Intact Insurance Home Insurance Reviews

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.