ABSA insurance get out of jail free card - Due to lack of maintenance!

Good day,

I would just like to find out what your criteria are for claims regarding homeowners insurance.

My wife and I just bought our first house, an estate house, and we have received a loan from ABSA. ABSA then sent an assessor to the house to determine the value of the property, as well as to see what is wrong with the house.

The only problems with the house were the electrical system and the plumbing, nothing else was brought to our attention. I took out a building loan for these problems because I felt that even if I pay for the repairs, the price that I offered was perfect for the area the property is located in.

The house was registerd in our names on the 12th of August 2021, two days later, the 14th of August 2021, we had our first rain, and found out the garage leaked, and in that process blew one of the newly installed garage door motors. So I submitted my claim for the motor, only to be rejected due to lack of maintenance. I phone ABSA and asked them how was I supposed to do maintenance on something I did not know about, but still just said the claim is rejected due to lack of maintenance!!!

I took that one on the chin because ABSA does not know about the 24 skips that I had to hire to get rid of all the ******* that was left at the house and the 2 truckloads, no not bakkie loads, truck loads that I paid to be removed.

The yard at the property was in an absolute state due to not being maintained at all. We cut down all the overgrown trees and started to make the property really pretty and we were slowly but surely making it a home.

After a while, we received our second rainstorm after moving into the house and realized that the roof was leaking. I am not afraid to maintenance myself, and I went out and bought the supplies that I needed to fix the problem. Slowly all the leaks were starting to disappear. The bad part about a leak is that you only know that is leaking when it rains. So every time, only 3 times, it rained I climbed up onto the roof, unlike the assessor from ABSA, and fixed the leaks.

My only problem was the "braai area" as I like to refer to it because I cant build my braai yet due to the fact that all my money is going into the maintenance of the roof.

Then the last storm came through and the water was just dripping in all over the place, so I submitted my 2nd insurance claim on the 21st of November 2021, the morning that I could see the actual damage caused. I heard nothing back from ABSA and phoned them on the 23rd of November to find out what was going on. Luckily I did follow up because they told me that they never received a claim from me. I logged the claim on the system as they told me to, and their reply was: "oh, sorry the system is backlogged, we are behind on the claims.". I submitted it over the phone while I had someone on the line.

ABSA sent out a company to come and do an inspection of the roof, what they had to do before they approved my loan, to assess the damage of the roof. While they were busy with the inspection of the house and roof, the guy from the company asked me if ABSA has sent someone out for an assessment, and I said yes. He shook his head and told me that the roof would not have passed inspection and that he had to bring it to my and ABSA's attention.

I went through the right channels in purchasing the house, as we are first-time buyers, and it is not our profession to know where the pitfalls can be in what to look for when buying a house. (Next house I will go through with a fine toothcomb and an army of building contractors to find all the faults.).

I called ABSA, like normal, to try and get some information out of them about where my case is at the moment. (I had to nag them in the beginning to get my insurance number and home loan number. Still waiting for my "welcome pack")

I think we can all guess what their response was to my claim....... REJECTED DUE TO LACK OF MAINTENANCE.

From my understanding is that when I buy a house through a bank, the house must at least pass the minimum building requirements. How can the house pass that when the roof was not built properly, according to the insurance inspector that ABSA assigned to the claim?

I have done my part of the insurance criteria by doing maintenance on my property, continuously, to keep on top of things, as well as to ensure that major defects do not creep up and cause bigger issues that could have been prevented by doing maintenance, but they do not want to honor their part of the agreement. As long as they get my premium, they are happy, but if you want to submit a claim, for the exact reason you have insurance, they hide behind due to lack of maintenance!!!! Not all of us are building regulation experts, but we use companies that are supposed to help us prevent cases like this to save themselves money as well. If I had known about the fault with the roof, I would have rectified it at the beginning, not 3 - 4 months after I had bought the place.

Come on ABSA that is not the way to treat your customers that is willing to give you money even in the tough economic environment that we are in today.