I have full cover home insurance with john Lewis. Recently the fridge of my AEG side by side fridge freezer kept icing up done the back panel. We called John Lewis and an engineer came out and duly said a part would need to be ordered. About a week later he returned with the part and began the repair. A short time later he told me that although he was able to fix the original problem, there was no point in doing so as his testing gadget had revealed a gassing problem which was not repairable so he was recommending a replacement fridge and that we would have to wait for it to go through the insurers. After waiting for some weeks I contacted the company to ask what was happening and was told that an email had been sent regarding the claim. The message had been sent to an email address the I do not use (John Lewis's Greenbee address).He was mumbling something about a cheque but didn't expand when i mentioned the fact that we used another email address so I didn't get the full gist the information. He asked for the email address that I used and i assumed he would resend the message but NO, instead today we have received cheque fo £499 ( cost of the original fridge). My policy states that, "If your product is uneconomical to repair, we will provide you with a replacement of the same make and model. Where the same make and model is not available, the replacement will be of a similar specification", The exact model that we have is no longer available however, it has been superseded by another of the exact dimension and appearance but the bottom shelf arrangement has been modified. Here's the problem though, this current model costs £699. I contacted the insurers but the person I spoke to immediately went into a list of excuses why they wouldn't replace the fridge with said newer version. First he said the point in the policy should have an extra clause added saying .... he didn't actually finish what it should have said. Then he said it was because they can't give us the £699 fridge as it was obviously not of a similar spec'. Our old one is at least 5 yrs old so costs are bound to have increased in that time so I don't see that as a good enough reason to refuse our request. Then he said he couldn't send the extra £200 as I had accepted the £499 - the original person I spoke to had put in his records that I had accepted the offer of £499 so i pointed out that I had not received the offer so no way had I accepted it and furthermore, I was still waiting for the original offer to be resent to my correct email address! Finally I did point out that since it was one half of a side-by-side appliance it was ludicrous not to provide an exact match (If one is available) irrespective of any modifications that the passage of time has accrued in the current model. I would not be recommended this company. With our previous insurers our policy was a like for like replacement policy and this what we were buying into when we changed to John Lewis. Its no good people saying well its not actually John Lewis. Thats just loyalty speaking and I'm as loyal a devotee as the next man but john Lewis should not put their name to services which are at the very least second rate. They should keep a watchful eye on companies that they direct business to, or, stick to what they are good at - never knowingly being undersold! I shall be changing insurers at the renew date.