Repudiation of Claim by Santam Limited

The meaning of Repudiation is denying the truth or validity. That is what Santam has done twice in my case. In the current instance the repudiation is premeditated. I am reproducing the letter I wrote to the claims key accounts manager of Santam to follow the process. She adamantly held on to what was written in Repudiation Letter.

"The First Assessor came for an assessment on 05 June, that is 4 days after the incident. In the meantime, the water on the carpet had already dried up and no marks were left on the wall or ceiling from where the water was flowing. The person who installed the geyser is the witness for the damage that occurred on the day of the incident. The assessor, Mr. Dimitri, himself admitted that bathroom ceiling is made of asbestos and it won't sag easily. There was no mould on the bathroom ceiling, but eventually when the second assessor came the holes from which the water came through the ceiling became visible. So the damage to the ceiling became visible when second assessor came in. I sent the photographs taken by me on the day of the incident, and he made the following comments in his report:

The insured forwarded us some pictures that was taken at the time of the burst geyser and it is clear that water had leaked through the ceilings of both the bathroom and bedroom, please see pictures attached.

I sent the same pictures to Mr. Dimitri also, but he didn't include those photographs, and he proved that due to the lack of maintenance, the claim is rejected. I would like to know why were my pictures ignored and the first assessor's report stated only lack of maintenance? The cause of the damage is a geyser burst. The water came through the ceiling, thereby damaging the ceiling. The water fell on the carpet and damaged the carpet. There was no water left on the carpet when the first assessor came, and there was no smell left in the room when the second assessor came. Some of the statements made in both the assessors' report are ambiguous.

THE AIM OF ANY INSURANCE IS TO PUT THE CLIENT IN THE SAME POSITION THAT HE WAS BEFORE THE INCIDENT OCCURRED.

THE INSURANCE IS REPLACING THE GEYSER BUT REFUSED THE CEILING AND THE CARPET.

IF THOSE ARE NOT REPLACED AS WELL, I WILL NOT BE PLACED INTO THE POSITION THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN; PRIOR TO THE INCIDENT.

The claim has nothing to do with your exclusions as the damage is caused as a result of the geyser burst. The damage would have also occurred at the best maintained property.

I will provide the quotation for ceiling and the carpet once the claim is approved."

In another instance the FNB credit card was used by my wife to pay for an air ticket. This payment method automatically covers the baggage also. The claim was partly paid. Mainly, the imitation jewellery was ******. But Santam didn’t pay the claim saying that jewellery must be stored in a jewellery box with lock and key. This is absolutely unreasonable way of assessing the claim. The ***** would have ****** the jewellery any way, and I would have incurred the loss. The intention of the insurer was just to repudiate the claim. I put this case here as well to show that the insurance companies indulge themselves in rejecting claims. In both the instances, the assessors made bigger money by rejecting the claim. This places the assessors at an advantage all the time by using their super power and rejecting the claim on unreasonable grounds. The insurance company has no idea that these assessors are committing **************** by rejecting a certain percentage of claims all the time.