First class claims service? Yeah, right!

Halifax's website suggest they have a first class claims service for insurance? Hmph, not from my recent experience.

So, after informing them of the leak, we were told they wouldn't pay for the roof repairs or the ceiling repairs but that they would send someone out. So, we got a visit from Imperial Consultants on 15th May 2008 who confirmed that the damage was "consistent with water coming in" but, because we had been told by Halifax to get the leak repaired before they would send anyone round, couldn't confirm where the leak had come from (he went on the roof).

After the temporary repairs had been done to stop any more water ingress, we eventually got some roofers to come and fix the roof. The ceiling collapsed after a few days, so we had that put right at our expense as well.

Nothing atall happened in June as we'd been told by the Halifax to get quotes for a new kitchen (which we did from B&Q, Magnet, Moben and MFI). That took a while as we had to sit through sales pitches, designs etc and arrange all this for evenings and weekends when we were both free.

Once I had these quotes and supplied the quotes (verbally) to Halifax, then all of a sudden they moved the goalposts and decided that they wanted to fix the kitchen. I tried explaining it was trashed by the water, but it's very hard to explain this when they're sat in a cubicle 60 miles away.

On the 31st July BTC came around to assess the damage and recommended that someone should come around and remove the tiles, as Munters had said it was wet. This dragged on for a few weeks and finally BTC came back to remove the tiles on 15th August.

We've had Munters come on the 20th August to bring a dehumifier to dry the walls, but unfortunately BTC had not been round to remove the kitchen units, so the machine wasn't going to do much until they'd been. Adam from Munters came again on the 26th August, but it was a waste of both of our time, as the kitchen units still hadn't been removed, due to Halifax dragging their feet giving the instruction to do so.

On the 23rd August, Kat noticed that a painting hanging in the dining room on the wall opposite the main kitchen wall (where the leak had come in) had a black mark in the corner. On taking the picture off the wall, it was clear that mould had grown on the back of the painting, damaging the newly plastered and painted wall and trashing the painting (an original).

We reported this to Munters when they came to check on the dehumifier and he tooks some pictures of the painting and the damage and instructed "an expert" to come around and see if it could be restored.

I received a call from ServiceMaster and they came around to take yet another picture of the painting and the damage on the wall, to them see if they could instruct "an expert" to enquire about restoration. The guy didn't seem hopeful. I have heard nothing since.

BTC finally came and removed the wall units on 29th August, but only had instruction to remove the wall units and left the base units. I was horrified as I watched them literally pull the units off the wall, bringing part of the wall with it, which crashed down and damaged the cooker glass top.

I reported this back to Halifax and we are now due to have both the Halifax's loss assessor (Mike) and BTC back again on Monday 8th September "to verify the damage".

I can see an argument brewing here, surely this is not the best idea in the world, to have the customer accusing BTC of causing damage, while the BTC guys are right there?