Personal Insurance poor handling of Rental Insurance compensation claim Fall-Winter 2021
by AR on Dec 18, 2021
2 out of 5 stars
Home insurance cost increases very fast at The Personal even no claim whatsoever. No loyalty program to talk with. Do not choose The Personal!
I own my house for more than 25 years. Never had a claim. Without putting too much information here, I've made my first claim a few weeks ago. At this point, the adjuster (very polite) is trying to find loopholes on how to reject the claim. The amount claimed is really small, a few thousands of dollars when my deduction is fairly high. Almost not even worth doing it. It seems that they put all their resources on how to reject my claim. I pay over 6k a year on my home/car/bike just to find out that I'm not insured. I will move on to a reputable company. YES - their policy is a bit cheaper but at the end... are you really insured?
Doesn't anyone at the Personal speak English? I am sick of dealing with people I have to talk down to like a 3-year-old. I send emails and I get "Please call one of our experts" blah blah blah. The last person left her extension but not her number and the number recorded was just for outgoing calls. Give us a break or we will find someone else to do our business with.
Recently, first time ever I file a claim with The Personal due to the water damage. As always told/believed, you only find out about insurance when you make a claim and I experienced it when told what is covered and NOT covered. Anyway I went with their assessment. They deal with Paul Davis Systems who carried out the assessment. What a joke -
the guy showed with nothing and had to borrow a step stool and a ladder to look for issue. Also called and provided the feedback to claim adviser which, I am sure, was commented as a standard apology and surely ignored - never will make it to the next level. So far very unhappy!
I have been a customer/policyholder of The Personal for 12 years and made my first home claim due to the Nov 2014 wind storm in the Oakville/Burlington ON area. The claims management experience has been a nightmare! Little assistance to help the policyholder through a stressful process, ridiculous policy on covering damages/expenses incurred because of The Personal and their service providers' incompetence, and to top it all off, a painful process to even get funds forwarded in order to pay service providers for those expenses they DID accept!!! Unbelievably bad customer service skills, adjustment/claims management process and expense reimbursement. I am beginning to believe that the favourable rates (mostly due to a group plan) are just not worth it. Stay away for the claims experience alone - believe me! If I could choose NO STARS I would.
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I filed a claim with The Personal Insurance Company recently (fall 2021) for compensation on the loss of rent during the period our condo was damaged and was repeatedly suffering from grey-water backups into the kitchen sink and, on two separate occasions, into our unit, a situation that made the condo unfit to live in for almost four months. The floors, the walls, the kitchen cabinets were all impacted and had to be dried up, disinfected, partially removed and finally replaced. I sent names and contact information, videos, pictures, documents, the assessments made by the building insurer etc. The Personal Insurance gave me the longest and most exhausting and exhaustive runaround in the book and to this day, they have only very reluctantly compensated me for about 1/4 of my rental losses. Their definition of an unfit to live property doesn't match that of the province they are headquartered in and are serving. They say, we only compensate the property owner during the repair time, not while the property is damaged, unfit, unsanitary, unsafe and only partially usable (in this case the property was only fit for the storage of the furniture, occasional stay overnight, and the use of the bathroom and laundry facilities.) Our tenants spent most of this period staying with family and friends and coming to the condo when absolutely necessary. To compensate them for this inconvenience, I gave them a discount equal to half their rent. I also, gave them the option to break their lease and leave altogether as we didn't know when the property would be repaired since the cause of the damage had to be found and fixed before any repairs could take place within our unit. They chose the rental discount hoping that the repairs would take place soon. I thought the Personal Insurance would easily compensate me for this very straightforward case of loss of rent, minus my deductible, and as long as it didn't pass my total rental loss compensation limit stated in my insurance contract. That was not the case, and the two claims adjusters, and the one complaints division agent with whom I followed up on my claim, all found every possible way to refuse to provide full compensation for the rental losses I have incurred by following the provincial rules pertaining to compensation to tenants when the property is damaged and is inferior to what was promised in the rental contract.
This is quite sad to discover since I have been a very happy client of The Personal for decades, generally due to their respective customer service and quick handling of the few small claims my family has had with them in the past. But, I guess things have changed, and this company doesn't seem to respect its rental home insurance policy and its written promises as it ought to. I hope The Personal Insurance executives will read my comments and try to return their company to what it used to be in the past, a decent and reliable insurance company that was reflective of the clients they're serving: hardworking teachers and university instructors among others.