When I was away travelling the 2nd property we own in Durban had some minor property damage wen a neighbors tree branch fell on our boundary wall damaging the electric fence. Minor damage, but still a cost to repair so I submitted the claim to our insurance company.
I think the damage looks worse than it is and could be a fairly cheap fix.
I was informed last week Thursday that we do not have insurance cover since September last year when we paid off the mortgage/bond. We should have been informed and there was no apology on their part. The bank insurers tried to sell me a new policy which I obviously rejected immediately as they are clearly lacking the personal service. This is a basic business practice to keep your clients covered by maintaining your current client base.
I have to say I am a little stunned how much these companies spend on marketing trying to increase their customer base and they allow their customers to fall out the back end. Thee has been no communication via phone calls or emails informing us that there was no insurance cover. When I told them I was not renewing with them as I found it worrying how little care was taken looking out protecting their clients. Business must be too easy for them and this should be a wake up call.
Within an hour of finding out we had no insurance cover we were covered by another company with a saving of R300 or $15 per month. The excess is where you get screwed over as our previous insurer had excess for multiple areas in a claim. Storm damage could end up with 5 excess claims such as swimming pool, electric ,roof and water damage being examples.
I used the online app Hippo to get some instant quotes which I selected the same company we use for cover on our Johannesburg property. This was painless d was able to ad some extras like the pool equipment as pumps are not cheap these days. I was wondering by using this app how many calls I would receive and there were a few which I blocked.
This new insurance cover has a max payment of R2500 excess ($130) or 5% if below the excess value so anything under R50K would be 5%. This sounds really fair and they are not conning you by having different classifications.
What this all means now is I need to pay for the repairs myself and any new damage will be covered. This could have been far worse considering how much storm damage we had a few years ago with a retaining wall costing well over a R100k. I would guess the electric fence will cost around R10-12K to fix so not great, but also not a catastrophe either. The monthly rental income more than covers this and with no bond payments any more the property is finally earning money.
