Fixing leaky kitchen will cost £25k but Direct Line won’t pay out

My home insurer Direct Line has left my family and me in upheaval for ten months after I made a claim to repair a leak in our kitchen.

We discovered the leak last July after noticing water coming up through the floor. A quick bit of detective work revealed the source was our mains water pipe, which was leaving a puddle underneath our kitchen units.

Despite filing a claim almost a year ago, no work has been carried out. Our kitchen is still as damp and mouldy as it was when we discovered the leak. After three months of living upstairs with a mouldy ground floor that we couldn’t use, we had to move out of our house. We have been in rental accommodation since October.

When we first filed the claim Direct Line’s contractors were not able to inspect our house for two weeks and then cancelled the appointment at the last minute. Direct Line then suggested that we find our own contractor and it would pay us a cash settlement.

Quotes from local tradesmen came to a total of £25,000, which included removing and disposing of our old kitchen, ceiling and flooring, treating the mould and then supplying and installing a replacement kitchen. But Direct Line said it would only pay £3,400, which is less than what it had cost to buy and install the original kitchen 24 years ago.

Our policy document says that Direct Line will only pay us what it would have cost for the insurer to use its own suppliers. While I would expect an insurance company to get a discount from its own contractors, its settlement offer is completely unrealistic.

Direct Line also seems happy to throw away more than £3,000 a month on our rent and associated bills while it quibbles over everything else. The total accommodation costs, none of which would have been needed if it had taken swift action, have already reached £30,000. We have asked it to take a commonsense approach but our pleas fall on deaf ears.

My husband and I have been so stressed about this and we just want to be able to move our family back home.Fiona Loakes, Bromley

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Troubleshooter says

How awful that you have been uprooted from your home. You had been back and forth with Direct Line for months to try to get a settlement that resembled reality. You said the insurer’s schedule of works had been missing items such as mould treatment, which you described as a “screamingly obvious omission”.

While it is not clear how Direct Line arrived at its settlement figure, you do not have to be an experienced renovator to know that £3,400 would not be enough to gut and replace a whole kitchen. I would expect it to offer you a settlement that is in line with what your tradespeople have quoted.

Luckily, within a week of me getting in touch with Direct Line it agreed to pay your full costs — but would not explain why it had originally offered you so little.

Direct Line said: “We have apologised to Ms Loakes for the time it has taken to reach an agreement of the costs for repairing her property. We will meet the full costs of her chosen supplier and in addition we will pay compensation because our service fell below our expected standards. We are conducting a review to ensure such a situation doesn’t occur again.”

Direct Line has also given you £500 compensation. You said: “I think you may have saved my sanity and possibly my career, as it has been horrendously hard to find time to work with all this going on.”

Your contractors have got to work and you hope the repairs will be carried out by the end of the summer so that your family can finally move back home.

In January my wife and I booked a trip to Lanzarote through the travel agent easyJet holidays, flying out in April. The flights and 11-night stay cost £2,224 and I put down a £120 deposit.

In March, about a week before the balancing payment was due, easyJet sent me an email warning that there were building works near the hotel and, given the noise, we might want to look at alternative accommodation. We searched on the website but could not find any other equivalent hotels. EasyJet offered no assistance to help us find an alternative. We asked to upgrade to a better hotel but the company refused.

We then cancelled our holiday but were astonished to find that easyJet would not return our deposit.Murray Duncanson, East Lothian

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Troubleshooter says

You wanted to be soothed by the sounds of the sea and not driven mad by heavy-duty machinery, so I can understand why you cancelled your holiday.

EasyJet holidays would not return your deposit because its cancellation policy said that if you cancelled within 60 days of your trip, it would keep your deposit as a cancellation charge. While easyJet hadn’t breached its contract with you, it seemed a bit mean for it to stick so rigidly to these terms when the problem was with one of its partner hotels and you understandably wanted to avoid the risk of the building work spoiling your holiday.

The company told me that in situations where building work is likely to have a big impact on a customer’s holiday, it would give the option of cancelling and giving a full refund, deposit and all. But in your case it did not think it would disrupt your trip and so only gave two options: choosing an alternative hotel or sticking with the original one. This didn’t make much sense to me — if it didn’t believe the building work would cause a problem, why did it bother to get in touch with you and suggest you choose an alternative?

EasyJet said: “We’re really sorry to hear that Mr Duncanson is unhappy with his experience. We pride ourselves on delivering brilliant holidays, so when we became aware of the building works taking place at the hotel, while we knew this wouldn’t be disruptive, we contacted customers to give them the option to amend their holiday if they wished.”

It has now agreed to give you £120 credit to use on your next holiday. When I asked if it would give you a cash refund instead, it refused. You were disappointed and said the company was being very inflexible. At the time of writing it still had not applied the credit to your account so I am still in touch with you and easyJet holidays to make sure it follows through on its promise.

If you have a money problem that you would like Katherine Denham to investigate, email [email protected]. Please include a phone number.

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