Spectacularly disappointing

I hate writing these things. I’m a busy mom of three and I barely have three seconds to rub together, but the sad reality is that bringing complaints to companies via social media is often more effective than direct communication.

Our home was broken into about a month ago - this has been our first ******* as a couple - so that’s in about 18 years or so. It was an unpleasant experience but thankfully not as traumatic as it could have been and we are genuinely grateful for that. While we weren’t eager for the hassle of claiming from insurance, we had moved to Naked as our insurer about 18 months ago based on many rave reviews and felt confident the process would be as smooth and quick as could reasonably be expected.

I’m sorry to say that on the other side of our claim I cannot say this, and I would never consider recommending them. To start with, our claim was chosen for validation. We had very little contact from Naked at this stage explaining on what basis it was chosen; how long the validation process would take or what it would entail. The validator came to our house and essentially went through almost all of our things asking for us to give approximate values for these things. This included stuff like our clothes and food. Apparently this was to ascertain whether we were underinsured. We were also asked to give proof of purchase for every item that was taken. We simply couldn’t do this for some of the items as we don’t keep all our receipts indefinitely unless we need them for warrantee or tax purposes. The validation process felt very invasive but we are aware that we live in a country where *******ion is rife and so we comp**** at every step and as swiftly as possible. The validator took almost an entire month to hand over his report to Naked.

When the claim was eventually finalized we were offered about half of what we had originally claimed. We were furnished with a list of our things and Naked’s own valuation of those things. Most of the items on this list were misidentified and there were some that were completely omitted - this despite the fact that we had provided proof of ownership to the evaluator which would have included very specific details about the items for accurate identification. For example I was offered R200 for a pair of cubic zirconia earrings in order to replace a R480 silver necklace.

We were told we couldn’t claim for an old laptop that was ****** because we couldn’t provide proof of ownership, but there were a couple other items on our list that we were reimbursed for and that we couldn’t find receipts for. We were offered R5000 (despite a similar item’s current retail value being R15000) for a PS5 because they insist this is an “easily portable item” or "an easily portable item that is not typically taken out the house but is small enough to be easily hidden on a person's body, like a small ornament”. The PS5 is 39x10.4x26cm and weighs almost 4kg - essentially the size of a small desktop computer. There is just no way this could be hidden on a person's body and obviously wasn't as it was taken along with a lot of other things that were not snuck out the house, but carried in a dog bed that was also ******.

There were three consoles that were taken and it looks like Naked have capped their payout for all of them at R5000. My husband works as a video games developer and these consoles are critical to the work he does. With the amount that Naked have offered us we will not easily or quickly be able to replace this equipment.

We have been in communication with Naked but at this stage are still not sure whether this issue has been raised with anybody in management because we still seem to be receiving emails from people at the help desk.

We moved our insurance to Naked because they seemed more efficient and high tech and they got excellent reviews from people who had made actual claims with them. I truly wish this was our experience but sadly I’ve found their service to be a very strange mix of distrusting, laborious, unnecessarily drawn out and *********** and I could not be more frustrated with the outcome of our claim. What they have offered us will be fall very short of what we need to replace the things we lost.