Home/Contents Insurance

I gots lots of stuff, and need to insure it when I move into my flat. I know that there are umpteen different insurers and that my best bet is to go on sites like Money Supermarket "to find a great deal on home insurance"™ but what I really need to know is how badly these companies screw you over.

I've not had to insure my stuff before, as every place I've lived in before now has had contents insurance as part of the rent (awesome, I know) but when I move into my own flat, I'll need to sort myself out. I've also never been broken into (touch wood, ooo matron, etc) and so I've never had to phone the insurance company to see how much of the cost I had to cover, or how many small children I had to sacrifice, just to get paid by the insurance company.

So how do you go about making sure you get paid what you're insured for if ever you needed it? I thought about taking photos of the flat with all the expensive gizmos in it, so that if they got stolen there'd be some record that I did actually have one in the first place. I also thought about going to the extreme of writing an inventory of everything I'd expect to get paid for should the items get stolen, with a record of how much those items cost.

Obviously it's a good idea to work out the value of your goods in order to know how much to cover yourself for in the first place, but has anyone here experienced some difficulties when claiming on insurance, or do you have advice on how to cover your bum in the event of war?

Cheers!