Dreaming of a (White) Wet Christmas
As a property owner with a portfolio of 8 properties I purchased Property Owners Insurance or as it’s sometimes know, Landlord Insurance. I used a recommended local insurance broker and when one of my tenants asked me who to use for a cheap deal on their home insurance, I suggested speaking to the same broker who subsequently arranged an excellent deal on my tenant’s contents insurance. Despite the fact we were both with the same broker; my tenant was insured with different insurance company. Not a problem, until it comes to dealing with a claim it would seem.
Last year, a week before Christmas, my tenant went on holiday for 3 weeks. Unfortunately when he returned in the new year, late at night [approx. 10pm], he was confronted by a house full of water. Due to the cold spell over the Christmas period, my tenant was the unfortunate victim of a burst water pipe in the loft. There was water everywhere; I went round to see the damage for myself the next day. Nothing was working, including his boiler and electricity. After spending a very uncomfortable night in the house he contacted me the next morning and we immediately contacted our local insurance broker.
Now our broker was incredible and took all the stress away. He contacted both the insurers on our behalf, who consequently asked our broker to liaise with both their loss adjusters. After which, both loss adjusters, instructed the same company to dry out the house. This seemed sensible.
Unfortunately, there was a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line as this company had multiple offices and decided to send a team from two separate offices. Once my tenant realised what was happening, he contacted the company, but couldn’t resolve the issue. Neither office could agree who should go out to dry out the property and neither one wanted to back down.
Amazingly, the two offices argued for 10 whole days before my tenant had finally had enough and contacted our broker again. Once again our broker was fantastic and spoke to both the loss adjusters and insurers again, to ask the loss adjusters to intervene and stop the dispute in order for our house to finally get dried out. The loss adjusters agreed and intervened straight away. The company agreed to send only one team out to dry the property and my tenants life was made a lot easier.
If I was to advise anyone, looking for Landlords Insurance or even a standard Home Insurance policy, it would be to suggest they contact their local insurance broker. You might think that you can get a cheap insurance deal by going to a big national insurance company, but to be honest, that’s not always the case and most of the time, you really can’t beat the personal service provided by a good local insurance broker.
