Following our last article, we are still tearing our hair out over the claims from the flooding that occurred just before Christmas
Many of these claims have been “dismissed” by the insurance companies and referred to the Consorcio.
We have been reliably informed by one of our insurance companies that the Consorcio will not deal with agents and will only deal direct with the insured party (our clients). This goes from the initial submission of the claim, to any follow up queries, to final settlement. As we are a caring company, we cannot leave our clients, especially the non Spanish speakers, to fend for themselves and have submitted many claims on our clients behalf.
We have been very good and submitted all the required documentation pertaining to each claim but still we wait ………Believe me, it is almost as frustrating for us as it is for the clients.
Fortunately, we were able to warn our clients that the loss adjuster who would visit their properties only spoke Spanish and was a little ruthless to say the least. Many of them were able to rope in the assistance of family, friends or colleagues to act as translators and to argue their case for them.
They say that variety is the spice of life, but a little consistency when it comes to these claims would be good. We were told to expect each claim to take at least 6-8 weeks to settle, yet one client has settled on a figure of around 70% of her original claim and has already received an interim payment within 3 weeks. Another client had two expensive carpets damaged in the floods valued at over €3000 and this claim was not even referred to the Consorcio and has already been settled by the insurance company. A further client had goods to the value of €500 damaged in a flooded storeroom and this was referred to the Consorcio and is still pending……. I despair!!!
I cannot moan too much. Today, I chased a claim for a client, pretending to be a friend of his, and the lady at the Consorcio couldn’t have been more pleasant. She gave me a new reference number so I could follow up the claim again if necessary and gave me a full update. It’s still not settled but we’re getting there …. Slowly but surely.