I chose an AXA insurance & now I homeless

norwichmanneil

Thanks for all who have spent their time posting replys in this case. Before I posted on this forum I told AXA what I was about to do and it was up to them to come up with a sensible offer to stop this.

The house has long gone and I dont really worry about people finding pictures of my house. I do worry about the privacy of the handlers of the claim although they were quite senior they did not make any of the decisons in this case as it was so complex and I do not have any grudge against them.

I am interested in what you all think about what I should or should not get as i am sure AXA cares about what you think.

bouncydog1

The title of your thread says you are homeless so the expectation when you took out the policy is that if your property had to be demolished it would be reinstated. That is what I would be looking for.

However there are still many parts of the matter unanswered - why couldn't the property be reinstated? Why was the site going to be sold? What comments were received from the water company regarding the cause of the incident?

I do hope that you manage to reach a satisfactory conclusion to all of this, but would be interested to understand the whole picture. surely when the limit of the policy was being reached this was explained to you by the claims handlers?

ac427

Have i missed the part where the water company were claimed against or at least contacted for partly destroying Neil's property ?

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

On the face of it, it is great that MSE can achieve movement on a case like this.

As Spikey1 says, the file would need to be reviewed to see if there is some special angle. Maybe there is one that makes tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand pounds worth of difference to the way most of us would have expected this to be resolved (although I cannot begin to imagine what it is even though I have imagined a number of fantastic scenarios where Neil might be a particularly controlling sort of character especially since I read that he warned AXA he would publish on MSE!)

From looking at Google Streetview I am curious about a suggestion in one of the letters about the site only being worth £10,000 and Neil reported as arguing the value was indeed nominal. At the time of the Streetview picture (May 2012) the demolition had just been completed and a substantial new concrete posted fence had been erected around it that makes it look like it might now form part of a new side garden for the house next door which has become the end of terrace. At the time I can see the two lane one-way street outside was still fenced off to the white lines in the centre with a ruined road surface and a Road Closed sign leant against the fence, but local traffic could still pass on the other side. The road seemed to have been patched up and back in full use by 28/3/2013 when the Google Earth satellite took another picture overhead.

I can't believe that planning permission to simply build a replacement house on your site would be denied and so as a cleared building plot it must even now be worth far more than £10,000? Is that what we should also read between the lines of that paragraph in Crawford's 12 December 2013 email?

Using professional valuation by Chartered Surveyors, the open market value of the property was previously assessed at £125,000. The intended sale of the cleared site to the local school was initially intimated at £10,000. This would have realised a loss in value of £115,000 if the sale had been concluded. The sale of the plot remains an outstanding issue and you consider the value of the plot to be nominal, in effect you consider there to be a full value loss up to £125,000 figure.

If it is still for sale I think I might offer you £10,000 for it tomorrow, Neil, site unseen! There a couple of interesting speculative planning applications in the immediate vicinity over the years.

The property was an end of terrace smaller Victorian two up two down by the looks of it.

Neil, you seem clearly on the one hand to be saying you have now cut any emotional ties with the site, but on the other we can assume from that last Crawfords email that you do actually still own it and have expressed a strong wish to keep it?

ac427 wrote: »

Have i missed the part where the water company were claimed against or at least contacted for partly destroying Neil's property ?

Well the way we all expect our home insurance to work is for the insurers to get on with fully indemnifying us first, and only then separately might they go about recovering behind the scenes from a third party by demonstrating any culpability.

For decades, as Crawfords will tell you and indeed their man Paul Handy details in a handy paper, on the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters website, Subrogation has long been a basic principle of property insurance.

It is however of only passing interest when the question of indemnity seems to be far from settled.

rs65

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

I can't believe that planning permission to simply build a replacement house on your site would be denied and so as a cleared building plot it must even now be worth far more than £10,000?

I think, reading between the lines and press articles, the plot is not suitable for rebulding. That would probably go some way to explain the apparent delays and council involvement.

If you read some of the letters copied in this thread, AXA have not been shy about paying out. It seems they have met the contents claim in full, alternative accommodation up to demolition and two months beyond and paid the full building sum insured plus the 10% clause. Also paid some investigation costs on top, being deemed to be claims costs rather than insured cost. Not actually that bad in return for a cheap aggregator premium.

There has clearly been something particular to this claim that has caused the debris, fees and shoring to climb. A lot of these are time related. If the site was suitable for rebuilding, the shoring costs would have been a fraction of what they turned out to be.

I doubt that the FOS will have much by way of precedence for these circumstances but after being presented with the full facts (which we don't have here), will they deem it reasonable that the insured loses some of his rebuilding sum insured to other costs. Again, we don't know why these costs were necessary but my gut feeling says this was more to do with ground conditions rather than mishandling by insurers or adjusters.

Other questions unanswered relate to responsibility of the water company and there was also mention at one stage of the council bearing some cost.

OP, Spikey speaks wisely above. AXA may offer something but I wouldn't be as optimistic as Archergirl. To get that type of resolution will probably need FOS involvement but with the total costs involved it may be outwith their jurisdiction.

Give AXA time and see what their review concludes. I have a feeling that senior management will be monitoring this.

duchy

Like many other I'm following this with interest as an AXA customer....what they do next will certainly impact on whether I continue to be.

Archergirl

Yes, I also am watching this as although I am not an AXA customer now, I was in the past and I know people who are at the moment ( but may not be in future lol)
I do expect my insurance to get me more or less back to the position I would be in had the disaster not happened, I thought that was why I paid it.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

rs65 wrote: »

I think, reading between the lines and press articles, the plot is not suitable for rebulding. That would probably go some way to explain the apparent delays and council involvement.

If you read some of the letters copied in this thread, AXA have not been shy about paying out. It seems they have met the contents claim in full, alternative accommodation up to demolition and two months beyond and paid the full building sum insured plus the 10% clause. Also paid some investigation costs on top, being deemed to be claims costs rather than insured cost. Not actually that bad in return for a cheap aggregator premium.

There has clearly been something particular to this claim that has caused the debris, fees and shoring to climb. A lot of these are time related. If the site was suitable for rebuilding, the shoring costs would have been a fraction of what they turned out to be.

I doubt that the FOS will have much by way of precedence for these circumstances but after being presented with the full facts (which we don't have here), will they deem it reasonable that the insured loses some of his rebuilding sum insured to other costs. Again, we don't know why these costs were necessary but my gut feeling says this was more to do with ground conditions rather than mishandling by insurers or adjusters.

Other questions unanswered relate to responsibility of the water company and there was also mention at one stage of the council bearing some cost.

OP, Spikey speaks wisely above. AXA may offer something but I wouldn't be as optimistic as Archergirl. To get that type of resolution will probably need FOS involvement but with the total costs involved it may be outwith their jurisdiction.

Give AXA time and see what their review concludes. I have a feeling that senior management will be monitoring this.

I agree with parts of this but I must disagree with others.

I can't agree that this is "Not actually that bad in return for a cheap aggregator premium." Aggregators have nothing to do with it other than indirectly insurers get tempted to cut corners to compete at the top of price comparison tables and come up with products and claims handling which isn't up to the job.

Nor can I agree that the water company liability and suggestion of the council paying anything has much directly to do with the insurance contract performing an indemnity unless the water company and/or the council have already agreed to pay some money directly to Neil which would in both cases be extremely odd.

The shoring costs would seem clearly to relate to the sudden sink-hole type nature of the problem. Maybe that still hasn't been filled in and reinforced. Perhaps that strong fence I saw they'd put up after the demolition is to prevent any weight e.g. a vehicle traversing over the site.

I am tempted to think that the claims handlers were soon completely out of their depth solely when they realised they'd have to spend money way outside the terms of the sums insured in order to provide an indemnity.

They will have guessed that they would almost certainly have an argument on their hands as soon as they presented the water company with a bill far in excess of the market value of the original house. I am guessing that although it seems to have taken Neil complaining to FOS and banging heads to get a November 2011 meeting, they probably got panicked into cutting scaffold costs which we all know are extortionate everywhere, finally knocked it down in May 2012 without really having an agreed plan about where it would go next, then got totally sidelined by talk of the original market value of the property, and confused by what all the foregoing had to do with the price of eggs. I could be wrong of course, but not much more wrong than AXA and Crawfords seem to have been

AXA senior management won't just be monitoring it. They'll surely be driving it now?

rs65

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Nor can I agree that the water company liability and suggestion of the council paying anything has much directly to do with the insurance contract

I made no such suggestion.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

rs65 wrote: »

me wrote:

Nor can I agree that the water company liability and suggestion of the council paying anything has much directly to do with the insurance contract

I made no such suggestion.

Forgive me - we are talking about performance of the insurance contract here and you wrote:

Other questions unanswered relate to responsibility of the water company and there was also mention at one stage of the council bearing some cost.

These other questions you mention are of passing interest only.