Need advice house insurance refused 81 year old man dying of cancer!

hollydays

naedanger wrote: »

No, I have made only one assumption, which is that they are unable to comment on the detail of specific cases. If I am wrong they can still answer my general question.

Again I disagree but they are unlikely to answer a loaded legal question that may not be relevant to this thread anyway.

dacouch

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

But according to the OP, the claim hasn't been refused because of maintenance issues. It was refused because they have stated that the house was incorrectly built and this alone isn't a valid reason to refuse a claim.

Faulty workmanship / incorrect materials is a valid reason to decline a claim.

Did you read the link I provided and in particular the quoted paragraph that confirms it can be fair depending on the exact circumstances of the claim to decline a claim due to being incorrectly built

naedanger

hollydays wrote: »

Again I disagree but they are unlikely to answer a loaded legal question that may not be relevant to this thread anyway.

You were factually wrong to say I was making a lot of assumptions.

You are also wrong to say my question was loaded. It was not.

hollydays

naedanger wrote: »

You were factually wrong to say I was making a lot of assumptions.

You are also wrong to say my question was loaded. It was not.

I disagree. We need a lot more facts from the op, who isn't the claimant.

hollydays

We don't know that what occurred was storm damage, under the definition insurers use.
We don't know if there were maintenance issues.
We don't know if there were signs the claimant should have acted upon.

naedanger

dacouch wrote: »

Faulty workmanship / incorrect materials is a valid reason to decline a claim.

Did you read the link I provided and in particular the quoted paragraph that confirms it can be fair depending on the exact circumstances of the claim to decline a claim due to being incorrectly built

So your first sentence should be "Faulty workmanship / incorrect materials may be a valid reason to decline a claim."

From your link:

"When we investigate a complaint about an insurance claim for storm damage, there are three main issues we consider:

(1) On the balance of the evidence, do we agree that storm conditions occurred on or around the date the damage is said to have happened?
(2) Is the damage claimed for consistent with what we generally see as storm damage?
(3) Were storm conditions the main cause of the damage? It could be that other factors were involved – and the damage might have occurred without the storm."[My numbering added for ease of reference.]

Obviously we don't know the answers as we don't have the full details. I suspect this was related to storm Barney and the damage was consistent with a storm. So I suspect the argument will be around (3).

If the insurer's argument is based on the third point then the OP should read case study B in your link, and in particular the Financial Ombudsman's statement: "We decided that if the insurer wanted to reject the claim - on the basis of the unsound construction and structure of the building - it would need to rely on more compelling evidence than a "limited" engineer's report."

naedanger

hollydays wrote: »

We don't know that what occurred was storm damage, under the definition insurers use.
We don't know if there were maintenance issues.
We don't know if there were signs the claimant should have acted upon.

Agreed. But none of these are relevant to my question to the Aviva Social Media Team.

My question to them was on their general policy.

naedanger

hollydays wrote: »

I disagree. We need a lot more facts from the op, who isn't the claimant.

The op's complaint is completely irrelevant to my question to Aviva.

How could I have been clearer that my question was not about the op's case but about their general policy regarding storm damage claims?

hollydays

naedanger wrote: »

The op's complaint is completely irrelevant to my question to Aviva.

How could I have been clearer that my question was not about the op's case but about their general policy regarding storm damage claims?

You aren't going to get a question and answer scenario about what you are now calling an unrelated issue on a specific thread where you've already talked about storm damage.ring Aviva and ask them a general question.

Keep_pedalling

naedanger wrote: »

Did you read the link?

Yes I did,, but we are talking about a structural wall here, And I doubt if anything less than a tornado or hurricane would could be deemed to be strong enough to cause a collapse, and that would also cause major damage to the roof, which in this case did not happen.