AXA Home Insurance - A Tale of Woe - Part 1
We are a family of 6, of which 4 are young children. Here is our tale of woe, that has involved countless telephone calls, emails, wasted time (Nov 17 to Aug 18 and onward) and cost us a lot of...
Read more We are a family of 6, of which 4 are young children. Here is our tale of woe, that has involved countless telephone calls, emails, wasted time (Nov 17 to Aug 18 and onward) and cost us a lot of money.
We had an escape of water in a small ensuite bathroom last November where the shower tray had cracked unexpectedly. The water travelled as it was trapped underneath the vinyl and continued across the house. It reached the main family bathroom and spilled out where the vinyl there met the hallway carpet soaking it. A lot of water subsequently came through our kitchen ceiling causing the ceiling to crack and bend.
We contacted AXA and were initially impressed, they told us they would send a surveyor from BVS to assess the damage within a couple of days. The surveyor offered a cash settlement to fix the repairs and advised us the hall way carpets could be replaced. A company specialising it drying properties was sent out to try and stop further damage, they left dryers on in our home for almost 2 weeks to remove as much moisture as possible. To aid the drying process they removed segments of the vinyl to expose the wooden boards. Unfortunately, this was where things started to go wrong.
We had humidity tests done on our kitchen ceiling and bathrooms after the drying company finished and they were still showing high levels a month afterwards. We got a series of quotes for the repairs and found that the settlement would only cover about 10% of the cost. Given AXA didn’t seem to want to accept the quote as “fair” we decided in January that we would get our own contractors in to fix our kitchen ceiling as we wanted to avoid future issues and would reclaim the additional costs later. Our contractors repaired that damage professional and promptly, however we were now £300 out of pocket as the settlement (before the excess was deducted) hadn’t been sufficient. We challenged AXA on this and eventually they accepted the repair cost for the kitchen ceiling was greater than initially believed and increased the settlement amount for this aspect, although we were still out of pocket for it.
