Francesca Rudkin: My initial drive to make a claim has been replaced by determination to get us all on the same page

7 weeks ago, I mentioned on air how impressed I was with my insurance company. We had a small amount of water seep through the back of our house during the flood on Auckland Anniversary weekend. Nothing major, nothing that evicted us from our property, nothing we haven’t been able to live around.  I left it a week before calling the insurance company to log a claim. I felt other people were much worse off than us and need to speak to someone more urgently. When I did manage to reach someone on a Saturday afternoon, I was impressed by their willingness to help, record the information and log and approve the claim on the spot.  Little did I know that was to be the last time I would be able to contact my insurance provider easily.  The carpet guys took a month to get here – and that’s understandable. The small amount of wet carpet had been dried and once lifted was in good shape. They left me a dehumidifier which sucked the life out of all of us for a couple of weeks.  They were a reminder of how amazing people have been at getting on with the job post flooding and cyclone. The young man who picked up the dehumidifier had driven his van up from Christchurch to work in Auckland. He’d been here for 5 weeks, working nonstop, and was heading home two days later. He was returning without his work van which has to stay in Auckland for weeks until he could get a ticket on a Cook Strait ferry.  Next came an external insurance assessor who measured rooms and said it all looked fine but didn’t have a moisture metre on her or make any effort to look beyond what was in directly in front of her. Who knows what her report says. I haven’t been able to find out.  On follow-up calls to my insurer, I was waiting for up to an hour, before having to hang up and get on with life. I then did what was suggested and logged into my account to see if there was an update and messaged them as requested. They said they would get back to me within two working days. I didn’t hear back for a week.  So on Friday I found myself working from home, with an extended time where I could wait on hold until I was able to talk to someone. I worked away and calmly listened to ads about how they were “Here to Help”, and “We’ll get your Sorted”.  I was pleasantly surprised when someone answered my call in 50 minutes, rather than 2 hours I’d been advised. Once I got through, I can’t fault the service. I am no further ahead in knowing what’s going on, but while on the call the insurance rep did try to call the assessors to chase their report, talked to the carpet people and checked a few other questions I had with their supervisor - all while I waited.  I may be no further along with my claim, but I appreciated the effort to answer all my questions and push things along. I was told and pleased to hear that those in the direst situations were getting help first.   But with no timeframe being offered it became clear it’s going to take forever to get everyone who needed to contribute to my claim on the same page. So like many people I’m now in the process of finding my own contractors to quote and assess the job, and hope that what I come back with works for the insurance company. It will be interesting to see the result.  The one communication I have received unprompted has been for my next home and contents insurance annual payment. It has risen $785.39 in a year. It’s also worth noting this is my first ever claim, and last year the increase was $515.00. It seems that whether you claim or not weather events are going to hit us all.  So, I’m now even more motivated to make sure we all end up on the same page. My initial drive to make a claim has been replaced by a determination to make sure we get it sorted properly, by contractors we both agree on, however long it takes.  The best news I got was that wait times for my provider should reduce next week – apparently another 100 people are coming on board to help. I think the insurance rep I was speaking to was more relieved than I.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.