Making an insurance claim in France
It all started early one July morning last year. I was filling the kettle with water for a cup of tea when the telephone rang. I was surprised as it was only just after seven o’clock.
“Bonjour,” the voice said, and I realised it was a gentleman we call ‘Monsieur D’.
“Bonjour,” I replied, thinking how nice it was to hear from our neighbour in France. Then my brain started to question why he was telephoning me in England when he speaks no English and knows only too well that my grasp of the French language is poor. He started to speak to me, but I wasn’t able to understand. However, I did understand three words: un gros problème. I knew that meant trouble. I conveyed to him that I would ask my friend Brigitte Hyde to telephone him.
Brigitte soon established the fact that our house had been flooded due to torrential rain. She is our translator and we have used her services quite often since we bought a house in France. Within a few hours, we were on our way to see the damage.
Monsieur D was at the house and had already started getting the water out. How wise we had been to leave him a key. He had also asked an English-speaking friend to come meet us, as well as the mayor. They explained that due to 18 hours of rain one day, followed by five hours of rain the next, bark chippings had been washed from the hillside onto our property. Our house is overlooked by champagne vines and new bark chippings had recently been replenished to protect the delicate vines, particularly in the winter. Some chippings were washed into the ravine at the side of our property which clogged the culvert and caused rainwater to flood onto our garden.
The previous owner had been awkward about letting local people onto her land when she wasn’t there, so the culvert had not been regularly cleared. Because the back of the house is below ground level, water flooded in through the back door. Our vestibule, shower room and toilet were flooded by about a metre of water, mud and debris, and the lounge was under six or seven inches of water, but luckily the kitchen had hardly been affected.
We spent the next two days clearing up with the help of Monsieur D, and by the time we left for England the house was clean, secure and as dry as could be expected. Workman’s comp
Then the real hard work started... Having spoken to the insurance company, we had to get two quotes for the work involved. The shower was unusable, having been clogged with dirt, and there was a tidemark throughout the whole of the ground floor. The septic tank was full of rainwater, causing problems with flushing the toilet. Also, the toilet door frame was coming away from the wall.
Over the next couple of months, we managed to gather all this information from 300 miles away in England. Even when we had the go-ahead from the insurance company, we had to wait for the elected workmen to start. Both my husband and I have always been keen to give any work on the house to local people. However, the plumber and decorator wanted to be paid as soon as the work was completed, despite knowing that our insurance company was paying.
We sent them to the loss adjustors who were dealing with our case. After some weeks, we were paid the equivalent by cheque, which we had to clear through our UK bank, then convert back into euros in our French account. It took months for us to pay the local workmen, who by this time were threatening to give us a bad name in the village. In fact, we are still in communication with the loss adjustor because the septic tank has not been emptied and we have no hot water.
I contacted the managing director of the insurance company and asked why it had not been possible to pay the French workmen directly and in euros. He passed my letter on to someone else who told me that I was aware of the terms of the policy when I took it out; the issue of paying out in euros or sterling wasn’t addressed.
The work was not done to a good standard and the plumber couldn’t find out how to empty the septic tank. Now we have to find a local builder to sort this problem.
Lesson learned It is now over a year since the flood and there is still a lot of work to be done. We are continuing to correspond with the loss adjustor and have requested that their French agent checks the work which has been done – or not done, as the case may be.
We have had trouble changing our insurance to a different company due to the claim, even though our house is not in an area which frequently floods.
For us this has been a steep learning curve and highlights how important it is to check exactly what property insurance covers and how it is paid. We have been surprised by the kindness, helpfulness and generosity of our French neighbours, for which we are very thankful. We shall also choose carefully when we next arrange for work to be done on the property. Otherwise we could be heading for another ‘gros problème.