Bad Service by ABSA Insurance

Dear Sir /Madam

Home Owners Policy *** - E van der Zee

Home owner’s insurance claim number ***

For more than 20 years I have insured my house with ABSA Insurance.

Recently I put in a claim for damages.

I should mention that one ABSA Consultant made it appear that the claim for damages was accepted, as I was told that I would be liable for the first ten thousand Rands of the claim.

After a period of time passed by and not hearing back from Absa insurance, I called in to follow up on my claim and find out it was repudiated because the house was was not only residential and was also used for business purposes.

Whereby in or around 2003 I had phoned Absa Insurance and spoke to one of the call centre agents and informed them of my property being in use for business as well as residential purposes.

It bewilders me that for all these years I was under the impression that the terms and conditions were altered to include business use. I assumed that all was correct and there was no reason for me to peek at the lengthened policy document sent by post.

The policy document (which I subsequently requested), clearly states that the insurance contract does not cover business use. The proposal form that I signed when I first a for insurance could not be delivered to me by Absa as I was informed that there is no record of it since documents are not kept by Absa for longer than 5 years.

My gripe is that over all these years the insurance broker has never once contacted me. Yet my house is ostensibly not insured and therefore ABSA is not at risk.

Should damage to my house have occured in the past, the claim would not be admitted. It will be repudiated. Such a situation cannot be allowed to continue.

To make matters worse after my claim was repudiated, Absa still had the audacity to debit my home loan account with an amount of R13,092.83 being the home owners insurance premium.

It transpires that I have been paying insurance premiums for twenty years without being covered due to a fault of Absa and in effect it's staff.

I intend holding ABSA INSURANCE responsible for keeping me uninformed.

More importantly, ABSA INSURANCE has not been at risk. I am therefore suggesting ABSA corrects this fault by honouring the claim or by providing a refund of all premiums that were paid between the years 2004 to 2020 (while I was not covered) to fairly fathom an immaculate forward relationship.

Yours faithfully