Next doors contractors damaged my property

mikb

DoaM said:

But I'm not an insurance assessor, so what do I know?  

If you were an insurance assessor, I'm sure you'd point out that each tile was a separate piece of damage ...

Of course they want to make it out to be two excesses, that way, they pay out less. It's a fundamental principle of insurance. Take premiums, try to give nothing back. Repeat until customer realises what a scam the whole thing is

Sandtree

DoaM said:
But I'm not an insurance assessor, so what do I know?  

And I am neither a claims assessor nor a roofing expert

DoaM said:
I don't agree that this is an equivalent analogy ... the contractor working on a single roof for a single contract should be a single event, regardless of whether the damage through poor workmanship (which is what this was) happened on one day or two.

I guess it depends how the damage has actually occurred. Assuming the OPs roof is in a good state of repair prior to the incident and structurally sound I wouldn't imagine someone working 5m away would cause "serious damage" and "slates to fall off" to a neigbouring roof and therefore, to me at least sounds more like impact damage, people climbing on the roof etc and hence separate incidents if multiple points of damage on either side of the roof.

Maybe I fundamentally don't understand roofing and that they are much more fragile things and that sawing a baton can cause "serious damage" to a neighbours roof.

molerat

A car crashes through your garden wall and into the front of your house - 2 claims ?

A car hits the central reservation and bounces across into the nearside barrier - do highways make 2 claims ?

A contractor repairing next door's roof under one contract damages both sides of your roof - 2 claims ?

The only real option is to issue a claim against the neighbour who will pass it on to their insurer, exactly the same as an authorised driver driving their car crashing into yours.  OP has no obligation to go through their own insurer. There is no doubt about liability, the contractor is an expert and any risk of damage to an adjoining property should have been foreseen and action taken to mitigate.

Sandtree

molerat said:

A car crashes through your garden wall and into the front of your house - 2 claims ?

A car hits the central reservation and bounces across into the nearside barrier - do highways make 2 claims ?

A contractor repairing next door's roof under one contract damages both sides of your roof - 2 claims ?

The only real option is to issue a claim against the neighbour who will pass it on to their insurer, exactly the same as an authorised driver driving their car crashing into yours.  OP has no obligation to go through their own insurer. There is no doubt about liability, the contractor is an expert and any risk of damage to an adjoining property should have been foreseen and action taken to mitigate.

The first two are a single continuous event, as previously exampled though if you hit the central reservation and came to a stop then carried on driving and hit the near side barrier a mile down the road then thats two events.

To take your thinking then and to an intentional extreme... an employee falls over an extension lead that had been trailed across the office and breaks their arm, 6 months later their office chair collapses causing damage to their back. Is this still one claim in your mind because its one contract of employment for them to be in one office doing one project?

DoaM

I'm still not convinced it's 2 claims (in the OP's case). Regardless, if they let their own insurer process it as 2 claims, with 2 sets of excess, then simply claim both sets of excess from the other party ... who will pass it on to their insurer (who happens to be the same company). In the end the OP is only down by having claims on their insurance record.

But as said above, the OP could claim directly from the other party rather than go through their own insurance - that way they'd have an incident on their own insurance record but no claims.

jon81uk

Sandtree said:

molerat said:

A car crashes through your garden wall and into the front of your house - 2 claims ?

A car hits the central reservation and bounces across into the nearside barrier - do highways make 2 claims ?

A contractor repairing next door's roof under one contract damages both sides of your roof - 2 claims ?

The only real option is to issue a claim against the neighbour who will pass it on to their insurer, exactly the same as an authorised driver driving their car crashing into yours.  OP has no obligation to go through their own insurer. There is no doubt about liability, the contractor is an expert and any risk of damage to an adjoining property should have been foreseen and action taken to mitigate.

The first two are a single continuous event, as previously exampled though if you hit the central reservation and came to a stop then carried on driving and hit the near side barrier a mile down the road then thats two events.

To take your thinking then and to an intentional extreme... an employee falls over an extension lead that had been trailed across the office and breaks their arm, 6 months later their office chair collapses causing damage to their back. Is this still one claim in your mind because its one contract of employment for them to be in one office doing one project?

No but if they broke their arm and leg when the chair collapses that would be one claim rather than two separate incidents of the arm and the leg.

DoaM

Are we playing Accident Top Trumps?  

When I came off my motorbike (several years ago) I did a poor impersonation of Superman ... the flight was great, the landing not so. I fractured my right hand, fractured my left hand and also had a displaced fracture (needed wiring) in my left hand, and had some internal trauma (minor bleeding). How many claims is that?