IAG assessors mentioned in the article below was our assessors too owing to having a farm package with NZ Insurance - they also work with State Insurance. as well plus another Insurance company. They were most difficult to deal with and in the end we pulled the plug with them withdrawing our Insurance claim - owing to them taking the cheapest quote from their quotes and our ones and would have ended up with Hawkins contractors instead of our own contractors that we know would have done a good job. Our quotes were very realistically priced and in the end did not even submit them owing to their attitude and them saying "that they would accept the cheapest". We have a lot of schist work round here which some was damaged and had to have the same people working on it that put it up owing to schist workmen having their own way of doing things and its more like a signature. Each schist worker is totally different to another schist worker and can be very obvious to the eye which I pointed out to IAG at the time.
The article below is just one of the many things that is going on down here now and can be quite depressing reading the newspaper in the morning and really feel for just so many of those people that are in limbo our there.
Now we have CERA going round - shutting places down right left and centre to cover their butts. Not accepting engineers reports on places for one. I would have thought that top engineers reports would have been taken into consideration - but no.
Will end my ravings here as could write a book on it all. With the 1931 Earthquake in Napier they were up and going in 6 months - plus they also had fire to contend with as well. How many months has this all been going on down here - 18 months. Had better not start on the Insurance companies not even covering the builders whilst building houses - otherwise will be here for the rest of the week.
Homes assessed as writeoffs become repairsBEN HEATHER Last updated 05:00 12/04/2012
IAIN McGREGOR/Fairfax NZ
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Insurers are bringing red-zone homes back from the dead, telling homeowners their rebuilds are now repairs and leaving them in a "shocking situation".
The switch has infuriated homeowners – most of them IAG customers in Brooklands – who have accused insurance companies of hiding behind the Government's red-zone offer to save money at their expense.
Red-zone homeowners who spoke to The Press said their insurer had deemed their homes a "total loss" after the September 2010 earthquake, but more than a year later, after thousands of damaging quakes, the homes have been declared repairable.
For some people, the change means they will lose out on more than $100,000 under the Government's red-zone buyout offer.
Insurers deny the switch is a cost-cutting measure, claiming it was the result of the Government relaxing guidelines for quake repairs.
IAG spokeswoman Renee Walker said reports sent to red-zone residents calling their homes a total loss were only a "preliminary assessment" and were made under the old Department of Building and Housing's guidelines.
When IAG returned for more detailed inspections, the damage was judged under the new guidelines introduced late last year, resulting in some homes changing from being rebuilds to repair jobs.
"Unfortunately, they have based their expectation on preliminary assessment. Once the full assessment has been made, based on new guidelines, we have found the homes can be repaired," she said.
Enforcing the new guidelines, which allow for big cracks and tilts in building foundations, meant many homes in Brookland had been pushed into the repairable category after previously being considered a writeoff.
"The majority of houses in Brooklands are deemed repairable and people are very upset about it because the nature of the red zone means they can't be repaired," Walker said.
Canterbury Community Earthquake Recovery Network spokesman Leanne Curtis said the rebuild-repair discrepancies would increase as more people were revisited under the new rules.
"From a homeowner's perspective, it a shocking situation.
"From the insurers' perspective, they are just feeding into the guidelines," she said.
While the switch was morally questionable, it would be difficult to challenge legally if the change occurred before settlement.
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority chief executive Roger Sutton said he was not aware of issue.
OWNERS VOW TO FIGHT INSURACE U-TURN
An insurance U-turn on Les and Lorraine Griffiths' earthquake-damaged home will leave the retired couple $180,000 poorer.
Les Griffiths sits in his crooked living room in Brooklands shuffling through an IAG insurance report from December 2010 declaring that the September 2010 quake had damaged the foundations so badly that the house was beyond repair.
Lying on the table nearby is another insurance report – written more than a year later – that says the opposite.
It turns out the home is repairable, the second report says, and the house can be lifted off its foundations and the broken concrete scraped out and replaced.
"I think it stinks. It means the red-zoning only works in favour of the insurance companies. It gives them an out," Griffiths said.
In the topsy-turvy world of post-quake Christchurch, learning that your red-zone home can be repaired is usually bad news.
It means the Government payout you get from leaving your red-zone home will probably be less because the insurer will be paying to repair the home, not replace it.
Lorraine Griffiths said that when the house was written off, the couple could have received as much $520,000 to replace it, but their insurer's change of heart means they are now entitled to only $340,000.
"They change their mind and we lose about $180,000," she said.
Despite IAG providing a quote for repairs, the work will never happen. In the red zone, where all land is expected to be abandoned, repairs are hypothetical – a way for insurers to produce a dollar figure.
Les Griffiths said they were planning to fight the decision.
"We are not going to accept it like that. We will fight," he said.
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BROOKLANDS BATTLE: Les and Lorraine Griffiths are seeing red over the zoning of their property.
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September 12, 2013, 08:35:35 PM