With insurers like this you're better off with nothing at all!!!!!1

I would've liked to give this company a 0 star rating. I'm going to try and keep this as short as possible. on the 19th of February we get one heck of a storm down in the Karoo. We were not home at the time but the next day I found my TV is faulty. I find that the carpet underneath is wet and suspect water ingress from somewhere. I then found traces of water that came through the ceiling (marks on the old painted Oregon pine ceiling planks and against the wall) right above where the TV unit is attached to the wall. I then went ahead and tested everything that could've been damaged and found the TV faulty, Home theatre system switches on but no sound, MiniPC didn't want to switch on at all, and my wifi router was acting strange. The DSTV Explora and Android TV box seemed to have been working fine. Also the Split unit airconditioner above the TV stand was faulty and had water marks.

I phoned Campher brokers, who handled all my Short term insurance who sent me some documents to complete. I also took only the faulty items to a local electronics repair shop for damage reports and sent this with the documents. After this a lady phoned me from OM Insure in George Telling me that she was going to do a digital assessment. Great, this seemed to have gone rather quick (about a week after the incident) A few days later, Mr. ***lord Britz phones me from George and tells me that he's going to come and assess. Good and well, i suspected that should be the case. He came to my place (2 weeks after the incident) and started off with recording our whole conversation and filling in an affidavit. I thought, damn. These guys go full out these days. It's been a while since I last had a claim. Then he starts peppering me with questions. Why am i under debt review? Since when have I been under debt review? Was it voluntarily or was I placed under debt review by a third party? Do I rent or own the house? Who is the owner? What's her number and email adress? Can he see the contract?

The questions were getting too personal to my preference but hey, he's got a job to do. He tells me that the airconditioning unit, although the contract states that I installed it and can remove it upon moving out and stays my property, is not covered under my home contents cover. Somehow I could understand this and let it be. By now the affidavit has been finished off and he starts taking pictures of everything, the ceiling, the TV stand, the marks on the walls/ceiling, the roof outside, etc, etc. and there he goes. Before he goes he tells me that he will have his report submitted before Friday, which Friday I guess he didn't say. The next week I start following up and finds that he collected all the items from the electronics shop and sent it to a "forensic expert" of which I haven't got any identification of up to now. He also made the lady at the electronics shop believe that he was a s**** collecting agent for my insurance and was collecting the items as s****, making her believe the claim has been settled.

After another week or so he phones me with some questions. The home theatre system and tv's plugs were cut off from the leads. Why? I then told him that because they go through a 10mm hole in the TV stand's back, the plug doesn't fit through so I just cut the wire next to the plug. Both the TV and home theatre system was connected to one plug to lessen the amount of electric plugs on the back of the stand. It's been working fine like that since I've built the stand in 2018.

The next thing he said that the miniPC wasn't switching on due to one of the USB ports being damaged. I was aware of the damage port (my the 4 year old son damaged it about 2 years ago) but we used the PC without problems and just did not used that port. He said that it was switching on when they tested it.

He then explained that the Home theatre main unit had water ingress from beneath as well as an arc on the PC board. I could not explain this to him seeing that the unit was standing on a solid flat surface with water pouring from above, I guess some of it could spatter in from beneath? The arc was inexplainable. Everything was working 100% before we left home and my son was watching Youtube the whole afternoon until we left.

The Wireless router also switched on according to them but he could not say if it was functioning properly.

I then told him to send me back the working items on one condition and that was that I want some assurance that the items had NO water damage that could give me problems in the near future, upon which it will obviously be my problem and not under insurance cover. He denied to give me such assurance and told me that his "Expert" was not a repair guy and could not give such assurance.

Next thing is that the National Lockdown is announced. I contacted my broker and asked if we would have the claim sorted before the lockdown seeing that I've got children to entertain and am now without a TV. He promised then that the claim will be discussed on their "claims forum" and will be sorted before the lockdown. I didn't think much of any of their promises by then so went ahead and borrowed a TV from a friend.

On April 8, after requesting feedback yet again, I get a response that the claim was rejected due to me providing false/misleading information to the insurer. ***? Why am I not surprised? I then ask them for a formal rejection letter so I can refer the matter to the Ombudsman. Today is the 21st of April, almost 2 weeks after I received news that the claim was rejected and still no letter. Every time I request feedback about the letter, I get an email back saying that the letter must be drafted and then be authorized. I cannot see how this can take 2 weeks.

This must be THE WORST insurance company I've ever had to deal with. They are corporate bullies and I will make sure to spread the word as far and wide as possible. This was a relatively small claim so I can recover from it but what If my house burnt down? They send a ***** investigator to make sure he finds something in the small print which they can use to reject claims and they drag the process so long that the 2 premiums they've collected during the process itself could've been used to replaced the TV.

I have since cancelled my contract with Campher brokers and Old Mutual Insure. With insurers like that you're better off with nothing at all!!!