ABSA Home Owner's Insurance - Atrocious customer care

I'm writing regarding a claim I submitted under my Home Owner's Insurance policy which is being handled terribly. On Saturday, 5 February the wall between mine and my neighbour's property collapsed due to the heavy rains and lightning.

I called the Absa Insurance call centre on Monday, 7 February to institute the claims process and assessors were only sent on Friday, 11 February to assess the damage to the wall.

Having heard nothing from the Absa Insurance call centre, I then called early in the week of the 14 February to follow up on the claim, I was told by the agent that I spoke to that the assessors take 3 to 5 business days to compile their report. At this point I pointed out that I had had a large section of collapsed wall for more than a week meaning that my neighbour's dogs had been roaming my yard for all that time. Although a call centre agent had undertaken to make arrangements for an emergency fence, no follow up was made on this and there is still no fence in place.

Towards the end of that week (around 17 February) I called again to follow up only to be told that the claim had been repudiated because the wall had not been constructed in accordance with some or other building code. I was furious for a number of reasons (i) why did it take for me to call for such significant feedback to be given (ii) the basis of this repudiation is absurd to say the least. I have had this policy with Absa since 2002, when I purchased this home. This wall was constructed way before then. I am not a qualified building inspector. How was I to know that this wall was not properly constructed? If Absa wanted to make that a condition of the policy, they should have asked that all aspects of the property be inspected by a buildings inspector (in the same way vehicle insurers do) but instead they want to push the risk of not having done so onto me.

I have called the Absa insurance call centre twice (Friday 18 Feb and Monday 21 Feb) since then and asked to speak to a manager to escalate this matter. Managers are unavailable and I have received no call backs.

I am a 73 year old pensioner and have never missed a single premium payment under this policy since inception (almost 20 years) yet when I need Absa the most, this is the way I am treated. I still haven't even received any written feedback on this issue and I must still go to sleep with a massive collapsed wall that compromises my security. This is completely unacceptable customer service.