FLOODING PART FOUR

As you will recall, we were waiting to meet some "unknown" representative from a Company that was supposed to now come to our house and figure out what had to be done under our Insurance Policy because of the flooding that had taken place. 

It was not the original company that supposedly had been appointed by the Insurance Company but some unknown company about which we had never heard about. To be direct about the call, I was quite surprised about it and not sure that it had really happened as disclosed because I had received no call from the Insurance Company representative that I had spoken with before.   

Just to shorten matters, I eventually got ahold of the Company that was supposed to come here originally and the lady that I spoke with had no idea about what I said because she told me that her Company was still scheduled to come to our house. She was supposed to contact the Insurance Company to find out what was going on. That was the last time I ever heard from someone from her Company. 

We finally did get an email from the Insurer's representative telling us that the new Company was supposed to come after this rather odd event took place in the manner that it did.  I just found this was a rather surprising way to act by our Insurer. 

At 9 o'clock in the morning, a representative from the repair company came to our house and examined what had gone wrong.  What he suggested needed to be done was not a huge function. After all, our basement was not decorated to be an area where people would come down either to use as a "sleeping" or "entertaining" area. Basements in our other homes had all been finished to make them look quite attractive. In this home, the basement had not been finished at all. My wife and I had decided that we were not going to fix it up and we were just going to leave it unfinished. Accordingly, all that needed to be done was to clean it up by removing the water and any dirt and germs, possessions that  had been damaged by the flooding and to put in new anti-germ chemicals in a floor cleaning. 

Simple, right? I sure thought so. All of that had taken about 15 minutes to resolve.  Then came the big mess! The gentleman from the repair company presented us with a contract to sign. I read the first couple of paragraphs on the first page and stopped reading it. I had a very simple question to ask. Under this contract, his firm was now going to be our cleaning agent and not the cleaning agent of the Insurer i.e. the representative of Marsha and me only now. I could not believe this. It made no sense whatsoever. I had no idea who this company was, never phoned them in the first place to come over and visit with us to figure out what had to be done, was certainly not going to pay them anything or be responsible for payments to them yet now we were supposed to appoint them as our representative to fix up our house.  This was absolutely unbelievable to me and something I would refuse to do. I could not figure out why this was being proposed. 

Again, the long and short of it was that I told representative that we were not prepared at all to act this way and that he would have to have the appointment from the Insurer to do the work and act on their behalf or we would go out to find someone else to do the job. This was just completely unbelievable and unacceptable to me and I refused to do what he wanted.   

All of this discussion took about an hour and a half and at the same time that he was talking with us, the representative from Reliance came here to take a look at the new problems that we were having with the hot water tank. We were asked by the repair company gentleman not to refuse to deal with his firm and that he would talk to someone senior from his Company to find out what they wanted to do and that he would get back to me later on in the day. 

To be direct about it, I was upset. This was a bizarre way for a company that our Insurer brought in to try to act now. Accordingly, I called our employee of the Insurance Company who had been brought in to handle this matter to discuss. That did not turn out very well at all either. Within a very few short minutes, and during our discussion, she unbelievably hung up the telephone rather than answering some of my questions that I was posing. I was furious! 

That was it as far as I was concerned. I immediately contacted her company, our Insurer, and demanded to speak to someone in a senior position immediately. Fortunately, one of the senior Ontario representatives was around and we spoke on the telephone. I explained to him how angry I was and how disturbed about what was happening and how I was treated. I asked for a new Company employee to be appointed for our home because I was not going to talk to the person who was supposed to be my representative again. Regretfully he told me that they had no employees available to contact me because they were so busy so he would have to be my contact with the Company. 

Our conversation started off in a very direct manner. However, as time went on, our conversation became much more casual and on a much more friendly basis.  I hoped for the best in the future in my relationship with the Insurer after dealing with this gentleman. 

I heard from the repair person later on in the day and he agreed that his firm would come in and do the work required and that we would not have to appoint that firm as our client and sign a contract with them. I was satisfied now that the relationship that we were establishing was the only one that I was prepared to enter into to resolve our flooding problems. 

Eventually, representatives from that repair company came in and started doing the work. One of the first things that they did do was remove our huge elliptical machine that we had in the basement and which I used now so often because of the concerns that they had as to its fitness because of the water in the basement that covered some of its parts. They also removed many other articles that had gotten so wet and set some of them to dry out as well. Once all of that was done they were in a position to clean up the floor.  It was completely cleaned up and fans were put in to dry it. That drying process was supposed to take several days. The noise level to be honest was high and a bit disturbing especially in night time so sleeping was a little more difficult.  Nevertheless, it had to be done. 

Of course, there is more to talk about concerning some additional troubling matters. You can read about that in our next posting and what had to be done next.