Insurance uncontactable after flood

[RotterdamDream]

Hi all,

 

I will try to keep this as short and sweet as it seems to be an ongoing saga. We bought out first house in January this year and spent 5 months doing diy to make it our own. We went away to a caravan for a weekend at the start of june and came back to discover that the downstairs toilet sink pipe had burst, flooded the entire ground floor and because it was hot water the damage from condensation upstairs was significant. We contacted our insurance company straight away and the humidity measurement was 89%. Obviously we couldnt stay there and we are extremely fortunate that my partners dad and partner have allowed us to move in with them.

 

Initially our insurance company (churchill) were fantastic, organising the removal of our furniture, installing a dryer upstairs (but not downstairs as they had to remove asbestos tiles before they could install the dryer downstairs). We organised this ourselves and i understand this will have delayed things slightly. The asbestos was removed 4 weeks ago, and they only installed the dryers downstairs last week. The guys who came to install those advised that once the wallpaper and skirting boards are removed they will revisit and hopefully declare the house dry so that work can begin on the property. However, the company who are supposed to remove these are impossible to contact. The number i have for them sends me to a general reception who just fob me off and claim they have had no information from our insurers to confirm which walls need stripping (i have had confirmation several times that this has been sent to them).

 

I understand completely that the house wont dry overnight, but we are now well into our 10th week out of our home, having been initially given a timeline of 4-6 weeks to dry the house and 6-8 weeks work to repair the damage. Its just so disheartening to be sent round in circles knowing that work wont begin until this company decide to book a visit to our house. We both work full time and are relying on work flexibility and our parents to let people into the house as our neighbours are always out.

 

Can anyone give me some advise how to hurry things up? Im at my wits end and right now am stressing that we wont be able to spend our first christmas together in our home. ...To make things worse, we are due to bring a puppy home at the end of november and this is reliant on being back in the house.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

[unclebulgaria67]

The only way you will speed this up is making a formal complaint to Churchill claims department. BUT you MUST be very clear about what you were promised and what needs to be done. Having dealt with countless claims over many years, i find that customers just want to vent their complaint about their situation and you have to ask them questions about what actions they are expecting.

 

If you can get Churchill claims to quickly understand what is not happening and what you want them to do about it, they should make a few phone calls to speed things up.

 

These water damage claims always take longer than expected. I think my Sister was out of her house for 8 months, as the burst pipe happened during Winter so drying out took longer.