Home insurance offering crazy low cash settlement

[Bathroomless]

Hi all

I'm looking for some advice regarding a home insurance settlement. We had a leak in our bathroom which has left most of the floorboards damaged and needing to be replaced. We were asked to get some quotes and all of the contractors advised that the toilet/sink/shower would all need to come out, the floor boards replaced, and that also the walls would need to be retiled as taking out the floorboards and bathroom suite would damage the current ones. The quotes we had were between 7.5k and 8k . Quotes were for like for like, we liked our bathroom and are happy to have everything back to how it was.

After weeks of trying to get quotes, going back and forth with the surveyor/insurance plus weeks of living in a hotel, the surveyor has just come back with an offer of £900 or the option of using their contractors.

I honestly don't understand how any contractor can do that work for £900. All I can think is that the surveyor doesn't think all the work quoted to us needs to be done but we haven't been given any kind of explanation as to what £900 should cover. Any ideas what we should do? We don't have a problem with their contractors doing the work but why have they got us to spend weeks and weeks getting quotes when they were going to offer such a small amount anyway?!

Thank you

Presumably because their contractors are on a retainer and it costs them half your quotes. Or they are getting backhanders.

Insurance is such a bloody racket.

Hopefully someone with experience will be by shortly to help you deal with them.

Some people prefer cash no matter how low the settlement offer.

Always go with the Insurers contractors (for many reasons). State that from day one and works would start relatively quickly.

Over 35 years in the insurance industry.

It's so frustrating because if they'd offered us their contractors in the first place that would have been fine.

At what point do we find out what work they are going to cover/do? I'm worried they are doing to try cut corners and not take the whole suite out and back in again. They haven't even sent their own contractors so how do they even know how much it will cost them?!

You need to push for more detail.

Just a little bump in the hopes that someone has been through something similar or has any advice 😅

I wouldn't assume they've allocated £900 of cost to their own contractors. Have you asked them what work they intend to do? Have you told them you're happy for their contractors to do the work you just want it done? It seems like the only people that can answer your questions are the insurance company so surely phoning them would be the easiest solution?