Westpac / Lumley Insurance

[Glenn]

We have just had a massive storm through our city and a number of the properties I manage have had damage.
In most cases I have asked the owners to contact their insurance company before I arranged the repairs.
In a few cases I could not locate the owners and have advised the insurance companies on the owners behalf.

All that is in one case where the owner had his properties insured through Westpac / Lunley. The call centre person there would not accept the call because I the property manager was not listed on the insurance documents.
Now this house had part of its roof ripped off.
I explained that the house would be further damaged with water but they would not budge. I suggested I would need to advise my client to change his insurance policy to a firm that acted in the owners best interest but no they would not budge.

So folks if you have your property managed and you use this firm then I suggest you move to a better more intelligent firm.
How stupid can you get. Surely they must have heard of people going on holiday or away on business and having relatives, friends, or property managers looking after their interests.

Has anyone else come across this sort of crass behaviour.

[roseneath_rat]

I'd probably call back on the same number hoping to get a different operator... it certainly sounds like the person you were dealing with was being pedantic in the extreme. There will be some obvious privacy issues, I wouldn't want some random person calling up & getting access to my property insurance info without my permission.

[Davo36]

Yeah 'customer service' person who doesn't understand the title or meaning of his/her job.

Ask to speak to the supervisor.

David

[Green Fish]

Glenn: This might be a simple Privacy Act issue. I had a similar problem with the IRD re the family trust. The insurance company probably has a policy to not disclose information about its client without authority. So all you should need is a signed authority from the client (ie, the owner). Something like "[Owner] authorise Glenn to receive any information about me that you hold concerning my property at [address] on my behalf and I further authorise Glenn to communicate with you on my behalf in any matter concerning that property."