Insurance

We take out insurance policies hoping that we never need to call upon them to help out (ok expect maybe health insurance here). But what happens when these insurance companies let you down? Who do you turn to?

In the recent floods we never in a million years thought that we would have to fight with our insurance company. After all we are with a company that went on national television 48hrs before the floods hit here and said that anyone who had a policy with them would have no problems making a claim. This was when it was just part of the state flooding and not the South East corner of Queensland.

Then suddenly we get hit. Now I am going to say this now, Our primary place of residence was high and dry. I am very greatful for this. extremly greatful infact. But we had house hold items stored at a storage facility in an area that was hit hard.

There are several things that are making me mad about what happened in this sinario. When we rented the storage shed we took out insurance through the storage facility. But you guessed it, It is not worth the paper it is written on and we not covered for flood. That is fine. We have portable extras cover on our home contents insurance with above mentioned insurer.

Now we were told to make a claim through them. So the night we discovered our shed had gone under, we called them. Asked specifically if we were covered, we were told we had the portable extras cover to submit the claim. The assesor came out the next week. He was reassuring that we had this cover we would be fine. (now we were lead to beleive that this cover was going to cover us. never once were we told other wise by anyone from this company.)

Than last week I recieved a phone call from them saying our claim was rejected. Why? Becuase our items were never covered becuase they were in a furniture storage facility. as per page 90 of our PDS. Really so when I first called why was I not told about page 90 of our PDS? Who knows, it is the first person's job just to take the claim request, the assors job just to be the eyes and ears for the claims officer and the claims managers job to say yay or nay on the claim.
So we went through 6 weeks thinking we had a valid claim even though we could have been told much sooner that we did not, becuase you can make any frivolous claim, but that does not mean they have to pay it. (This is the words of the complaints person this afternoon.)

But I hung up in his ear when after nearly 40 minuets of his crap (20 of which I was on hold for whilst he and his supervisor investigated my complaint) he said he was sorry for my loses but..... I thought that was the nicest and most christen thing I could do at the time. I was angry and about to lose my temper (even though he probably thought I had, but he really does not know me) and screaming at him that they misrepresented themselves from their media comments through to the first two steps in making the claim was not going to help me.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us needing to replace these items one by one when the time comes. All our winter clothes, All our baby items, TV's, air conditioner, ect. It is a very frustrating day. becuase even worse. We are not elegiable for any assistance, becuase this did not happen to our primary place of residence. Sucks to be us and every one else in this storage facility.

Oh and the other question on our minds, why were we not told that our items were at risk, one will never know.