BUILDINGS INSURANCE claim and I am confused!

THE_LUGGAGE

Hi All,

I am wondering if any one can help me. I live in a flat and a couple of weeks ago, I had a leak from the above flat. I couldn't get an answer from them for more than 24hrs so I ended up getting the police,joiner and plumber and with the police permission we broke into the flat to stop the leak. this cost me £230 for the plumber/joiner.
I did my insurance claim putting in the cost £230 and explained the circumstances to my insurer.

The problem is they say its not there responsibility to pay the £230 as it was not my flat that caused the leak!

If i had not done this the damage would have been greater to my flat and also the flat next door, so I thought I had done the right thing. ( the guy above was away for 3 days).

The guy above rents the flat, so my problem is who pays for the joiner/plumber? Am i out of pocket for this?

Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks
The luggage

mattymoo

Its a tricky one because when you have "escape of water" claims, the actual cause is never covered by the insurance. For instance, if your washing machine sprang a leak, the damage caused by the escaping water is covered but you need to get a new washing machine or the old one repaired.

Some policies have emergency repair cover that will pay the cost of repairs (up to a limit) if failure to act would cause the problem to get worse. That might have picked up the cost although a second difficulty is that it happened in property other than your own.

If all else fails, I think you need to appeal to your insurers better nature since the action you took certainly prevented the problem become more serious and the cost to them would have increased.