Hollard pursues its own interests only

On April 9th, 2019, my home boundary wall collapsed due to a natural disaster. The next day I contacted the Hollard insurance company, and a few days later assessor came to my house and the assessment. As you all know, collapsing is an emergency. I have been asked a few times about the results. I received a rejection letter on May 9, exactly one month later, when I asked for a ridiculous excuse with no reply. The reason is that the wall was too old and the foundation of the wall was poor.

Since I moved here two and a half years ago, I asked my former husband in the UK about the wall's history through e mail. When the former owner lived in this house a few years ago, the wall collapsed by flood water and there was no reason to collapse because he had built a solid wall in the standard bank insurance he joined.

That is why it is not plausible that the insurance company 's fence is too old to be rewarded. And it is also not convincing because he has built solid walls at Stanford Bank Insurance Company.

So I ask Hollard again. Please reassessment by another assessor.

My neighbors and builders who saw the collapsed walls, all complain about Hollard's attitude, which is only for his own benefit. Everyone says that it is the job of the insurance company to compensate.

As an Asian missionary, I have been ministering to the streets people for a long time. I am heartily eager to be discriminated against because I am a foreigner, and look forward to Hollard's sincere actions.

I strongly demand it As soon as my insurance company reassessment.

I attach the e-mail of the former proprietor who wrote down the history of the fence that has fallen into evidence to prove my claim reasonably as below,

Ha***o (I may have got this wrong), Good afternoon, Yes the years go by but we see you are still there in lovely SA. The elections are in May and it will be most interesting to see how it all turns out. The short term future of the country is at stake. We see that you did put up a fence at the front but hope that Lovemore Heights remains fairly peaceful for you.

Over here the talk is of Brexit, democracy and the will of the people. It is a mess, but an exciting one. We have local elections in May and they may well be affected by all the Brexit goings on.

We have just come back from a few days in Wales where we did much walking that tested my hips and Bev`s knee. Our big walking days are perhaps over. Life in the UK is, of course, quite different from that of SA. But we knew that when we decided to follow family back here.

Now with regards the wall.

During the last year or three we did some work on the house that included:- New pressure geyser. New retaining wall by the pool. New pool pump/motor. Driveway access. Water tank to the side. New wall at the bottom of the garden.

The garden wall actually fall down one night during heavy rain that built up against the wall until the pressure was so great to topple the wall over. It was only when the neighbour came round the next morning that we were even aware of the problem. This was a few years ago but am no longer sure of the dates and do not have any correspondence to refer to.

I did not know whose wall it was.

In this case the wall was knocked down by the weight of water build up. It became clear that this was due to the fact that the wall was built without weep holes at the bottom that would allow any build up of water to flow through the wall. The absence of weep holes meant that the wall acted like a dam wall until the pressure became too much.

We had house insurance with Standard Bank I think.

We contacted them and had a new and better wall constructed using this insurance cover. We incurred an excess cost only.

The new and good quality wall was built with weep holes.

It is important to keep these holes open from any build up of earth/sand in order that they may fulfill their role of allowing water to pass through. At the same time I installed the water tank as a holding place for water coming off the roof. The path at the bottom of the garden also acted as a small moat if really heavy rain came down. In addition the new driveway access was amended to stop any heavy rain from coming down the driveway. Any that did would be collected in the pit in front of the garages. This is another area that needs to be kept clear of leaves etc for it to work properly.

These actions resolved the water issue but it has to be realised by the neighbour that water will flow from high to low ground and that it is natural for any heavy rain to flow from your garden through the weep holes of the wall to theirs.

The question is why the wall fell over this time. If it was not rain then it might be something on the neighbours side e.g. ground slippage.

By these actions it did mean that the wall was yours even if this was not the case before. But hopefully covered by your insurance. It depends on why the wall fell as to who is responsible for the repair. I hope this helps. Bye for now. Cheers. Alan Shern