Bad faith practice on the part of Santam

The idea of insurance is a matter of trust between client and the noted insurance company, in this case, Santam. What has transpired since the inception of the claims applicable to a cataclysmic flood from 10 October 2017 in Durban, KZN has been nothing short of clear cut bad faith practice on the part of Santam and a veritable betrayal of trust that I once had as a client.

The noted claims in question are as follows: ********** 83 & ********** 42

Which have now been referred to the Ombudsman for Short Term Insurance (OSTI) for review with noted reference numbers of: AOR1 - B38/18N // SANTAM // 862/ ********** 3589 & AOR1 - B39/18N // SANTAM // 862/ ********** 3589

Since set flood, SANTAM has demonstrated a laissez faire attitude and performance in committing to their contractual obligations. Your noted preferred suppliers attempted to rip us off. Your administration of the claims from Kayser Baird (noted broker) to the 'Managers' to 'Assessors' have been nothing but a clear nightmare inducing delays that left us without water for over 4 days. The consistent excuse tendered was the amount of claims submitted which were bottlenecking the claims process but you had no complaints when the immense number of premiums were being submitted to your profit line.

Wherein the claim of bad faith practice in set claims comes to the fore is that of your KZN Manager repudiating a claim on the 30 October 2017 when the assessor only arrives on the 3 November 2017. Now, either your Manager has a time machine in processing claims OR better still, there was never any intention of paying out our VALID CLAIM! This is the legal determination of bad faith practice and encroaches into the territory of misrepresentation on the part of SANTAM. As for the 'pay for play' Engineer - besides the delayed appearance of himself and his absolute joke of an assessment, renders the excuses put forth in his report without merit.

As clients, we have gone above and beyond our Duty of Care in attending to this matter involving our insured property which is covered up to R 7,490,000.00 and we are truly done in placating not only the deliberate incompetence of SANTAM but these deflective tactics as more than undue. Also, this tendered excuse of our building of ‘not being maintained’ has zero legal credence. As when we have confirmed that there is no initial report on the property insured on file with SANTAM (a simple walk-through or observational report similar to what the assessor engaged on 3 Nov 2017), no insurance company can claim that the property was not maintained. As clients, we do not live in shacks and insure our property as a mansion – it’s preposterous. We prepay for the entire year on our policy as we can and are able to and when it comes to maintaining our property, there is no debate on that issue – it is well maintained!

Our complete and organized quotes rendered by competent and qualified contractors deserve full payment without delay. It is absolutely shameful when service delivery of a major corporate insurance company is put forth in this manner and the demonstrated ineptitude is allowed to go on unchecked hoping that clients will magically fail to pursue the issue.

It is time that Santam get their act together and get this matter sorted and paid out in full!