Wawanesa Home Insurance Reviews

Long story short. My Neighbour had a flood and damaged my property (condo). Wawanesa adjustor (Christina M) gave my neighbour and me all kind of nonsense and refused to pay. I had to spend a year and hundreds $ to sue my neighbour. In the end, Wawanesa had to follow the order to pay me and honour their policy. So much had for me because the company and adjuster would not do the right thing at the beginning.

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?

Too much to tell about the misery this company put me through. Had a major leak, and they avoided calling me back for months at a time. Sent out 2 absolutely unqualified adjusters on 2 separate occasions, got the run around for 8 hellish months, meanwhile they charged me for a claim that was ultimately refused after making me wait and watch all the damage being done to my house.

Had a water damage claim in Spring 2021. I won't get into all of it here but, I've dealt with other carriers on claims and never once felt like I was getting the run-around or basically, being lied to. This company's representative that I dealt with misrepresented my coverage, misrepresented what caused the damage leading to my claim, adjust use false information in their reports, and for the most part, everyone was all in the game. I even wrote to the head of home coverage at Wawanesa and got the brush-off. It appears to me this company is rotten from the top down. With the help of private contractors, I was able to expose their shenanigans and received my entire claim value which was close to $2,000.00 more than where we started.

A pipe broke under my house and these awful people didn’t want to cover it. I had to put a public adjuster and only after 1 year as 2 months got they to paid for it. Then a tenant that we had upstairs damaged a little hose/pipe from the dishwasher and didn’t tell us for a week and so we had water damage on most parts of the kitchen and down to our garage. They tried to not cover again but after 3 weeks of talking back and forth and we reminding them about a public adjuster they decided to covered it. Now we received a letter from them saying that they will not cover us anymore. No only that, they made our claims public with lies for other insurance companies see it and make it difficult for us to find another insurance.
So if you are looking for home insurance wawanesa is NOT A HOME INSURANCE OR THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT INSURANCE IS FOR!
Scammers!!!!
I absolutely don’t recommend this business!

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.

This April we installed new kitchen faucets, unfortunately they were too easy to operate and we woke to a flooded 1st floor and basement after our cat hit the handle and it had run all nighr. We called our broker and they confirmed we were covered so we made a claim. Adjusters came with a contractor who said the whole kitchen needed replaced along with the hardwood floor. Adjusters said it would most likely be paid out and we'd hear from them in a week. A month goes by with nothing from Wawanesa, we call and call and finally they arrange to meet and take a statement. Claim I'll get a copy to review, lies. A week later we get a letter saying they deny coverage based on an inclusion in my policy which excludes damages by pets and they cancelled the policy. I read the policy and this inclusion they denied us on wasn't in my policy so I contacted the broker for another copy to confirm, it was exactly the same. Now my lawyer is handling it. They have sent him a 50 page policy they claim is our policy but we never saw this version! We will be taking them to court, this is fraud. They old bait and switch. Avoid Wawanesa like the plague, they are crooks.

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