Asprea Ltd

Adelaidebound

I also have worked for Asprea and my recommendation is avoid them at all costs! An asbolute shower of a company. And the contractors aren't any better. Get your own quotes and use your own contractors, you will then be able to control quality of work and timescales. Use Asprea and suffer the consequences. The surveyors are NOT qualified in the main but are a straggle of failed tradesmen that think they can survey with NO qualifications to carry out the role. Even the idiot they use to train their Peterborough staff has no surveying qualifications. The contractors are given a limited schedule of works for which they get paid. Asprea are paid to reduce that scope and the contractors are constantly trying to increase it to get more money! Internal fighting is common so just play safe and get a qualified trade to do the work for you.

angeltoad

I have been trying to get hold of Asprea since the Earthquake. They never answer the phones, you are invited to leave messages and then your call is never returned, you get put though to answer-phones that tell you not to leave a message and then cut you off, and they do not answer letters or emails it seems. EVen the first guy who came here could not get through to the office when he needed to call them re a glitch. He left the number and I have been trying for weeks now. The last straw is that they sent me a letter saying that as I had not contacted them the claim would be closed in 7 days! It's not for lack of trying! Has anyone had any luck with Barclays in complaining? No wonder the policy was cheap - if it means nothing at all.... Meanwhile we are stuck with a damaged house!
Grrrr...:mad:

I_know_my_ABC_and_my_CMYK

Has no one thought to contact Watchdog?

Johnny_Depp

I work for the Norwich Union and agree to all the previous comments regarding contacting Asprea and the standard of their work. The Claim Handlers at Norwich Union are just as frustrated as our customers are with Asprea, their staff do not follow up with their contractors regarding the work they are supposed to be doing, it is not until we final manage to get through to them and ask for a present position, do they actual call the Contractors. We leave messages on the Asprea Tracker which are in the whole ignored, the staff in the Asprea call centres are not properly trained in Customer Service and I do feel sorry for them. I will always advise a customer to get their own quotes but as all the policy books tell you, we will only pay up to what we would pay our own contractors, however, usually the local builder is cheaper than the Asprea quote. The F.O.S are keeping an eye on Asprea Complaints so, if in doubt write to them, their web site is http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

RedAndYellow_3

I used to work for Asprea and would like to add to everything that the above norwich union customers have commented on.

the surveyors for Asprea arnt fully qualified, they are basically suited handymen... all they do is go into a property and point out the obvious... eg toilet overflow... the ceiling needs repainting, the walls need repapering and some of the water damaged cabinets need replacing. they then make a personal opinion weather the claim is valid or not, i have heard that if you offer them tea and biscuits this can be a deciding factor!!!

The staff...
there are two types of people who answer your calls if your lucky enough to get through...
Personal Claims Advisors
and
Call Handlers...

the later being people who just answer calls all day, and pass you though to someone else who can help, as they are not trained to do anything, as they are just temps who take calls, just so Asprea's Stats look good to norwich union. PCA's (personal claims advisors) are people who are allocated a postal code area, and if you come through to them with a problem in say, a north london postcode, and that person on the line deals with south london... they wont attempt to help, but will just pass you though, or pass a call back to the team who deals with your area...

its like a game... who can pass off the most calls to differnt teams without actualy dealing with anything... this is not a company at all... its a farce. everyone does a half assed job there as the lower managment just pressure everyone to take calls, do nothing else... chances are if somone says to you when you call... ill just ring the contractors and call you back... they wont... they will just come off of your call and take another straight away without dealing with your requests.

from working there, i have learnt which local contractors are perfect (one out of roughly 25 in SE England), but most are pretty poor. Asprea quotes them the bare minimum to do their jobs, so cant expect much in the way of quality.

however... one thing i have to mention Johnny Depp "We leave messages on the Asprea Tracker which are in the whole ignored"
unless the system has changed since i have been there, any messages you leave on a particular claim we don't have anyway of tracking until someone actually goes into that claim and reads the last note by you guys... like i said, unless that has changed...

Psytronic

No, the tracker has yet to be updated to alert people when notes are added.

Its even worse now (NU employee) If a cust calls with anything to do with Asprea we have to write it down on a sheet, pass the details over to Asprea reps who sit in the office, they will then (at some point) look into the claim, and try and get the issue sorted out (with a 48 turn around time), and of course, they don't work friday afternoons

SUPERDEC

We work for Asprea Sheffield office as an approved contractor
you have to balance a small number of negative comments
from ex employees and anonymous Axe grinders against thousands of satisfied customers on a weekly basis

hollydays

xxxyyyzzz wrote: »

I work for Asprea and have to say one thing, first of all don't call the 08456 number call 01506 591 030, 020 8290 3900 or 0161 486 5810 if you use the Livingston, Bromley or Manchester office not too sure of the other numbers for other offices.

I recommend you go with your own contractors as it will save yourself a whole lot of hassle and delay!

As mentioned below they don't train alot of their staff they just bring in people and throw them in at the deep end whilst recruiting people just because they are family who know nothing about the job and do very little work and just sit around on bebo and the internet all day. Yes this is how it takes so long sometimes to get your appointment booked in for a surveyor as some people are just putting notes on saying they have contacted you but they don't even ring its just so it looks like they have attempted.

Also they employ staff who are lazy and leave notes on the system but don't follow them up of course they do have alot of people who do go that bit further for customers but they the sad thing is thats only about 50% of the office.

But in Asprea's defense though the staff answering the calls do not need verbally abused by the Norwich Union Indian Call Centres speaking to Asprea staff like sh*t.

My advice though is don't go with Insurance that is through Norwich Union, Norwich Union Direct, Skipton Building Society, Your Move, ASDA, Barclays, Abbey, C&G, Post Office if you don't want to go through Asprea.

This post was quite hard to read.What have abusive Indian call centre staff got to do with anything?

hollydays

That's not the customers problem.If the staff can't handle the job,they should't do it.

xxxyyyzzz

I work for Asprea and have to say one thing, first of all dont call the 08456 number call 01506 591 030, 020 8290 3900 or 0161 486 5810 if you use the Livingston, Bromley or Manchester office not too sure of the other numbers for other offices.

I recommend you go with your own contractors as it will save yourself a whole lot of hassle and delay!

As mentioned below they dont train alot of their staff they just bring in people and throw them in at the deep end whilst recruiting people just because they are family who know nothing about the job and do very little work and just sit around on bebo and the internet all day. Yes this is how it takes so long sometimes to get your appointment booked in for a surveyor as some people are just putting notes on saying they have contacted you but they don't even ring its just so it looks like they have attempted.

Also they employ staff who are lazy and leave notes on the system but dont follow them up of course they do have alot of people who do go that bit further for customers but they the sad thing is thats only about 50% of the office.

But in Aspreas defense though the staff answering the calls do not need verbally abused by the Norwich Union Call Centres speaking to Asprea staff like sh*t.

My advice though is don't go with Insurance that is through Norwich Union, Norwich Union Direct, Skipton Building Society, Your Move, ASDA, Barclays, Abbey, C&G, Post Office if you don't want to go through Asprea.