)

Avoid this company, purchase independent insurance cover for your move.

I purchased insurance via my BRS registered company and as things happen my furniture was damaged in between removal, storage for 2 months and delivery back to my new property.

Making a claim became a major issue. They didn't acknowledge emails, phone calls were just ignored and delays were constant. Their MD took the view I wasn't a customer. Avoid at all costs

After PSS Removals damaged over £12,000 of our belongings in an international relocation from the UK to Australia, Basil Fry & Co, operating as 'Removal Claims Service' are handling our claim (we paid £1000 for our insurance for the move). Initially they colluded with PSS to refuse to process our claim so that PSS could blackmail us into paying for their estimating errors, and then took a further month to get a local sub-sub contractor to visit us (they appointed a marine surveyor rather than a loss adjuster - with no qualifications or professional accreditation as a loss adjuster). So, so far, 2 months since submitting photographs, quotations for repair / replacement, valuations and a raft of other info they demanded, we have no resolution to our claim. I'd recommend buying independent insurance for your move as its not clear who these people are really working for, but it certainly doesn't appear to be the customer. I'll post updates as and when (if) there is any progress.