Will never make a claim again
by JBD on Feb 28, 2019
1 out of 5 stars
April 3 2017 we had a water leak. Intact had a contractor at my house the day after to look at damage. Day 3 we had emergency work done. TWO months later and we have had no resolution what so ever. Not one person is in communication with the other. The contractor says one thing the insurance company says the exact opposite. We are still stuck with this insurance company. Customer service has been awful and are not helpful at all. This company passes the buck from one to another. I feel this will be an all summer fight for what we pay for. Avoid at all costs. Go elsewhere for insurance it is not worth the hassle and stress this company puts its paying customers through. They make no extra effort into helping.
My claim has been ongoing for 4 years. The agents assigned to the claim repeatedly lied and delayed in an attempt to stall the claim. The contractors they hired to do the repairs never completed an estimate and again delayed. When we finally had someone in, they didn't complete the repairs and Intact has left us with an unfinished house and refused to pay a settlement so we could hire our own contractors.
They've literally made my life a living nightmare.
Let's start with the initial contact to start the claim. They answered the call quickly and the home robbery claim was started, so I thought. After a day I phoned back with the police report number when I was told no claim number existed. Claim process started... again. Now the claim has started and their reliable, pre-approved contractor cannot replace the door (destroyed during the robbery) for 6 weeks. Fine, I got my own contractor and had the door replaced in 2 days.
Back to the claim. I was assigned an adjuster from an outside company. She is professional and polite. We both have hit a brick wall with the claim. They just will not update either of us.I don't know where the claim is or when it will be settled.
Update to follow!!!!!
INTACT commercials - your claims process starts when they get your phone call - but that does not mean they will help you or pay people. It just means they type it in the computer. Then you deal with the adjuster which is trying an experience from HELL! I had the absolute worst experience with this company and my neighbour across the street did too! Our basement flooded due to a water main break. We had top of the line coverage. Adjuster got mad at me and smashed my front door! Put a claim in for that and finally got paid one year later. Adjuster told me he did not like me, and promised to give me a hard time. He sent threatening letters that they were considering denying my claim. He offered me 1/7 the actual cost to repair the damage 2 months of the flood. I had already spent double hiring myown contractors to start repairs, not wanting to wait for the insurance company to take action. I had tenants.The fighting over coverage went on for nearly 6 months and finally I got a cheque for double what he first offered. I said this is not enough to cover all the invoices I submitted and complained to Intact Ombudsman. They did nothing. Then I reported unfair insurance practices, bad faith, to FSCO = Financial Services Commission of Ontario. This forced the matter into ARBITRATION! I recommend this to anyone not satisfied with money the insurance company is trying to get you to accept. Take the money they offer but do NOT sign a final release. Tell them you disagree with their calculation of your loss total. At arbitration, I got to present all the invoices for the actual repairs of the damage (not the adjuster's guesstimate) + lost rent. The whole process took about 9 months, but I finally got nearly everthing I asked for. INTACT gave my neighbour across the street a hard time. After his semi detached home was involved in a fire, it took twice as long for Intact to repair his house compared to the equally affected neighbour nest door. Fire was in January and the neighbour with CAA insurance was back in his house by August. The other neighbour with Intact is still waiting for drywall work to be completed. Estimated re-occupation could be 1 1/2 - 2 years because the approval during the claims process goes at a snails pace at Intact. INTACT SUCKS! Maybe their rate could be cheaper, but the attempts to deny coverage and delays in the claims process do not make it worth the savings! Go for a insurance company with a good reputation for claims processing - even if they charge more. I don't know how some insurance adjusters can look themselves in the mirror each morning after doing such horrible things to claimants - I know they get a bonus for paying out less. It's dirty money. I don't want to profit from other people's misery! SHAME on YOU INTACT Insurance Adjuster!
We had water damages a few days ago,they were very quick in sending someone to dry the place ,of course to their advantage to try and tell us that there is no more humidity. Then they send an estimator who claims he has done 6000 claims, acuses us of delibertely breaking the tile in the kitchen around a column that was pouring water galore. Writes down in his estimate ,take out the wood floor in the living room ,and just screw in the sub floor that squeaks, ReALLY !!! We had a contractor come and make an estimate ,and the claim is over 20k they estimated at 10k.Best par about it is that the clown that came to do the estimate is boasting how he had water damage at his house and his insurance company estimated 24 k .He boasted he did his own estimate and the damge was 48k .But he comes to our house and does to the clients he serves ,the same they tried to do with him.A real frustrated pr......k giving a hard time to the customers ,because he thinks he knows it all ,very unprofessional.
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I am a single Mom, who had a terrible experience with Intact after smoke damage to our home. Intact left the restoration work unfinished to the point where it was making myself, my family, our pets and others sick. They have had excuse after excuse and have delayed our claim for over a year. Now, over a year later, I am still trying to get them to rectify the situation. We had to beg, borrow and plead for help from the community, family and credit to fix what we could after living away from home for months. It has caused us so much distress and financial hardship, that I am not sure how I am going to survive this, other than through my faith in God.
My mother and my in-laws both had the very unfortunate experience of having Intact insurance covering their homes, when they were flooded last summer.
Insurance is supposed to be for peace of mind, in case something goes wrong. Both my mother and my in-laws never missed any payments, and have been paying insurance for decades and decades with no claims. Then they experienced severe flooding this past summer. That's when the horrible problems began.
We all understood that there were probably thousands of homes flooded so everyone was trying to be very sympathetic. Nonetheless, BOTH sets of my relatives are STILL waiting for completion of the repairs (April '14) and the flooding happened 9 months ago (July).
Work didn't even begin until after Christmas. Work crews appear for a day or two and then disappear. The work is shoddy. The products (like the replacement carpeting) is very inferior. The assessments of the damage were unbelievably ridiculous. At my mother's house, I was walking around in water above my knees in her fully finished basement. Walls, doors, washing machine, dryer, gas fireplace insert, wash basin, shelving, the furnace - all was destroyed or damaged. Can you believe that the estimate for all repairs (including supplies) was $5,000. How ridiculous is that?? Then to keep within this absurd budget, corners are being cut left and right. The work crew keeps trying to foist left over materials onto my mom. Most recently, she found out that the replacement knobs on the doors had been allocated an amount of $1 (no this is NOT a typo). I don't have a clue where you get a replacement knob for $1 unless you are getting knobs from a demolition of another house. My mother's original knobs were fancy, relatively new and certainly were at least $30 to $40 to replace (conservatively). With my in-laws, though the bathroom in the basement was destroyed (the actual floor beneath the bathroom actually completely warped) the insurance company refused to repair the bathroom and told my in-laws they must pay extra. My in-laws (far too nice folks) agreed and despite that, the crew didn't let them select their own tiles. They just showed up with some tiles (seriously) and my kindly relatives let them install the times. (You'd better believe they wouldn't have gotten away with that with me.) My mother's crew tried the same thing - showing up with paint in a colour she hadn't chosen.
It is really unbelievable.
Because all of the neighbours are equally fed up, all these folks are just agreeing to anything in sheer desperation to finally wrap this trauma up, and to get their homes back and the crews out of their lives.
In the meantime, Intact Insurance posted a $100 million dollar profit in the last quarter of last year. They sure aren't suffering. They are making that profit on the backs of seniors like my in-laws (who are in their 90's for goodness sake) and my mother who is simultaneously fighting cancer while she tries to get her home back.
I have never seen anything so shameful and you'd better believe I shall never, ever insure with Intact after witnessing what my family has gone through.
Find someone else folks. Intact is really happy to take your money, but when the unthinkable happens, you'll be facing a terrible battle to get a fair settlement out of this insurance company.
At every corner this company has stalled for time and given us the runaround. At one point the contractor of our rebuild had to threaten to stop construction unless they received the first payment. Our adjuster has delayed working on settling/submitting the contents portion of our claim twice by going on holidays. We have been given numerous dates that we would receive reimbursement for our (so-called covered) expense receipts but they always have an excuse for delay. It has been 11 months since we lost our home and we still have no money settlement for our content and have paid out of pocket for fridge, stove, etc. And all of this stress for our 90 year old Grandmother! Think the company might be like, "if we delay long enough....." ??
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We had a pipe burst in our bathroom and called Intact immediately. This was on a Saturday. They said they would send an emergency team that evening to assess damage and help with cleanup. No one came Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. On Tuesday a contractor finally showed up to take measurements and then no one came back until Thursday. They still didn't start work for several days and even then, only put on some heaters and took down half of the drywall and floor (leaving me to do the rest). When Intact got back to me about the contractor's estimate, they basically gave me the option of paying $2000 out of pocket to have the room put back by the contractor, or I could take a $2200 cheque to do the job myself. This was based on an estimate of over $9000 for the work. I went over and over with the adjuster that I shouldn't have to be out of pocket to simply put my bathroom back to how it was, but I received no help and terse answers to every question I had. No flexibility was shown, nor any sort of empathy or concern. When I said that no one could redo an entire bathroom (including buying a new shower and vanity, and all drywall, insulation, flooring etc.) I was told, "You're right, but you still have to pay."