sonlymewalter

It seems some insurance companies are refusing to pay out to the poor flood victims as it's not the right kind of flood. Funny, they are more than happy to take the money from those poor people:curse:

It would be good to start up a list of those companies that we know are refusing to pay out so that people can get a clear understanding of which companies have paid out and which ones haven't

Steve2009

Can someone illustrate what's the problem here? i.e. the ambiguity in the policy. My contents cover with AAMI is very clear that flooding is not covered.

myrtle1

We have only recently (obviously) started to look into this in greater detail. There are those that cover any kind of flooding - which I was told Suncorp does (?) while others such as QBE specifically state that they do not cover river/lake flooding but do cover flash floods ....

DeadVim

Indeed, it is the policy holder's duty to read it ... we went with Suncorp for specifically this reason ... we also paid a premium for having it and I don't expect to subsidise those who didn't read the exclusions.

Sounds harsh but is a reality, you pay the premium, you take the risk.

sonlymewalter

the problem is some insurance companies produce product disclosure statements that are not easy to read or understand due to their legal jargon. Now some insurance companies are saying even though it was flash flooding, it was exaserbated by the dam being purged so in effect it's not caused by mother nature but by human error.

Some insurance companies are bottom feeders. They'll happily take your money but when it comes to paying out they drag their heels and some of these poor people are now having to fight their insurance companies to prove the floods were a natural disaster:curse:

Expat Kiwi

Our insurance company policy is very clear that we're not covered by flood from watercourses.

I looked at the Suncorp web site to see how much it would cost to switch to them.

Guess what - Suncorp aren't taking on any new customers.

AlliF

My OH works as a civil engineer in flood-mapping and management and even he thinks the wording on insurance policies can be confusing and definitions very ambiguous and when it comes to the crunch possibly leaves them with enough room to wriggle out of paying if they did not have a conscience!
Fingers crossed we won't need to find out with ours but its not always as straightforward as some people seem to think.
I agree if it states clearly you are not covered for any flood damage then you can't really complain but I think it is more the different interpretations by companies of types of flooding that is causing the confusion here.

sonlymewalter

spot on and said much better than me

that's exactly what I meant mate

Bermudashorts

I am pretty sure when I took out my insurance policy when I arrived here that they specifically discussed flood cover.

It is not normally something in the small print, it should be clear to the policy holder whether they have it or not. Just as people chose whether to be insured or not, they chose whether to insure for flood cover or not.

Expat Kiwi

Let's face it when most of us arrived here Australia was in the middle of a drought, flooding would've been the last thing on our minds

HelenTD

We had some minor storm damage a few years ago, damaging some flooring, front door and door frame. We dug out the policy to make a claim, and found that our policy didn't cover the water damage, as the heavy rain had pooled outside the front door and seeped in - this was classed as flood damage. If the rain had come in through the windows or roof, it would have been covered as rain/storm damage. Lots of houses in the area (country WA) were damaged at the same time, but they must have had better insurance policies as most of the claims were covered, according to the flooring people. I bet everyone in Australia will be checking their insurance policy wording very closely now.

fish.01

A lot of the people who flooded in Brisbane could not get flood insurance as they lived in known 1974 flood zones.

I compared the councils 1974 maps for the Rosalie/Milton area to the 2011 flood and it was very similar - if slightly less.

Some people up river are saying it flooded higher than expected. Apparently this flood was higher upriver (flood was on a bigger angle) where 1974 damaged more areas down river of the CBD.

Might be something to do with this being mainly wivenhoe catchment rain (ie rain out the west of brisbane) whereas 1974 heavy rain in Brisbane itself flooded a lot of the local creek catchments as well?

Brisbane was mostly sunny during this flood.

Melbourne bound Mark

Ok, well first up lets ask a question.

Did everybody who bought insurance cover last year just go with the cheapest quote they could get?

Well guess what it's buying a product and the cheaper products are not as good as the more expensive ones.

It really isn't that difficult to get a policy booklet and have a quick read to see what is covered or not thing is on the whole people don't do this - they just buy the cheapest cover they can get and assume that everything is covered.

Bermudashorts

No, I would not go with the cheapest quote. I consider what is covered and what is not and then take the cheapest quote offering the cover that I require.

It is quite an expensive purchase, insurance, I wouldn't buy a piece of say electronic equipment without finding out what it can do, so why an insurance policy.

OzSheila

About 2 years ago GIO automatically added flood cover to all policies and the change was heavily promoted at the time. I had to ring them and ask them to remove it from our policy as we live at the top of a hill and if we flood you may as well say goodbye to Melbourne.