When asbestos prevented repairs being made to her home, Alisha's insurer wouldn't refund the £50 excess it had charged her.
What happened
Alisha discovered she had a leak in her bathroom, so she contacted her insurer to claim under her home emergency insurance policy.
The insurer asked Alisha to pay a £50 excess before sending out an engineer to inspect the leak, which she did.
The engineer tried to find the source of the leak but couldn’t. They said a roofing contractor would need to lift the tiles on Alisha’s roof to expose the waste pipe. The roofing contractor came out a few days later and found the leak, but also also found asbestos at the same time.
The insurer said it couldn’t do the repair until the asbestos was removed which it said was Alisha’s responsibility. Alisha thought the insurer should have arranged the asbestos removal because it was part of the repair that needed to be done.
She complained to the insurer.
What we said
We checked the terms and conditions of Alisha’s policy to see if the insurer should have arranged the asbestos removal. The policy made it clear that this was Alisha’s responsibility, so we couldn’t ask the insurer to do it.
We asked Alisha if she had arranged asbestos removal in the meantime. She said she hadn’t. The leak had continued and caused further damage.
As the repair hadn’t been made, we asked the insurer why it had kept the £50 excess. It said it was because it had arranged two visits to diagnose the leak.
We checked the terms and conditions to see when an excess was applicable. This was only in the event of a completed repair.
We didn’t think it was the insurer’s job to arrange the asbestos removal. However, we didn’t think it was fair for them to keep the £50 excess. We upheld Alisha’s complaint and asked the insurer to refund the £50 excess with interest.