Nedbank Insurance - 4 claims, 4 terrible suppliers, no assistance from Nedbank

Our experience with Nedbank homeowners' insurance has been uniformly negative, despite all claims being minor issues. We are moving our policies, as the risk of them responding similarly should we one day have a major complaint, is too high.

A summary of our experience to date:

Nedbank insurance suppliers seem to be sub-par across the board, and their management of them even worse. Their complaints process is completely ineffective, which means that if you have an issue, there's no recourse.

A summary of our experience:

- Our geyser thermostat blew twice due to power surges. On both occasions, the Nedbank supplier fitted faulty thermostats that failed within a few days and tripped our electricity. Today, we were told that this isn't Nedbank's fault as they have no control over suppliers. The call centre was unable to log a complaint, and referred us to an email address which is unmanned (see experience below).

- A City power electrical surge damaged appliances at homes on our entire street. Our garage motor and 17 lights blew. Nedbank sent a supplier, and we paid the excess on the same day, 18 December.

For the next five and a half weeks, their supplier, Aminata, dodged 8 emails, countless phonecalls, didn't show up when scheduled and then ignored us for a week, showed up without scheduling appointments, showed up with the wrong equipment and had to leave (which their contractor confirms happens daily), refused to provide info on what the claim would cover, refused to recognise that as our garage door couldn't close and was a security risk this was an emergency, promised a temporary fix and then ignored calls, resulting in cancelled Christmas and New Years trips and reservations, installed the incorrect lights after confirming these on the phone, and **** to both us and Nedbank about having done the work already, having contacted us, and having been at our house. The first time we could leave the house unattended again, or go anywhere in a car, was 27 January.

Nedbank was copied on most of this correspondence, all the info sent to their complaints department, as well as to their procurement management team, and has to date never once responded. The only reason this work was finalised at all was because their social media team responded to a Hello Peter complaint.

- A major storm in January this year also damaged our roof, causing several leaks. Most houses on our street were damaged. Nedbank insurance sent someone out, but then couldn't do the work during lockdown, which is understandable. After level 1 lockdown was lifted, someone came out, refused to get on the roof because it was 'unsafe', and denied the claim because it was caused by lack of maintenance. We appealed it, another person came out, got on the roof, and then denied the claim for the same reason, despite us providing proof of the waterproofing work that they claim doesn't exist. We phoned Nedbank, they said they'd send us the detailed report and a contact to appeal it further - three weeks later we got a letter of rejection with none of the information that was promised. We sourced an independent contractor from our estate agent, gave him no context, he got on the roof, safely walked around, told us the damage was storm-related and not maintenance-related, confirmed that we had waterproofing on our roof (which Nedbank insists doesn't exist), and that the repairs needed were minor. We have no recourse, as Nedbank ignores complaints and will not send us the detailed report they claim exists.

We are now cancelling all our Nedbank policies, moving our home loan, and re-evaluating our substantial Nedbank business accounts. The transfer costs are worth the risk mitigation alone.