Super unhappy - Standard Bank Insurance - CORR - 21/035261

Words cannot express our frustration with Standard Bank Household Insurance. I strongly advise anyone buying a property to never use Standard Bank - not for the bond or the insurance.

Dealing with them means dealing with inept call center personnel who does not phone you back. It means holding on for more than 20 minutes sometimes.

Dealing with the personnel who are supposedly higher up the chain at head office is just as bad if not worse. I have tried so many times to phone and I have sent so many desperate requests for help I've lost count.

Here is the story in a nutshell. Our geyser burst around the 7th of May. It took Standard Bank Insurance four days to get a plumber to install a new geyser. The installation was done on the outside of our house as the bank refused to authorise the installation in the roof cavity.

The work done was shoddy and non-compliant. We could not get our gas COC as it turned out the geyser was installed closer than 5m from the gas cage. We then had to get the insurance back again to install the geyser where it always has been - inside the roof.

After countless emails and fighting they finally sent the same plumbers back. The geyser was installed, but now our ceiling is leaking as a roof specialist/builder was not involved in the job.

We are now three weeks down the line (almost 4) and we still don't know when a building contractor is coming to salvage the roof/whatever is causing the leak. In the meantime our ceiling is rotting inside.

The worst out of this whole experience for me is the lack of communication and care. No communication whatsoever.

As one of SA's supposedly big five banks - I think it is a shame and I expected better from you. We will never have anything to do with Standard Bank again and I urge you to not even consider them.

I do not want to give a star rating to this review, I wish I could make it minus 10.