It’s not only potential flood victims who are being hit with grossly increased insurance premiums.
My husband and I live on the top of a hill.
We CAN NOT be flooded out.
Our home was built in 1994 and in that time until now, we have literally had four insurance claims on our house and contents.
1. A gardener was mowing our lawns and smashed a floor to ceiling glass siding door in our master bedroom
2. A carpet cleaner knocked an antique clock off our wall moving his cleaning equipment from one end of the home to the other – same insurance company for these two.
3. We had a roof leak – new insurance company who didn’t like colorbond rooves.
4. We recently had a broken water pipe underneath the concrete path outside our laundry door – new insurance company again – our only claim with them in over three years.
Last year our home and contents insurance was just over $800. On receiving our renewal this year we discovered our premiums have jumped to over $1,770 – with one claim.
We are horrified that insurance companies will just increase premiums for no reason other than there have been some natural disasters.
I don’t know why they can’t base each claim on its own merit and if one hasn’t had a claim – why should we have they have to pay extra and be penalised?
I don’t see why we in Beenleigh for instance should have to face increased premiums because there was a cyclone in Cairns.
Being age pensioners, I see all this as a money grab.
We are faced with increases in fuel, food, electricity (even though we have 24 solar panels on our roof and were originally getting a good payback for selling to the grid – we now get paid 40 cents per kilowatt and have to buy back at 30 cents per kilowatt.)
Then we look at the losses in medical needs and benefits – five free medical based visits to a practitioner per year that we now have to pay $10 per visit for. There are also reductions in other areas of medical care.
My husband and I are in our 70s. We had our own business and paid our taxes every year – we worked outside in blazing heat on hot house roofs, crawled under homes in the company of spiders and snakes.
We’ve dealt with dishonest homeowners and real estate agents – yet gave the best service (on the spot and after sales care when needed) at the best prices.
We get absolutely nothing from any level of government – we are instead played as suckers and have no choice but to suck it up.
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via email.
