The claims consultant who requested a photograph of sound!

This site does not allow one to proceed without selecting a star so its the only they get 1.

This is my letter to the ombudsman copied here and I hope that anyone even having the slightest idea of signing up with Momentum insure reads this fully, and changes their mind because my story proves without a doubt how *********** and uneducated their consultants are. My car has suffered water damage on 27/1/2022 due to flooding of the cabin whilst off road driving with a Land Rover Discovery Sport designed with a wade depth of 600mm. Unfortunately after heavy rains 2 weeks prior the known road had become water logged more than expected, I got stuck and water seeped through one of the doors slightly deeper. As a result electrical faults occurred.

I auto valeted the car the following day to extract as much water out of the carpets and floor then waited for it to dry to see if modules recover. On 2/2/2022 I submitted my claim. It then took 5 days to be contacted by a claims consultant to have the vehicle assessed. So on the following day, 8/2/2022 the outsourced company of Momentum, Netassess, had a look at the vehicle. The assessor agreed with me that photographs taken will not give a true idea of the damage since its electrical faults as well as deeply penetrated water seepage. Therefore I suggested that because the car is under warranty it would need to be electronically diagnosed by the Land Rover dealership to which he agreed as well. Later that day his manager had advised that my car should be transported to SMG Arc in Durban since they the nearest Land Rover approved panel shop and from there the car can be sent to the dealership since the panel shop might have to perform stripping as well.

My car was lifted onto a truck and taken from Pietermaritzburg to Durban on 10/2/2022. It was drivable but I did not want to risk driving the distance with unknown faults. From this point it took another 9 days to get authorization from Khanyi Rasodi which was emailed to me and not the panel shop. If I had not phoned SMG to follow up on 22/2/2022 the panel shop would have not known. I had to take time off work to email and make the contact to the panel shop. It was from that point that I never received communication from Khanyi again. The panel shop could only run limited diagnostics with the computer they had and needed to send the car to the dealership but required authorisation from the insurance first. On the same day I emailed Khanyi's manager, Adel Kotze to complain of the processing delays. She did not respond.

From this point it was endless phone calls to the panel shop to find out what was going on because almost 3 weeks after the submission of the claim I did not even know what the extent of the damage was and no estimation of how long I would be without a vehicle. The panel shop only got approval to send the car to the dealership about a week later, thereafter once their diagnostic report was submitted it took about another week for Momentum to approve further damages found.

I wrote a complaint and review on 2/3/2022 on Facebook, Momentum contacted me on messenger and said they'd escalate the matter. On 3/3/2022 I contacted Adel again with another email explaining the situation of delays in recurring authorizations. I specifically acknowledged that all I had received in communication was an email of authorization from Khanyi. Adel did not even read my email properly because she just attached the very same email of Khanyis that I had already received 2 weeks prior. So even the claims team manager was useless and showed no interest in helping. She not apologize, she did not phone or give me any insight as to why the repairing technicians have to be hampered in every move they make. The panel shop advisor did explain the vehicle would require a series of testing and retesting as components are revived however each step picking up new damage over and above what had been initially authorized for would require extra requests for authorization which clearly to this date took a week at a time.

On 18/3/2022 I was contacted by the panel shop to say that the dealership had run diagnostics again and found other components to be repaired. The diagnostic report printed clearly that radio, speaker and amplifier components were broken and had been submitted to Momentum to authorize them to order and repair the parts. He continued to tell me that this was hampered yet again because the consultant at Momentum requested photos as evidence.

So it's at this point 7 weeks since the claim started that incompetence has reached it's peak because it's a complete circle. The very first assessor stated that this required diagnostics and photographs are not good enough yet Francois Swamers (whose name I received today) now decides that photographs are required as proof that there is no sound from the radio. He obviously is uneducated in this matter.

All of Momentums' employees have served nothing but resistance to repair my vehicle and might I add that actual repairs only commenced last week, ie 6 weeks after claim submission.