"Definitely not insurance!"

My 1st review of this company was removed because the COVER they offered, in return for the PREMIUM I paid, and the DAMAGES we then suffered, for which they required us to complete a CLAIM form, from which they deducted an EXCESS was mistakenly referred to by me as insurance when they corrected me and said "'We do most certainly not offer Insurance ..." (direct quote) but only offer All Risk Cover. Please forgive my error and please don't ever think you are getting insurance from South Africa Relocations.

We did take out ALL RISK COVER and when there was damage, they claimed that the most expensive items where either not covered or they used random procedures, processes, and definitions to reduce the claims.

Obviously (what was I thinking in asking for one?) they cannot provide a contract or policy, because it is "certainly not insurance". This presents several problems. Firstly, I suspect they did not hold the required reserves to honour this agreement and now are forced to argue the quote as low as possible and secondly there is no legal agreement against which I can compare their unreasonable assumptions.

There arguments and assumptions do not agree with supporting documentation, like the packaging list or their own emails explaining their decisions.

For example, they have admitted negligence on behalf of their own staff – they agreed that some furniture had been damaged because their brand had incorrectly been wrapped towards the inside and rubbed off on our furniture. For 1 item a headboard portion of a bed they claimed we only indicated that a bed was to be covered and not a headboard (even though the headboard is part of the bed unit and not a stand-alone item). My argument being that we would have two potential claims, either against the All Risk Cover (it seems as if their own negligence is not one of the risks covered under ALL risks) or against their admitted and confirmed negligence.

And before I am accused of misleading people, here is a quote from one of their emails on which they admitted their mistake but still refuse to pay: "It was a human error and I cannot really explain how this happened as the person that packed your lovely items has years of experience and this is the first time that he made such a mistake."

They reduced the overall CLAIM to such an extent that the EXCESS they charged is almost 30% of the total PREMIUM we paid and intentionally have kept the CLAIM approved way below the PREMIUM we paid to make sure they make an extra profit.

We only took ALL RISK COVER for one of our paintings which we also had crated by them at an extra expense. We marked this one painting on the itemised list as COVERED for R50 000. ALL other paintings in all the other rooms are listed and specifically marked with a zero value in the amount to be covered column. We only loaded these because we had space on the container and none of these paintings were crated. When they damaged the crated painting and despite that their packaging list clearly shows we had NOT covered the other paintings they rep****: "1. Because you did not stipulate how many pictures and paintings you were covering for the amount listed on your filled in All Risk Value Form or which painting you were covering, we ended up calculating from the inventory how many pictures and paintings our team collected from your lovely home that was listed on the inventory."

Would be nice to be able to argue against this convenient assumption but would need some sort of contract?

8 of our boxes arrived smashed, we have photos and their local unloading agency confirmed this. These were our kitchen boxes. On their packaging list we had COVERED all the boxes marked utensils/cutlery/pots/pans which is how THEY packed them and this was the only options on the preprinted ALL RISK COVER form. In the smashed and damaged boxes various items where damaged (in fact all the breakables were damaged):

Ceramic Salad Bowl Broken Declined: Not Covered Glass Salad Bowl Broken Declined: Not Covered 2 x ceramic Broken Declined: Not Covered 1 x Glass Baking containers Broken Declined: Not Covered Tupperware Squashed Declined: Not Covered Ceramic Serving Plate Broken Declined: Not Covered

Their reason: " 2. Unfortunately, bowls don’t fall under the categories that you pointed out in the email below and that is the reason why the All Risk Value Form has a few blank spaces in each category for you to add items that you would like to cover that is not on the list."

Then when I argued that their staff had packed the boxes, paintings etc and could testify to what was included in the kitchen boxes and where the COVERED painting came from, I got this:

"Unfortunately I was not at your lovely house when our team packed your household goods and am therefore not fami**** with what was packed from which room."

To top it all off, we paid for all these broken boxes, paintings and furniture to be shipped from South Africa and they offered to pay out only a small portion of the South African value (after the adjustments and exclusions discussed above) which leaves us even further out of pocket because if we replace the items in South Africa then how do we get them to Australia?

The worst part is that they promise to get back to you, commit to specific dates and then ----- nothing! Poor Service and a poor product offering