AXA Home Insurance - A Tale of Woe - Part 2
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.
As AXA didn’t feel the quotes we sent them for the bathrooms were reasonable and we couldn’t come to agreement we agreed that AXA could instruct its own contractors to carry out the repairs, as if additional damage was incurred this would be covered. After several visits to scope the work we were expecting the works to be agreed by the end of February. However, AXA spent over a month negotiating the costs with the contracts and the works weren’t agreed till the later end of March. The expected date for the works during Easter came and went and still nothing had been done.
We complained and subsequently the contracts had to do another site visit (why we have no idea!), and a date for the works was agreed for July. However, as they did not order the replacement vinyl they did not turn up nor notify us in advance, which wasted the time we booked of work. A later date at the end of July was agreed, the work should have taken 2 days as per the scope of works, however when the contractors turned up at 8am they did not have all the necessary materials they had to go pick up this, in addition they didn’t seem interested in carrying out all the works on the scope and had to be challenged on this. They left our house at 11:30am the same day as they had “finished”.
However, their definition of finishing involved them causing thousands of pounds of damage to our bathroom tiles, as they had failed to show due care and attention at our property. In their rush to “finish” the job they had caused more damage than they been sent to fix, they could not connect soil pipes correctly and our sinks aren’t level (they are about 1cm higher on the right hand side). When we complained to the contractor they told us that new scoping would be needed for the tiling repairs so they wouldn’t be fitting the vinyl, so at this point we had been 8 months without proper covering for our bathroom floors!
We complained to AXA about this, according the “Claims Manager” the contractors had been trying to “minimise disruption for our family” which was why they hadn’t been there that long. The damage to the tiling was “incidental” and wasn’t the contractors fault. Personally I’m shocked by such a claim as normally if you are experiencing difficulties you would advise the home owner, or stop and inform them after damage is incurred, not carry on and destroy the other bathroom before informing the home owner!
AXA is refusing to cover the cost of repairing he bathrooms to their former state, they also want to use their contractors again and follow a suggested plan (which we have been advised by other contractors is unlikely to work without incurring further damage). Apparently AXA has no other contractors who service our area (North Essex) except the ones based in East London so we’re limited to them, or a cash settlement. When told they could use their own contractors again on the provision they agree to cover further damage as a result of the repair attempt I was told that AXA could not agree to this condition.
Our only recourse now has to been to seek new quotes for the repairs and once supplied we will be initiating small claims court action as AXA has no intention of fulfilling their contractual agreement.
Reviewed on 25th August 2018
Anthony Stebbing
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