Aami - Mia

[Trevor 57]

AAMI - Missing in Action:

We built our house in 1995, since then we have had our home and contents with AAMI, we have also had our car since before then and recently we insured our caravan with them. When our kids first bought their cars we got them insured with AAMI.

Well, it is all about to change.

The north-west side corner of our 6 metre by 6 metre garage had subsided into the ground by about 30mm over time causing the wall the lean over towards our neighbour’s house, it caused cracking in the brick work and caused the plaster ceiling inside the garage to fall. This is what alerted us that there was a problem, we couldn’t see the wall or the brick work from the inside of our garage and the affected wall is on the boundary with our neighbours.

After the plaster fell we got an engineer in to work out what was going on, he investigated the problem and found that when our next door neighbour built their house with A V Jennings about 12 months after ours the plumbers dug a 700 mm deep trench along side our garage footings to put in a gas main. Over time the disturbed ground has dried at a different rate to the ground around it and subsequently this has under-mined our garage footings. A written engineers report supported this.

We lodged a claim with AAMI which they subsequently rejected as the wording in our policy states that we are not covered for “ground movement”. I believe that the “ground movement” they are referring to is a ‘nature thing’ and not a ‘man made’ thing, but AAMI are going down the ground movement is ground movement line so they don’t have to pay the claim. I think they are feeling the pinch a bit at the moment.

Anyway they have lost all my business when the policies are due for renewal and I would warn everyone else about using AAMI and any company that falls under Suncorp (AAMI’s parent company), read your policies well.