See here whether the Financial Ombudsmen decided insurers should pay for replacing a bathroom suite and wall tiles, removed when plumber traced the source of a leak.
The Leak Team can provide a photographic report to document our work, what we find and what the next steps should be. This is critical in the claims process.
“Mr C’s sitting room was badly damaged when water leaked through the ceiling from his bathroom. He called a plumber, who located the source of the leak and fixed it. In so doing, the plumber apparently had to rip out the entire bathroom suite, including the wall and floor tiles.
The insurer accepted Mr C’s claim for “escape of water” and it paid the cost of repairing the water damage to the sitting room and replacing the bathroom floor tiles. But it would not cover the cost of replacing the bathroom suite and the wall tiles. It told Mr C it did not think it had been necessary for the plumber to remove these items in order to “trace and access” the burst pipe.
Unhappy with the insurer’s response, Mr C brought his complaint to us.
complaint rejected
We were satisfied that the insurer’s offer had been fair and reasonable in the circumstances. It was a clearly-stated condition of the policy that policyholders should:
- notify the insurer immediately of any situation that was likely to give rise to a claim and
- preserve relevant information and evidence.
Mr C had not contacted his insurer to report the damage until after the plumber had ripped out and disposed of the bathroom suite and wall tiles.
We accepted the evidence provided by the insurer that it had not been necessary to remove the entire bathroom suite and all the wall tiles in order to locate a pipe beneath the floor. In the circumstances, we thought the insurer’s offer to pay for Mr C’s actual, proven, losses was fair and reasonable. We rejected the complaint.”
