This is simply an anecdotal tale of my personal experience, but it seems to illustrate so much that is wrong with being an ordinary individual in modern late capitalist society, that I thought it was worth relating.
I sit writing in my study. Water is dripping through the ceiling across the other side of the room.
After a heavy storm about six weeks ago, there was a downpour from the ceiling. The water was very dark and smelly. I don’t think I have any outflow pipes it could possibly come from, or I would have thought it was sewage.
So I phoned the insurance company. I bought the household insurance through Comparethemarket.com. I accepted a quote from a company called CETA which was for approximately £450 per year.
So I called the Claims number provided and was rather surprised to find the phone answered by a totally different company, the Davies Group. I spoke to a very pleasant lady with a young voice who had great difficulty hearing me and apologised for her faulty headset. She promised to phone me back the next morning.
The next morning she did phone me back, took my policy details and the nature of my claim, and said they would be in touch.
Nothing happened for another week. Water continued to drip in occasionally, adding to the internal damage.
After about another ten days I received a phone call from a drone operator. They wanted permission to access my property to make a drone survey of the house for the insurer. I confess I was rather surprised by this, especially as you can walk on to the flat roof above the study via a door from the bedroom. But I agreed.
The water continued to drip in. The floor now needs replacement.
Eventually the drone came and went. More time passed. Then I received another email pointing out that it was a condition of the policy that any flat roof must have been inspected, and repaired if necessary, in the two years prior to the start of the policy.
By total chance, I had in fact had the flat roof relaid in the two years prior to the start of the policy. The Davies Group – who in this email described themselves as “loss adjusters”- had asked for evidence that the work had been carried out by a qualified roofer.
A general building company doing maintenance had sub-contracted the roofer, so more time went by – and more water came in – while I obtained documents from the actual roofing company. This eventually happened and I sent them to the Davies Group.
The Davies Group are also asking for “evidence” that no more than 50% of the roof of the property is flat roof. But it is obviously well less than 50% and they have themselves sent up a drone, so they have the evidence already.
It has been raining heavily and the water is coming in quite hard. What kind of insurance company immediately puts all claims – including quite small ones like this – out to a loss adjuster?
They seem to be spending more resources denying the claim than it would cost to fix the leak. What was the drone for?
I called the Davies Group this morning, and got another nice young lady who could not access my claim as their systems were down, and asked me to call back in a few hours.
I therefore decided to call the CETA Group who comparethemarket.com had listed as the insurer and who had sent me the policy documents. That did not get me very far. CETA are not an insurer, but a broker. Their website calls them “the broker for the broker”.
So comparethemarket.com – which is licensed as an “insurance intermediary”, had taken my money and sold me a policy provided by CETA, an insurance broker.
But what company was actually insuring me? It would be neither the intermediary nor the broker.
I phoned CETA and spoke to a very helpful lady in a call centre, apparently overseas. She read from her screen and kept trying to refer me to the Davies Group.
I explained that I did not want to speak to the loss adjusters, I wished to speak to my actual insurer.
After a long, long phone conversation she spoke to her supervisor and I was given an 0203 number for the insurer, where I was told I could register a complaint about claims handling.
I called this number which was for a company named Arkel. Now after research I found that Arkel are in fact also not the insurer. They are an underwriting agency, which is an agent that has been given the authority by the insurer to conclude contracts.
Arkel do not have a website but do have a Linkedin page. They are a little company with just seven employees.
When I phoned Arkel, I was answered by a young man who just gave his own name, not the company, and plainly was not expecting to receive calls from a member of the public. He really did sound exactly as though I had just woken him up.
However when I explained the situation he could not have been more friendly and helpful. He explained that Arkel do not handle claims, but he did offer to contact the Davies Group on my behalf and find out what was happening, and I believed he would do it.
By this time I had read very carefully through my policy document, and while it had a big Arkel letterhead at the top, in the detail it gave the name of the actual insurer as the Chaucer Insurance Company.
The Chaucer Insurance Company is in fact 100% owned by China Re. China Re is 100% owned by the Chinese state.
I was just trying to get my roof fixed and the ceiling repaired. I did not expect to have all this trouble, or to discover my home is actually insured by the Chinese state, to which, while it seems a strange thing for the Chinese state to spend its time doing, I have no objection.
But consider this. I bought my insurance from comparethe market.com, an “insurance intermediary”, who took a cut. They got it from CETA, an “insurance broker”, who took a cut. They got it from Arkel, an “underwriting agent”, who took a cut. They were acting on behalf of Chaucer Insurance, whose frontmen get a cut from China Re, who ultimately get the profit, which goes to the Chinese State.
It is amazing there is anything left from my £450 to be pooled for the payment of claims. Which is perhaps why any claims immediately go to a loss adjuster – who of course gets yet another cut – and we have weeks of messing around, including drone shots of a roof you can walk on.
For me the worst part of this has been that every individual I have spoken to, in all these companies, has seemed a really nice person, genuinely wanting to help, but stuck there wearing a headset, reading limited responses from a screen, operating within their tiny delimited space in this nightmarish corporate jungle.
So many people now have this kind of utterly demeaning employment it has a real effect on human welfare.
Since I started writing, another very nice gentleman from CETA has called me in response to a lousy review I published on Trustpilot. He too said he would contact the Davies Group.
It is impossible that in the real world this corporate spaghetti is more efficient than the old insurance company that used to collect premiums and handle its own claims.
Involving this vast plethora of intermediaries can only work by screwing more out of the consumer – by not paying their claims.
Automatically bringing in loss adjusters on a small household claim is vexatious.
This is just a small personal story, but it seems to illustrate how impossible it has become for ordinary people to interact effectively with the hypercapitalism that orders so much of our lives.
Finally one last irony.
I did not expect to find the Chinese State insuring my home. The claim is being “handled” by loss adjusters The Davies Group, a huge portmanteau services company.
The Davies Group is 100% owned by BC Partners.
BC Partners is 100% owned by the Guardian Media Group.
I didn’t expect that either. The Guardian. Loss adjusters to the Chinese state. Welcome to 2023.
UPDATE Incredibly the loss adjuster has come up with a new reason to try to deny the claim. They say that the weather in Swanston 18 to 19 June did not meet the definition of “storm.”
The word “storm” does not in fact appear in the policy document, so I don’t know where this comes from.
They have now accepted my evidence that the roof was relaid by a qualified roofer in 2020, and that less than 50% of the roof area is flat.
They have referred the question of “storm” to the insurer and promised me an answer in three to four days, “Possibly sooner”. The rain is still dripping in. END UPDATE
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Oh boy, were to start. Firstly empty your bookshelfs and store the books somewhere else, because your roof will very likely need renewing.
The split responsibilities in your insurance company snakes and ladders game are merely shifting the buck sideways without enacting any remediation, in their effort to frustrate you and in the hope of finding bad practise on your behalf to get out of it.
Embarrassing them can work and as we are nearing silly season, other media outlets might want to swipe out at them.
Many of the tips given are very good. Dont wait until it gets colder, that will exacerbate the problems as ice and frost can damage the roof further.
Abandon your study and make moves to repair it, we had our roof done by a trusted trader, well worth ringing round and or find out about their work and diligence from customer comments, we even contacted an ex customer of our roofer, asking for their experience with x or y contractor/builder/roofer.
Its not always the first one who comes to quote and inspects the work to be done, pulling air through their teeth whilst orally quoting, that is the best quote. We found that its wiser to get a quote from somebody busier, somebody who is not first to quote.
A roofer/builder that comes with more than one friends recommendation is also a good way to find a suitable company.
Time is not on your side, winter will be here in 3 month, get you going boar.
This story is both amusing and disturbing. How many people have the tenacity to unravel the complexity of something so seemingly simple as ‘who is my insurance with’. And while they obfuscate and delay, the problems increase. I hope you did/do eventually have everything put right. Serves them right if your claim costs more than the insurance.
“Modern late capitalist society” or socialism with Chinese characteristics?
Socialism with Chinese characteristics has been the most successful political project of the last few decades. It’s not even close.
Late neoliberal Britain is circling the drain.
Capitalism with Byzantine characteristics.
We had a flat roof leaking on our London apartment managed by CityWest, a sub-contractor to Westminster Council. Water was entering the home below. The roof was readily accessible through the door of the apartment. Instead of coming to have a look at the repair they were responsible for, they wanted to sub-contract it out to a company called Extreme Ropes. They were proposing to abseil down from the 11th floor roof to assess the damage.
No matter how many times we encouraged them to use the door, they seemed to think that abseiling, which they readily admitted was going to be more expensive, was the way to go.
We never thought to suggest a drone . . .
Matt.
Insurance, nowadays, is there only for the benefit of the insurers not for the benefit of the insured. There are two types those that you are legally required to have and those that seem to make sense to hold – if the system wasn’t corrupt.
Putting money into a savings account ‘for a rainy day’ makes better sense for the latter type. IMO !
I’ve come to suspect this is one of the ways empires fall. For more and more people, actually filling potholes and fixing leaks is beneath them. They work behind desks instead. We saw in the pandemic how “going to work” and “going to the office” were synonymous. Those dealing with issues like this have three responsibilities. First, find a way to say it’s not their organisation’s responsibility. If that fails, divert things to someone at a different desk who’s probably on holiday or whatever. Finally, if the resident/customer/victim persists, find a way to have the absolute minimum paid to whoever is actually going to do the job. Thereby ensuring that in the next generation, even fewer will want to do real work.
it’s not like the employees don’t want to work. they are doing their job as their employers demand. unfortunately that involves not paying claims.
A flat roof is a leak waiting to happen.
As for insurance, you are only “insured” for as long as you think you’re insured.
Just look at the long chain of people/companies standing in line to rake off ‘their’ share of your premium money. It’s a racket. Legal, but crooked at the same time.
You can pay your premiums for four or five decades and then when you try to claim you will find that you have paid far more in premiums than you will ever recoup in a claim.
That’s how the operators of the insurance industry / scam work. It’s why when you go and visit the head office of an insurance firm you will see that the cars in the staff carpark are invariably much posher than the ones in the visitors carpark. They make money out of you. You will never make money out of them. That’s how it works.
Other than such things as motor insurance, which is obligatory, and landowner’s third party insurance where claims can potentially run into millions, you are usually best to self-insure. Find the going rate for insurance and self-invest that money meticulously in good investments such as gold and fine art and Rolexes. You probably won’t need to cash those assets in, but you can be sure that you yourself won’t fuck around when it comes time to pay the costs of repairs such as a wonky roof or a burst pipe.
Trust me. I’m the majority shareholder in three namecos at the fugly building in Lime Street. I know how the system works. We win, usually. You will usually lose.
There’s an episode of “Linda Smith’s A Brief History of Timewasting” (the first series is being repeated on Radio 4 Extra at the moment) in which Linda undergoes hypnotic regression in order to recall all the organisations who have been supplying her home with gas over the years. She eventually remembers that her current supplier is the English National Opera.
i’d pay to have it fixed then reclaim costs through the courts, it seems the only way to get some companies to act.
Similiar insanity in Germany, naturally.
On any market, including the labour market.
If you are unemployed and apply for unemployment benefits, eventually after 1 year you will be pushed back into the labour market or harrassed by the state.
If you follow orders you will get job offers, rather having nothing to do with what you formerly did, and every intermediary involved into getting that particular job to you wil get a cut.
So if the job officially is for 10Eur/hr you will end up receiving 4Eur/hr since the other 6Euros are pocketed as “cuts” by the various intermediaries.
Just like with Craig´s insurance odyssey.
Needles to say that said intermediaries in fact do nothing for their cut.
Everybody rips off the state and the unemployed.
Clerks working for those state offices who have tried to change these policies internally or facilitate the plight of the unemployed got kicked out or harassed too so they end up in the labour market themselves.
So in the offices you often have the unemployed and the clerk as potential rivels in the labour market.
* * *
As to the roof, hopefully the wooden structure itself which the roof is built on is intact (since this problem appears to be older.)
So the leak did not affect only single spots of the ceiling of the room itself not the raw material of the house structure above.
Of course this you will not find out with a drone.
Only if a knowing person looks into it in personam below the surface.
Well who would have thought? The Guardian and the Chinese State!
I just hope you get your roof fixed.
My monthly sub (in the name of Mrs Banks) will not go far in fixing things but ‘every little helps’.
I have known about the issues you describe since the early 2000s. I left the car insurance company (whose marketing director at the time was one of my nieces) I used to insure my car because of issues similar to what you describe – a vast heirarchy of middlemen all taking their cut. The insurance company? Admiral. Also, getting broadband issue fixed suffers from similar problems – talktalk take note!
got me worried re Admiral….got a multi thing policy car and house….maybe should separate…
Water leakage is the most common claim on household insurance. This is why you have to look carefully at the policy details. For example I had a problem with water leaking through my ceiling and found I was only covered for leaks from the pipework and not if the seals and grouting around the bath or shower are not watertight. The loss adjuster sent by the insurer was obviously skilled in demonstrating in the customer’s home that the company had no liability. (What a nice job to have to do!) Another problem is the main way to reduce the premiums payable is to raise the excess to the level where there is little point in having the insurance. Also if you make a claim one year, your premiums are likely to go up even if you switch insurers. I have found that buying through a reputable High Street broker is worth doing as they can do the market comparisons for you. Always explain which insurer is taking the business and can handle the claims process for you. Saves a lot of hassle even if you have to pay commission.
Hi Craig,
not your usual type of blog but thanks for sharing. We have reached a depressing point in time where a significant part of the capitalist process involves various agencies passing a payment through their system and database and taking a cut without any human involvement.
Your blog fits very well with my most important POV on any type of insurance which is that you never know how good your insurance is until you have to make a claim. I think this applies to all types of insurance and is of particular concern to me as I get older.
The tick box culture of the online market for travel insurance is extremely difficult to navigate even when you want to be totally honest and above board about your state of health. If it was possible to pay out a reasonable sum of money to have a session with a qualified GP or other qualified medical professional who could ask the right questions and the right follow up questions and get me to sign on the line that I have been totally honest I think I would go for that. They could then give me a level of risk that I could take to the market and all I would need to add was when I was going, how long I was staying and where I was going.
I am quite prepared to take my chances with lost luggage, petty theft, broken cameras or tablets, lost jewellery, etc, but I need assurance that I have travel insurance that will get me home from the worst case scenario. I’d happily pay more for such a policy rather than the possibility of a relative or friend having to deal with loss adjusters and various other agencies who are probably there to find a way of avoiding paying out as much as they are there to “help”.
Also of great concern is that how much you pay in a premium seems to have little connection with how the claims service is and how applicable, appropriate and robust your cover actually is.
Sounds like a job for Wikileaks!
If it were me I get a builder or roofer in pronto to fix it and then argue with the insurance company, or just pay for it anyway if not much.
And of course change insurers – look at Which? best buys.
Got a cowboy builder in, caused 30k worth of remedial work. My insurer would not pay, his insurance would not pay, however my insurance did offer 50k of legal cover if the case was pursuable in court, they decided it would not be as the cowboy kept low assets on company balance sheet. So I’m out 60k total and the cowboy is free to continue.
Tradesmen, especially properly trained ones, are few and far between in Scotland. It’s deplorable the number of rip-offs and substandard work that has to be tolerated because of the “lottery-like” nature of building trades people. Where you are lucky if you find a skilled worker at a fair price (£500 to £1500 for one day’s labour ex-materials is not uncommon). Standards of service in most semi-skilled trades do not exist. Countless tales of bad workmanship exist within the “industry” because there is so much demand for such important services.
late stage capitalism, scams everywhere. i’ll give capitalism that, it does produce efficient scams. not so efficient at solving problems.
Craig, I assume you will soon be in the market for home insurance. If so, you might want to double-check your choice of company with recommendations on the Which website. They’re no guarantee of quality of course but might offer some reassurance before you part with your hard-earned cash.
I’d be happy to give you my user name and password for the Which website if you like – you have my email address. (I wouldn’t recommend subscribing to the website just for this information).
:-O !!!!!! WTF?! What a story. This should be reported by a newspaper. Err….
hey how about the Guardian?
A sadly typical modern tale. I find that making a complaint quickly if you’re not getting results tends to get you through to someone with more authority.
By the way, BC Partners is not owned by Guardian Media Group. Nor are BC Partners the actual owner of Davies Group. It will be investors (limited partners) in funds managed by BC Partners. Primarily pension funds and other institutional investors.
Ironic that following the advice of cute Russian-accented meerkat cartoon characters and buying insurance through Comparethemarket.com turned out to be not so simples!
(There had to be a way of blaming the Russian President for Craig Murray’s current woes somehow. :-))
At least Murray can sleep at nights knowing that the profits from Chaucer Insurance Company are presumably going to the Chinese state who will use them to build more infrastructure and create more employment for the Chinese people, more so than the British government can be bothered doing for British citizens.
You’ll need to replace the ceiling as part of the repair. At the moment it’s acting as a conduit to transfer the water to various locations in your room, so where the water appears in your room won’t necessarily correspond to the location of the leak in the roof. If you pull the ceiling down now you’ll be able to inspect the roof from the inside, find the location of the leak, and place your buckets accordingly whilst waiting for a response from whoever will take responsibility.
Fantastic. Sorry for your trouble, but it’s a great read.
Flat rooves leak, but architects still love them. There’s a whole chapter in the fabulous “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand.
https://www.quartey.com/writing/how-buildings-learn
All the best
Loss Adjusters work for the insurance company and want to adjust any payout down.
What you need is a Loss Assessor. He works for you to achieve the best outcome for you.
(His costs may vary, it may even be NIL – see https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/loss-assessors/ for some more background information.)
This advice I read years ago and I gave it to a friend who was claiming many thousands for her husband’s death by cancer.
The loss adjuster didn’t want to pay out anything! This had gone on for months, with associated stress, until the loss assessor got involved. She got a full payout plus final peace of mind.
As an aside, Loss Assessors are often ex-Loss Adjusters, so they know all the tricks Loss Adjusters will try!
If the roof of my house leaked, my first step would be to get it repaired.
Then I’d think about whether I could claim something from my insurance. It’s unreasonable to expect the insurance company to pay for additional damage caused by the homeowner’s failure to fix the leak as soon as possible after noticing it.
It may surprise most readers, but in normal times, an insurance company pays out slightly more in claims than it takes in in premiums (its overheads and profits come from investing the “float”). The zero-interest regime of the past few years has broken this model, but the insurance companies should have adapted by increasing their premiums, not by trying to deny more claims.
I assume everyone knows that companies pay to feature on price comparison sites?
I always try to buy direct from an insurer not via an intermediary , not easy to find. I have been using LV who do answer the phone as well.
They have just been bought by someone so it may deteriorate into a brand name only.
Similarly I try to book hotels and train tickets from the provider not intermediaries like Booking.com or Trainline, it seems obvious to me that if anything goes wrong as it often does, the entity that did not have to pay 10 % or more to an intermediary is likely to be a lot more helpful.
What a scam Comparethemarket is ! they and other comparison sites have cost the taxpayer billions and billions by helping to set up tinpot energy companies that went bust when energy prices rose, so that they could get a commission moving consumers from one company to another.
Presume politicians are keeping quiet because both Labour and Conservative encouraged consumers to switch to cheaper suppliers.
That was pretty extraordinary story and I admire your investigative skills.
I hope you eventually get a settlement and your roof fixed.
In the meantime all I can helpfully suggest is that if the drip is damaging your floor you put a bucket under it to catch the water.
Since covid pandemic customer service seems to have disappeared and I’ve found the following method is required for almost all situations with service providers to get a satisfactory result, whether it’s an electricity company, leasehold management company, broadband provider or insurance company:
As soon as possible after you feel even slightly let down insist any company/ organisation provide you with their complaints procedure, follow it & insist on obtaining a complaint reference number. It’s important to do this as soon as possible as there’s often a fixed time period before the complaint can be referred & also a limit after which it cannot be referred to the ombudsman/ governing body. One can sometimes speed up the process by requesting a letter of deadlock. Insurers are regulated by the Financial Ombudsman Services.