CHOICE is once again looking into problems around home warranty insurance (a.k.a. domestic building insurance) - which is meant to protect homeowners against dodgy builders or in cases where the builder goes bankrupt and the homeowner’s money can’t be recovered.
Here are a few stories on the subject:
We’re looking to talk to people who have been badly affected by home warranty insurance.
It might be interesting to send ‘To the occupant’ of each unit in [XXX] towers. You could get inundated, but one per tower would probably reflect all per tower.
And then there are the more mundane ones. More a first world problem, not badly affected… My house was 4 years old when purchased in 2002 and had 2 dodgy piles my inspector called out. They were uncomfortably exposed being on a moderate slope and had the potential to slip if the area got damp enough.
It introduced me to the ‘quality’ ‘highly respected’ master builders deliver with impunity, approved by conflicted surveyors in Victoria. Called him in, to his credit he came, and he denied any problem. The insurance was not worth the paper it was printed on since the builder came, looked, and fobbed it off as ‘no problem’. It was not worth fighting over and turned out well although with cost because fixing the pile problem turned into a wine cellar that I probably would never have otherwise done.
Had renovations done in 2013 by a licenced builder, and we paid for warranty insurance with the QBCC.
At the end of renovations, water leaked through from balcony hand rails into rooms below. This was because the builder had fixed the handrails to the floor through tiling and waterproofing membrane underneath. The builder refused to accept responsibility and blamed the tiler who had also done the waterproofing (and had declared bankrupt in the meantime).
After that rebuff, I applied for help from the QBCC and duly filled in the form I was given by staff at their office after explaining my situation. Didn’t hear anything back for months. Followed up multiple times by phone, email and in person. They kept telling me it was in the pipeline and wait. Months down the track, they advised that they required detailed statements (and photographic evidence) from me and a statement from the builder.
Then to my surprise the QBCC announced that they wouldn’t help because I had filled in the wrong form. Eventually they deigned to overlook my error in filling out the form they had provided. Didn’t hear anything back for more months. Followed up multiple times by phone, email and in person. They kept telling me it was in the pipeline and wait. The statements were swapped so we could both respond.
Eventually, (approximately 13 months from application) out came a QBCC inspector who looked suoperficially and said that the builder had met his obligations by putting Sikaflex into the screw holes. According to the inspector, the work was up to the required standard. The leaks, the water penetrating through and damaging the structures below were not therefore the builder’s responsibility. The inspector said it was unfortunate I had the multiple leaks, but it was up to me to rectify at my own cost.
I would have thought that if water was penetrating through as a result of the builder’s work, it would be the builder’s responsibility. Apparently this is a misapprehension. Silly me. So no rectification work.
In my opinion, the problem is that there is no real arm’s length impartiallity and independence between builders, the building inspectors and thereby the QBCC, because the same limited pool of trades people circulate from one form of employment to another.
Consumers are just collateral damage.
Not at all.
If a person or company engages another party to carry out a service, then they are responsible for the results.
When our piece-of-garbage Kleenmaid dishwasher flooded our previous home some years ago, Suncorp gave the repair job to a bunch of charlatans who they then had on their FNQ repairers panel who then proceeded to do everything on the cheap, even though some of the sub-contractors were never paid.
One unfortunate sub-contractor was a local removal business who had to remove a lot of our furniture so that the polished timber floors could be rectified, and in the process, they managed to reverse their truck over the edge near the bottom of our steep driveway, resulting in damage to it.
When I rang the Suncorp assessor, his immediate cop-out was “We don’t cover driveways”.
I acquanted him with what my sister, a now retired barrister, had already advised me using an example of a person who has a medical procedure which goes wrong and subsequently has a worse result with the next specialist.
She said that the second specialist is not liable as the first specialist was incompetent.
Old mate got the message but fortunately the removal business had their own insurance which paid us for the damage.
A few years later, we had some promblems with the defective work the charlatan had carried out and Suncorp’s first response was that they had to give this clown first call to rectify the problem, but by this time, the business was long gone.
When our previous residence was constructed and we had problems with water ingressing through the downstairs wall, we called QBCC or whatever “Clown Central” was called in the 1990’s.
Their response was that they could not recommend, let alone tell, the builder what to do as if the problem was not rectified, the builder would simply say that they did what they were told and it did not work, so it is not their fault.
