flood damage urgently need advice

kitty_deegan

in the floods of last weekend our entire downstairs was written off. ok not nice but we're insured right?? well maybe not.

i took out the policy through a comparison website in january this year, and completed the usual online forms to the absolute best of my knowledge. you have to answer every single question for the form to process you through to the insurance quotation stage. knowing my house was possibly a flood risk, i knew it was important to have cover for flooding. on the comparison site one of the questions was 'is the property within 400meters of a river or water course' and it is, so i ticked the box as a 'yes'. no other questions appertaining to flood risks were on the form. the quotes came up, i bought one i thought was good, it had flood damage included on the policy, i bought the policy and thought nothing more of it. until we got flooded. the insurance loss adjuster is saying that on our policy there is a box which says 'the property is not within 250meters of a river or water course' and that this has been ticked -NOT BY ME!! - there is another box in the policy which states 'the property is not listed by the environment agency as being at risk of flooding' again the yes box is ticked - AGAIN NOT BY ME - . SO there are two boxes i have never seen in my life, on a form i have never seen in my life which state that my property is NOT near a river and is NOT at risk of flood. I repeat that neither of these boxes had been ticked by me. the only question about flooding i was ever asked was the one on the original screen of the comparison website which i answered truthfully and i ticked our house as being 'within 400meters of a river'. so now it appears i am not insured, because a box i had never seen and certainly not ticked has somehow been ticked by some computer somewhere either when the data left the comparison website or when it arrived at the insurers computer!!

i am considering taking this to our MP and the national press and consumer groups. this is simply not right. my data has been distorted between my putting it into the comparison site and being insured by the insurers.

has this happened to anyone else? and if so what was the outcome? and is this not a huge cause for concern? if you fill the comparison site information in and it is then not passed across to the insurers accurately and it turns out your insurance (which they've taken money for) is not valid - whose fault is it? this could happen to thousands of people on thousands of policies and needs to be addressed immediately.

please can anyone help? we will be 80k out of pocket if we have to pay for the work ourselves.

thanks for reading.

huckster

Normally you are sent details of what information has been used to issue the policy, when they send the policy documents to you. You are asked to check all the information and if any of it is incorrect you have to phone them. You have a 14 day cooling off period, if the policy is not suitable.

Check what you were sent. It may be worth asking the comparison site for a copy of the data that was handled by them, which may need to be in the form of a Data Protection Subject Access Request. The same information could be asked from the Insurers.

It does not surprise me that the comparison site had entered default information on the Insurers system that you clicked through on. I suspect that there is a miss match between the questions on the comparison site, with the assumptions for quoting on the Insurers site. If you visit the Insurers site, is it a question about the river/water course or is it just an assumption that is required for them to be able to quote.

Remember that the comparison site will also come under the remit of the FOS and you should also complain to them.

dacouch

Mikey has a nice link that basically says the Insurers is liable to the information supplied to the comparison site, if there is a glitch between the comparison site and the Insurer then it's the Insurers problem.

He'll pop along soon with the link.

It's then a case of proving what questions were asked / you answered

kitty_deegan

hi again, first thanks so much for replying. i wasn't sure if anyone would even read it.

so far, I've contacted the comparison site and they have pulled their information out of their computer about my original quote and the information which i put into their site questionnaire was accurate and correct and i ticked the box saying we are within 400m of water. ok so far. they say they will check along their data line and find out what they sent to the broker/insurer. the lady at the comparison site said data errors do happen so its possible someone somewhere has corrupted my data and therefore the insurer has different data for my quote than what i actually put in. am still waiting for them to do this (after a week) though i have chased them a few times.

am convinced that even if they do admit to an error somewhere along the system, the insurers wont pay out because we didnt fully check the policy when we got it and therefore missed the fact that they had the incorrect data and had based the policy on that.

dacouch, do we know where mikey's link is please? could do with some progress as house uninhabitable and we still dont know if we can have it sorted.

many thanks

kitty

DCFC79

kitty_deegan wrote: »

dacouch, do we know where mikey's link is please? could do with some progress as house uninhabitable and we still dont know if we can have it sorted.

many thanks

kitty

[STRIKE]You could try searching for the user "mikey" and PM him asking if he could provide a link to what dacouch was refering too, of course "mikey" could be on holiday for example which means he wont see it till he's back but thats just a guess but might explain why he hasn't seen your thread.[/STRIKE]

dacouch

Here's the link, read it a couple of times so you understand it.

Do not be afraid to mention it to your Insurers and the Comparison Site, be polite but firm in any conversations. You may find that lower staff will not be aware of this FSA link, if you find this send them the link or even better ask again politely but firmly to speak to someone more senior.

This does not excuse you making a mistake in answering a questions, however it does make them responsible for the correct information supplied by you being transferred to them incorrectly.

If needed you can request the data the Insurer and the comparison site have on you by sending each company a cheque for £10 and requesting a "Subject Access Report". The companies often have a page on their website about this.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guide/principle_6/access_to_personal_data.aspx

If you experience problems come back to us.

mikey72

I can't see the link, (couldn't even log on earlier) but this is the one I normally refer to, and apologies to dacouch if I'm simply repeating what he has posted. - http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/consumerinformation/product_news/insurance/price_comparison/index.shtml - it's the responsibilty of the comparison site, and the insurer to ensure the information is transferred correctly.