Santam has complete disregard of listening to any valid reasoning.

During the course of 2 weeks in February we experienced heavy storms. Due to the heavy rains, the drainage gutters could not handle the mass of water coming down and the water overflowed onto the veranda area, the gutters also sustained damage and the water was not contained as it should have been. With the tiles being subjected to water over a period of time, the grouting and mortar was compromised and the water caused the tiles to lift. I verified that some water got underneath the tiles by lifting a few tiles to reduce the stresses exerted by the tiles on one another as I was starting to see damage on the tiles. Before this the tiles were in a perfectly good condition with no evident damage or indication of being loose.

I submitted my claim on the 05/03/2020, shortly thereafter the assessor came to inspect the damages to to the property. On the 02/04/2020 I received the rejection letter

According to the rejection letter the claim was rejected according to subsection: Storms and Wind, where damage is not covered by the insurance provider due to:

a) damage due to wear and tear b) damage due to gradual decline

I disputed these claims as the the relevance of these statements were invalid. The definitions for wear and tear and gradual are as follow:

Wear and Tear: The definition to wear and tear is the damage that happens to an object in ordinary use during a period. Gradual: slowly over a period of time or a distance

There was no evident wear and tear to the tiles before the heavy storms we experienced. The damage to the tiles did not happen under the normal use of the tiles and definitely not over a period of time, the damage occurred within a few days and the rate the damage spread was quite significant within a day or two. There clearly must have been an external influencing factor which caused the damage to happen (in this case the heavy rain) so quickly and spread at the rate at what it did. There was also no evident damage to the gutter beforehand and this could also not fall within the rejection reasons given.

After the dispute they rep**** that the installation of the tiles had been done incorrectly, because they had been layed over other tiles and this is the reason the claim had been rejected, Incorrectly to what standards exactly? Why change the reason after it has been disputed, why not stipulate the reason correctly in the rejection letter? This statement is also invalid as this was not the reason why the tiles were damaged, as this would of happened gradually over a long period of time and the rate it spread wouldn't of been so rapid as it had.

If one looks at the statements, timeline of the events an the influencing factors, it is clear that it was due to an external factor.There is no evidence of any gradual decline

After this they proceeded to write a long paragraph explaining why and how tiles tent, not giving any consideration to my explanations and reasoning.

Let me give a representation of how I feel my claim is being handled. If a buy a vehicle at a dealership, and before i leave the dealership with the new vehicle they insure me that they have done all the necessary safety checks. On my way home a other car crashes into my new vehicle. I submit my claim and upon inspection the assessor finds that a wheel nut is loose (we do not know when the wheel nut was lost) they reject my claim due to the fact that the vehicle was "unsafe" disregarding that this had no influencing factor on the accident and my innocence.

I asked them if they could honestly dismiss the claim with cer*****y that the floodwater had no influencing factor, I received a response that if I am unhappy I should take the matter further not answering any of my questions. I did take this further and contracted the internal arbitrator and he basically provided the same reasoning. With this all I feel that it doesn't matter what I say as as a client it would not even be entertained or considered. No good counter explanation could even be given to what I feel was a valid reason from my side.

In this I also find out in this that the assessor mentioned that there was no damage to the gutter despite me showing him the areas the gutter had been repaired, he also mentioned that it had not rained that much, which it had there were news articles of fatalities recorded due to the rains personally we documented over 100mm within 2 days not mentioning the other rain during the course of those 2 weeks. Furthermore I received a photo from the client service manager where the address attached to the photo was not even corresponding to my address, this just shows how valid facts were dismissed and made to be nothing, not very professional.

Reading through Santam's reviews which I should have probably spent more time doing before I considered them as a insurance provider. I just got a sense that clients are just numbers, and it is pointless to try and reason. The negative comments greatly out weigh the positive comments for this company.

All I can do is post this and make anyone else aware of what my experience was.