Just eight hours after Georgia Scott, Mike Rodgers and their two children moved into their new home, a faulty ceiling heat lamp set the house afire.
The family of four thankfully survived the event. They would soon find out, however, that their insurance nightmare was just beginning.
More than a year after the event, the Christchurch couple’s Heathcote Valley house remains in a poor state of disrepair, while the family, after spending time living in a tent, now lives in the backyard,
Fairfax Media reported.
The couple are unable to proceed with the repair of the fire damage until the house’s quake-damaged foundations are fully rebuilt. However, a fire damage appraisal into the property revealed that it underwent an inadequate repair back in 2014 and a new scope of works shows that the earthquake repairs would require $250,000.
Neither
EQC nor private insurer
IAG dispute this, but neither will pay for the quake repairs.
The couple said they did their “due diligence and more” in buying the house – they paid for a comprehensive building survey report, checked that EQC’s repair was signed off, and even had insurance claims from the house’s previous owner reassigned, the report said.
“We’ve given them [EQC and IAG] enough time. We even offered to pay half the shortfall. We just want to repair our burnt house and they are stopping us,” Scott told
Fairfax.
“We can’t get on with our lives because EQC didn’t do things right in the beginning. We are living in compromised conditions because of their negligence.”
According to the paperwork the couple requested, both EQC and IAG were aware of the required over-cap repair. The scope of repairs sent by EQC to its repairer EQR appeared to be for a different property. And instead of rebuilding the foundations, the EQR repairers spent $90 gluing up cracks.
Trish Keith, EQC customer and claims GM, told
Fairfax that while they recognise the couple’s stress and frustration, it “believes it has fully settled Ms Scott and Mr Rodgers in accordance with its obligations in the Earthquake Commission Act.”
“The claim has reached EQC’s cap and has been passed onto the customers’ private insurer to manage.”
Speaking about the claim that was reassigned when the house was sold, Renee Walker, IAG spokeswoman, said the claim assigned to the couple had no value because the previous owners got market value when they sold the house.
“IAG has settled the fire claim with the family. Unfortunately, there is nothing further payable for the earthquake damage under the IAG policy,” Walker told
Fairfax.
The couple are fighting to settle the claim through their lawyer and want the organisations to sort out the details between them later, the report said.
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