Alex and Sarah contacted us after struggling to resolve an issue with their home emergency insurer after delays in repairing broken boiler.
What happened
When Alex and Sarah’s boiler broke, they claimed for the repair under their home emergency insurance. The insurer’s engineer missed two appointments. The insurer then told them there were delays in ordering parts from the boiler manufacturer and that this was out of its control.
In total, it took four weeks for Alex and Sarah’s insurer to fix the boiler. That meant they had no hot water or heating over Christmas and New Year, and they had just had a baby.
Alex and Sarah were unhappy about the missed appointments. They'd also had to spend money on buying electric heaters to keep their home warm for the family. They complained to their insurer, and unhappy with its response, contacted us to make a complaint.
What we said
We looked at records including claim notes, contact notes and notes between the insurer and its panel of tradespeople. We could see that the insurer was aware of potential delays because of the time of year. We also looked at when the parts were ordered, and checked whether the insurer could have ordered them any sooner.
We asked Alex and Sarah to send us evidence of their increased bills and the cost of the electric heaters. After examining all the evidence, we thought the insurer should have managed Alex and Sarah’s expectations when they reported the claim.
The insurer knew it was a busy period and was aware of appointments that had recently been missed for other customers. It should have told Alex and Sarah to arrange the repair themselves and then claim for costs afterwards.
We also thought the insurer was liable for the delay in ordering the parts. The manufacturer told us the parts were in stock at the time of the first missed appointment. If the engineer hadn't missed that appointment, there would have been no delay.
We upheld Alex and Sarah’s complaint and asked the insurer to pay them compensation for the distress and inconvenience. We also asked the insurer to reimburse Alex and Sarah for the extra cost of the heating bills and the electric heaters.