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Michael B

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Review of the Post Office, Home Insurance:

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Gold Plus Home Insurance.. that isn't

I woke at 05.00 to a kitchen ceiling leaking water onto the kitchen laminated floor and a steady dripping throught the downlighters and palster board. Turned water and electricity off, threw towels onto floor and ran upstairs to locate leak. Pipes go from airing cupboard under floor in back bedroom in to bathroom. No leaks visible in bathroom, cut bedroom carpet to get access to pipes but found no leaks. Went back to kitchen and removed one plaster board of ceiling showing wettest at outer wall below bathroom. Presumed turning water off had stopped leak. Called insurance 'Emergency' number and a Servowarm team turned up within 40mins, looked where I had looked and told me that if I could find the leak they could come back and fix it (I said that if I could find the leak, I could fix it) 5 mins after arriving they left. With pipes exposed, I turned the water back on but found no leak. After 24 hours of no further leakage and still unaware where the leak was, I poured a jug of water against the bathroom outer wall and saw the leak appear through the kitchen ceiling. The two sources of water here appear to be the shower or the washbasin, however the pipes are sound and dry. The conclusion I came to was that the washbasin tap had not been full turned off over night and through a design flaw of the sink, water tracked down the stem of the tap across the back of the sink onto the floor and through to the kitchen ceiling and floor. I informed the insurer (Ageas) the above information and asked about claiming for the water damage and damage done while investigating the leak. A very nice lady looked into my Gold Plus 'policy wording' ..and informed me that it looked like 'I caused the damage' and therefor couldn't claim. I despute that the wording under What is Not Covered:- "Criminal acts or deliberate damage or loss caused by you, your family or anyone living with you" is applicable, because it was 'not deliberate'. However that appears to be the end of it. I will now fix it all myself, but will never buy anything from the Post Office or underwritten by Aegeas ever again and urge others to think long and hard about doing so. This is a salutary lesson for me, that brings me to an inevitable conclusion that insurance is a rip-off. In future I will only take out the absolute minimum insurances (for anything) and only where it is mandatory. Reviewed on: 6th August 2025

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