Ecclesiastical Insurance

I had the misfortune of my gas pipe bursting and setting fire to my back-burner last year.

The insurance company (ecclesiastical) turned up pretty quick, although this happened on a Bank Holiday Monday and there was an out-sourced company answering the phone - they could do nothing apart from take my details and get someone to phone me back (which didn't happen of course, I had to phone them back the next day).

Anyway, they sent a chap down to assess the damage and then proceeded to wriggle like hell to get out of paying for anything.

They DID pay for the boiler - because it was not the cause of the damage, but refused to pay for a new gas fire, which was totalled and instead would only pay to brick the wall up. The radiator in that room was not big enough to heat the whole room, hence the fireplace.

They also tried to just pay for accomodation for about 7-8 weeks, despite the drying process (the water pipes burst in the heat) taking 7 weeks alone.

All in all, they pretty much got out of it as cheaply as possible, even leaving me to do all the running around and were not very sympathetic when I told them that at the height of the silly season finding a short rent was nearly impossible - there answer was "well, you'll have to look harder." - obviously I couldn't move very far away as I had to get the kids to school.

So, I think about 4/10 - they turned up quickly, but then wriggled and wriggled to pay as little as possible, despite the extra pressure it would put on me. At one point I had to pay the bills, mortgage and rent out of one pay packet - I did get this back, but it meant a summer with no money at all.

Not really all that impressed.