Wawanesa Home Insurance Reviews

I am an single mom of three working 12 hour shifts to provide for my family. I have a older home with no concrete foundation..Just dirt under floor boards. The house was insured by wawanesa by the previous owners and now by myself and was insured with the house having h dirt foundation. I put 35000 into the house after purchasing. We repaired some floor joices that had sunk. I have never had the need to look under the the home again till a few weeks ago when I found the floor was bowing. I have found yellow mold fungi all over the floor boards and joices under the house. I took a sample with a kit and found it verified as "the house eating mold" There is no crawl space..Only about a foot between dirt and boards...I was told would be very expensive to fix. My 19 month old son has been to the er numerous times for lung infection symptoms or croup since he was born and him and I slept in the room directly above the mold fungi. I contacted McLean insurance who sent my claim to wawanesa after many arguments back and forth. I was told from the start that it likely wouldn't be covered as they don't cover water seepage and since water seepes through dirt that caused moisture hense making the wood damp and causing the mold fungi to grow. The adjuster came and took photos. Then a week went by. He returned with a contractor for his opinion. He stated it would be a lot of money to fix an take up to 6 months to complete. Another week went by and I heard nothing. I contacted he insurance reminding them that I have three small children in this house an we will need to make other living arrangements as I won't keep the kids in this house. Few more days went by then I get a call from the adjuster.... There are not covering my claim as they don't cover water seepage. I can not control how much water seepes through dirt. There has never been a flood up to the house. They insured the dirt the way it was under the floor an had no problem taking my payments for 6 years. Now that the same thing the insured has failed they will not cover it. I can't afford to fix the problem as it is extensive. It is looking as I will have to give our home back to the bank and look to rent...Which from what I have seen so far is around 1200 plus..That's a big difference from my small mortgage payment. I just can't believe there is nothing they are offering to help myself and my children with. I would not recommend his company especially​ if you have an older style home. They can give away free pizza an iPads but won't help there customers.

Wawanesa is hands down the worst insurance company I have ever had the displeasure to deal with. I have had them for my home and auto for over 15yrs. I have had to sue them twice now to get them to follow-through on their obligations. I should have learned the first time, i know. First experience was a damaged window from a hail storm. It took them a year (no exaggeration) to send their adjuster back to look at it - then denied the claim. We sued, they settled in mediation. This time around, there isn't enough room to tell the whole story. House fire in my neighbors townhouse spread to my unit, which was just the start to the fun. After 2 months of no communication from my adjuster at all, and being thousands of dollars in debt paying for a hotel, while I waited in limbo, they finally started talking to me, but would take a 1 month or more between contacts. I was in debt $15K before they cut me my first cheque. Then the terrible contractor they hired flooded the entire house after 4 months of waiting for them to do any repairs, by freezing a pipe. Contractor wouldn't do anything until the insurnace company stepped in, so it took them 3 days to finally do anything while the basement basted in water and freezing temperatures. They opened a NEW claim and charged me another deductible. Took them nearly a year to fix all the mess. I finally sign off on what I think is a fully repaired house, to find flooding and seepage in the basement within a month, where I had never had it before. INSANE. So I call, and they tell me its unrelated and it will be a new claim, and probably won't be covered. They send a contractor to look and says the same thing. I hear nothing from them for more than a month and I'm forced to now have my lawyer send them a threatening letter. They finally respond and tell me they are denying the claim. So I get my own contractor in to fix the mess and low and behold, we find the dirty secrets. The insurance companies contractor had taken no permits out. They left all of the original lumber in the wall. They must have known there was an additional water issue, but rather than disclosing it or fixing it, they used electrical tape and taped a piece of poly over a crack in the foundation, i suppose hoping it would solve the problem. Completely disgusting. They continue to deny the claim, and in fact refuse to release a cheque for my missing and damaged contents until I'm willing to sign their proof-of-loss form, that clearly states that I will have no further claim to damages. Suit #2 now filed. I wouldn't wish these clowns on my worst enemy.

One of our house cats turned on a kitchen tap in the middle of the night .originally the policy we got in the mail was about 12 pages . After 3 months of runaround they canceled our insurance and denied the claim .and saying they don't cover damage from domestic animals and to look at page 50 on our policy. This company needs to be investigated. Stay away

I have hade two claims with wawanesa one flood two fire the cost now is out of this world ' up 80 per cent. every time you have a claim they wont there money back now there all the same

We pay around fourty five hundred dollars for farm insurance and many people we know dont pay half that. We are now looking for a new insurance provider

They cancelled my insurance because of a payment issue that I was unaware of. Four days after I checked that this month's payment had gone, which it had, my bank then NSF'd the payment! As it is my only financial outgoing per month on that account, I had no reason to check further. Today I received a "cancellation of insurance" notice. On the interim, my broker or myself did not receive any notice of a payment problem. Instead they hit my account every couple of days accumulating multiple $25 and $5 NSF charges on my account. Had I received a heads up that the payment had in fact not cleared in the first place, I would have ensured the money was there. Now there is no money left to fix the problem because of the multiple NSF charges. This is a dirty & rude way to conduct business!

I've been a customer well over 15 yrs. I had a house fire this past April.
The lack of guidance, information and resolution has been eye opening.
It took me over 15 yrs to attain everything in my home and my Adjuster expects me to purchase first then submit receipts... In addition to that Ive lost income due to this fire as well. On top of that i need to prepare for the additional utilities cost for when they finally start the rebuild. Yes that's right the 8-12 week estimated time is now September but it'll be more like December. The Insurance is not on my side and all other parties involved are paid by my Insurance. I am at the point of seeking legal advise and seriously considering a public Adjuster.

I have never in my lifetime had a home insureance claim! Never! We live in Airdrie, AB which is the base camp for the army when the flooding happened in Calgary in 2013 because it is a much higher elevation and we don't flood. Does this matter to them? NO! our rates increase by 20%. Last month we had HAIL, did I have a claim? NO! However, I just received a letter saying my insurance is going up another 50%!!! This before they even pay a dime out! Insurance companies disgust me and so does our government for not protecting the public from these thieves! They put agencies in place and when you call they tell you to talk to your insurance company reps! Failures on all fronts.

I had two claims in same year in 2013, still not settled in 2014 year after first claim, insurance contractor lowballed estimates for some items then added high 20% overhead plus 20% administration costs to total and stated that line total before overhead and administration is what you get 80% of for cash settlement, thus 80% of 60% of contractor estimate, then reduced by additional 5% for gst which I could submit receipts for after work done in reasonable amount of time. It worked out to about less than half of contractor estimate after deductible.

Trying to get a contractor to do restoration but most do not want to do since insurance slow at paying them when work done. I am tempted to go through dispute resolution but more time and not worth the headaches. Roof estimate close enough since only 10% off for overhead and 10%% for administration, so 80% of 80% is better than 80% of 60% for basement restoration.

There story is that we can not profit from our insurance claim, but I told them fair compensation for work and tools used and no future liability is worth them saving 20% but they want to save 40% plus, so they can profit by having us do work for next to nothing after all materials paid but I cannot get fairly compensated for my time and use of tools and assuming personal liability for restoration??

The new replacement cost of items destroyed or semi destroyed meant nothing since they reduced items values for depreciation and then give us 75% of lower amount not new replacement cost for cash settlement, we could provide receipts later if we spent more but with no basement restored why buy anything not too mention they would not commit a time or money limit for storage costs, jut "submits receipts for our consideration" which means we will probably not pay for it or just a small portion of it, but no firm numbers and time constraints??

Cheap not always best?? Do your research and seek out companies that are fair but still reasonable in premiums etc. Would I recommend Wawanesa? What do you think LOL?