Terri Scheer - Caution From My Claim

[DaveM]

I'm assuming you went over the PDS for EBM?
Did they have anything similar along these lines?

I read the EBM PDS last night and could not see exclusions of this type. The PM has done plenty of similar claims through EBM and has not had any issues with getting the bulk of a claim approved without dramas.

I will msg brettc to see what his thoughts are, he has been helpful in assisting me with policy questions in the past as I consolidate insurers.

 

[ok180]

What your describing is pretty much why I have never bothered with LL insurance, across my properties it would be costing several thousands of dollars and I have never had to make a claim in over 10 years of being a LL. I have probably saved over 20k in that time. I just have regular home insurance on all of them

The way I look at it provided the property managers are doing regular inspections and if you get a nightmare scenario only once every 5 - 10 years your better of going without LL insurance 99% of tenants would never cause the level of damage required to go through insurance.

 

[Television]

How much were you paying in LL Insurance p.a.?

 

[Ian (WA)]

Hi All,

Long time for me away from forum, been lurking sparingly.

Felt I had to contribute to this thread due to exact situation with CHU & their Chartered Loss adjusters YDR.

I had a 1yr old townhouse damaged in various ways to what Dave describes right down to garbage, keys, replacement of downstairs carpet, holes in walls, broken glass from tenant breaking back into property after being kicked out (through SA RTT) etc. etc.

Now I could turn this into a multi page reply on the details and I can assure you that anyone with Landlords Insurance will recoil in horror; personally I was sick in the stomach for days after reading all the correspondence between property mgr & insurers loss adjuster whereby my claim for approx $6K saw me offered $40 to replace stolen roller door remotes (remotes cost $240 - $200 excess = $40).....and $339 to replace smashed toilet bowl ($539 - $200 excess = $339).

In my instance and indeed from what Dave has highlighted, we are essentially covered for SFA!!!

By time the insurer and more importantly, their loss adjuster, apply their interpretation of of each incident or event there is in fact very little that is covered should you have a tenant engage in damage & destruction to your property. Especially when they roll out their determinations of 'clean living', 'wear & tear' and excess to be applied to each & every 'event' or 'incident'....each piece of damage is regarded as an individual cost & individual excess applies....regardless of whether or not the tenant has gone on a once off damage spree or not. I mean who the hell can prove if the damaged happened in one afternoon, or over the course of several weeks? All my 3 monthly inspections were in order and my tenant went off the deep end at some point in between inspections, but that matters not in the eyes of CHU & YDR.

All the insurers promotional material and PDS info paints a certain picture which makes us think that we are covered, but in the very same PDS docs and other support info provided, there are very clear contradictions and plays on wording which allow for the insurer and adjuster to dispute or deny what we as normal human beings would ordinarily believe we were covered for.

I can assure you I have since re-read all my insurance docs many, many times over and run yellow highlighter over every contentious wording, sentence & paragraph through every doc I have in my possession. I have even received all the guff from Terri Scheer and PI Plus as well as my other policies with GIO (for WA) and I can assure you, they are a minefield of deceit littered with avenues of escape for insurers.

I have thought of going into battle via the ombudsman, but am physically & mentally not able to drive myself to do so. Based on the weight of evidence from friends & forumites who have battled insurance claims themselves, I am choosing to walk away from this completely and will claim back what expenses I can through my tax.

Yes we are covered for some of the basic loss of rent, accidental damage etc, but for larger scale damage we are not protected. We lodged a police report to which SAPOL were not overly interested - they duly explained the fruitlessness of the exercise in terms of their time & effort and what they knew would still be rejection of matters by insurers & adjusters.......and the cops were dead right.....claim mostly rejected!!

What disappoints me further is that I was given an insurance brokers name to approach by my property manager, so we swapped correspondence whereby he spoke of the benefits of Terri Scheer & PI Plus........but upon reading story from Dave M, I will stick to my firm belief that they (Insurers) are all a pack of ***** charlatans and we as paying clients are left with our backsides hanging exposed.

Thought about copying & attaching all my claim correspondence to this post for your viewing dis-pleasure, but would only end up getting sued I'm sure, but trust me.....it is not pleasant.

Ian.

 

[jim1964]

I have posted before my experience with Terri Scheer being a useless waste of money when it comes time to pay out.Recently we had a claim through EBM,after keeping the bond payment of $1000,we were still out of pocket approx $500,we received a $205 insurance payout????? i am still trying to get the answer how this was calculated.
In all honesty,i now believe all LL policies are a complete waste of money.Keep a tight reign on things and you shouldnt really need one besides the normal home insurance.

 

[beachgurl]

I'm currently dealing with a loss of rent and malicious damage claim with AAMI.
A tenant making a lovely flower pattern on the carpet with an iron is poor housekeeping so I get nothing back for that.
The loss of rent is covered for 13 weeks (starting from 4 weeks after the initial payment stop) which makes for a very tight timeline to get repairs done and re tenanted. First termination notice and application to tribunal made in October but could only gain possession this week.
I was going to be charged 2 excesses but managed to get out of that. Saw some water damage but that would've been another 1k excess.
Still worth the insurance for me but it sucks that cleanup isn't covered.

I had another place that needed 3 skip bins to remove the rotten food and rubbish in the house. Just bad level of cleanliness on that one!

 

[INVSTOR]

How do these tenants secure a property in the first place? I mostly don't worry about insurance. If PM doesn't do paperwork correctly that can stuff you up also.

 

[wylie]

For many years we couldn't afford landlord insurance so didn't have any apart from public liability that came with the house insurance.

For years now, we have paid landlord insurance. I've asked before if we can just insure the building. We've only ever had to make one claim on landlord insurance when the insurer paid to have VJ walls patched and repainted when a tenant went on a drug-induced rampage and threw screwdrivers(?) into the walls. Had we not been insured we would have patched and painted ourselves but we thought seeing we had insurance, we would make a claim. The total repair bill came to about $2.7K but we would have fixed it for the cost of a couple of days of painting and a bit of spakfilla, and of course, we still paid the excess which I think was $750 from memory.

Only thing is, when I've asked if we can drop the insurance down to just protecting the house, I've come against a brick wall. It seems from the homework I've done that if a house is tenanted, we MUST have landlord insurance. I'd be curious to know who insures a tenanted house just covering for major things like total loss (fire) and covering anyone (including tenants and visitors) for public liability should they fall down the stairs etc.

I too look at landlord insurance as a bit of a waste when we are capable of fixing most "wear and tear" and even accidental damage for less than the excess.

Perhaps I'm missing something but reading this thread just makes me want to check this out further.

 

[INVSTOR]

For many years we couldn't afford landlord insurance so didn't have any apart from public liability that came with the house insurance.

For years now, we have paid landlord insurance. I've asked before if we can just insure the building. We've only ever had to make one claim on landlord insurance when the insurer paid to have VJ walls patched and repainted when a tenant went on a drug-induced rampage and threw screwdrivers(?) into the walls. Had we not been insured we would have patched and painted ourselves but we thought seeing we had insurance, we would make a claim. The total repair bill came to about $2.7K but we would have fixed it for the cost of a couple of days of painting and a bit of spakfilla, and of course, we still paid the excess which I think was $750 from memory.

Only thing is, when I've asked if we can drop the insurance down to just protecting the house, I've come against a brick wall. It seems from the homework I've done that if a house is tenanted, we MUST have landlord insurance. I'd be curious to know who insures a tenanted house just covering for major things like total loss (fire) and covering anyone (including tenants and visitors) for public liability should they fall down the stairs etc.

I too look at landlord insurance as a bit of a waste when we are capable of fixing most "wear and tear" and even accidental damage for less than the excess.

Perhaps I'm missing something but reading this thread just makes me want to check this out further.

I've never had a problem getting building insurance without LL insurance. Try NRMA.

 

[jim1964]

I've asked before if we can just insure the building.

We only insure one out of 9 with LL insurance.The rest are normal Home policies.

 

[newbietoinvstng]

I've never had a claim for any of my 2 IPs, so I can't contribute on that. However I have Allianz LL insurance for both of them (QLD). When I did the quote online, the LL insurance premium including building cover came slightly cheaper than just the building insurance. In my case I'm actually saving a bit of money by getting LL insurance.

 

[The Y-man]

... still out of pocket approx $500,we received a $205 insurance payout????? i am still trying to get the answer how this was calculated.

Claim Excess?

The Y-man

 

[Spades]

Interesting thread!

I was going to sign up for LL insurance with TS but now i'm thinking of not getting LL insurance at all.

Strata covers the outside on an ip,i may look at the different policies but at this stage i'm opting to go without LL insurance.

Seems to be not much in return for what you pay.

Cheers Spades.

 

[chrispy]

I only have LL insurance on the Body Corp properties to give me internal public liability. I have loss of rent on these as well, only because its part of the policy.

I insure the houses through RACV and have had no problems with claiming flooding, even though I thought I wasn't covered for flood!!!!! tree going through the roof in a storm, etc. I just pay the basic excess. RACV notes the policies that the houses are tenanted.

With the houses I do not worry about loss of rent. I reckon I have saved thousands over the years not having LL insurance on them and believe that I am using that to cover any rental losses.

Chris

 

[chilliblue]

Interesting thread!

I was going to sign up for LL insurance with TS but now i'm thinking of not getting LL insurance at all.

Strata covers the outside on an ip,i may look at the different policies but at this stage i'm opting to go without LL insurance.

Seems to be not much in return for what you pay.

Cheers Spades.

With strata properties, remember that kitchens, bathrooms, light fittings, furnishings etc are your responsibility and need to be insured if you have a mortgage.

 

[speary]

Most of the quotes I've ever done online, as soon as you answer the question about who lives in the house i.e. tenanted, it says you have to do a quote for landlord insurance. I just checked NRMA as mentioned by Jim above and they were fine, offering building insurance even though its a rental.

 

[Ian (WA)]

Hi All,

Just been out for caffeine & mud cake.....much better now.

For me I can only take a modicum of solace in believing there is some merit in maintaining LL Ins on my IPs purely for the potential loss of rent coverage. I have had four bad experiences with tenants absconding and being able to claim some of the rent monies while IPs were vacant (over & above bond) has been worth it.

It's the total lack of financial support when it comes to expenses incurred in repairing extensive damage that I have a problem with. When purchasing a LL policy I want to know that I am in fact, "insured".

All the glossy sales brochures & PDS stuff reads on face value that we are covered, when in fact and once you drill into the detail of these policies, none of us are covered to the extent that we might think.

This comes slamming home in your face when you are on the receiving end of a rejected claim. When you read the explanatory correspondence on how the assessment has been made by the Insurers Loss Adjuster you then understand how & why you are not covered.

Invstor: unfortunately the screening and application processes used by property managers when signing up tenants don't always show up the bad eggs. It is so easy for tenants to bluff their way through application interviews. 3 of the 4 runners I experienced (across 20 yrs in holding IPs) all presented well on paper, held relatively secure jobs and for all intent & purpose posed no obvious threat. All of them ran off during second & third leases....they had all been fine for first 12 - 18 mths....none of them had bad history on tenant registers in SA & WA. I've been pretty lucky when considering the number of IPs and years in the game.....things could have been far worse.

Ian.

 

[karina]

Dave,

I don't think this is specific to Terri Sheer. I found this out a long time ago. "Hard living" is not covered so basically if your tenant stains your carpets to the point that you need to replace them that is not covered. If on the other hand they rip up the carpets and throw them out the backyard and punch some holes in walls that I think would fall into the "malicous damage" category.

 

[Ian (WA)]

With strata properties, remember that kitchens, bathrooms, light fittings, furnishings etc are your responsibility and need to be insured if you have a mortgage.

Absolutely 100% ditto!!

Be careful with your strata insurance and building & contents insurance or the banks won't be happy should you suffer an extreme insurance event where a mortgage comes under scrutiny during a claim.

 

[Ed Barton]

I had a policy with the Rebel insurance group. Always paid out for any damage (or imagined damage). Unfortunately the product has been withdrawn from the QLD market.

<unlocks front door, puts the kettle on and awaits a visit from the cops> - Campbell if you're watching I'm only joking.