Help please insurance reclaim overpayment

DVD-and-Media

Hi,

Back in the summer of 2007 my house was flooded and we obviously had a nightmare - it took us over 6 months to get all the claim sorted / builders organised + in the mean time we were burgled twice as the house was standing empty.

Anyway to cut a long story short I have today received a letter from the loss adjusters saying that they have overpaid our claim by several thousand pounds and "what are my intensions for paying this money back?" In their reckonings are loads of expences that I never knew about which all add up to taking the amount paid out over my sum insured so this is why they say there has been an error - they even admit in their letter that "there has been some administrative confusion between themselves and the insurer causing an overpayment".... I was never out to get paid more than I expected and have obvioulsy spent the monies that were paid to me and there is no way I can afford to pay this money to them... never slept for the last two days because of this, any help would be much appreciated.

Quentin

Write to them and explain all this, and ask for their assistance.

Hopefully they will be sympathetic as the fault is mainly theirs!

At the very least they hopefully will accept instalments.

DVD-and-Media

Does nothing count for the fact that when I got the last cheque they included a letter that said -

In full and final settlement of your claim

Surely that applies to them as well and they are the professional loss adjusters that have calculated it and I shouldn't be responsible if they have made a mistake... do you think they are trying it on with this letter they have sent and just hoping I send them a cheque as at the end of the day surely the insurance company will have claim against them?

mattymoo

1) did they settle all the contractors bills directly and generally manage the project or did you?

2) If you did, you will have presumably had the money from the insurer and then settled with the contractors. I suspect you may have more of an uphill struggle in this case since you were in a position to keep an eye on costs.

If however the adjusters dealt with everything and you never saw invoices etc then I would suggest you were fully reliant upon the adjusters expertise and knowledge to manage the claim, as was their client, the insurance company.

I think I might be tempted to go back to the insurer and explain what has happened and that it would be "inequitable" for you to be held in any way responsible. This simply means it would be unfair because the matters were outside of your control.

Suggest to them that fault lies with the adjuster who is now trying to pass the buck on to you and that you are not prepared to accept this and reserve the right to involve the media if the matter is not resolved in your favour.

What I then suspect will happen is the adjusters will let their professional indemnity insurers settle the matter.

dacouch

There is a law that if you receive an over payment (I may get this slightly wrong so look it up or take legal advice) and it is not feasible that you would know the payment was wrong and that you have spent it and that it would cause you great hard ship to pay it back then you do not have to pay it back. From what I remember of this law a judge looks at all the circumstances and takes the above into account. If it was reasonable for you to have suspected the amount was wrong then they normally rule you have to pay it back.

Like I said I may have got it slightly wrong but the general gist of it is about right so it would be worth you taking advice on this. If you are a member of a union they often give legal advice or ring the Financial Services Authority

DVD-and-Media

Thanks everyone for your answers, I will take those points on board when I call my solicitor to get further advice. If anyone has more to add or a similar experience then I would love to hear from you.

geri1965_2

I overpaid a claim once (only partly my fault as I was given incorrect information, but I should have checked it) and my company had to pay it back to the client. We didn't ask the claimant to reimburse it.