Dial Direct Claim

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Ozz_7

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Good day All,

I would like to log my experience and ask for advice on the following.

I had a burglary at my house the 27th of September. I live in a house in Villieria, Pretoria. I have electric fencing, high walls, the works. So the crooks lifted my automatic gate off its rails and pushed it open. Thereafter they broke through my security gate and kicked open my wooden door, now it has a hole. Within 2 minutes, they took my 55" TV, bluray player, Camera, laptop, digital photo frame, and some smaller stuff. I have all the footage.

So, it's been a week since I logged my claim at Dial Direct. My wife convinced me to phone Dial Direct to get an idea of progress as they haven't told us anything yet. Because I phoned I was able to get the claim agent to make an appointment to come to my house 10 October in order to do some more paper work etc.

I have detailed slips and receipts for everything except the bluray player. I only have a bank statement with an amount on and a store name: Makro. I still have the bluray player's remote and all its speakers against the wall.

Will this be a problem for my claim? Does anyone know?
 
Make sure the inspector sees your Bluray collection.
 
No issue on the Blu-Ray claim item.
You have the remote (and possibly the instruction manual as well) - so you'll be fine.

I was burgled some time back and one of the items stolen was my Technics Hi-Fi modular system. They dropped the turntable in the garden and it got damaged, but amp, CD player and Tape deck all gone. It was more than 10 years old. No receipts or boxes anymore - just the instruction manuals. Got it fully replaced, including a new turntable.
 
Also. Items purchased on your Makro card should be able to be pulled from makros system. I was told this when I bought my tv
 
Yeah they probably won’t even look twice or ask for details of something as simple as a Blu-ray player.

They’ll only ask questions if it was something unusual like in my case where I had 2 Xboxes in the house.

Having the remote alone should be enough with supporting evidence of card if need be.

Also be certain to claim for any related damage as it’s covered by your insurance as well.

The door, the new keys for locks the motor etc.
 
3WA said:
Make sure the inspector sees your Bluray collection.
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Great will do that thanks!

Ecko_1 said:
Items purchased on your Makro card should be able to be pulled from makros system
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I'll do this before the inspector comes over.

Thanks for all the advice guys! I've also contacted lockandroll.co.za.

This is the first time I've been burgled since I've moved to Gauteng in 2009!
 
They asked me a bunch of questions about how the PS3 worked, different ways it can be turned on etc. I guess they thought it possible that a 30 yo could be lying about it. After the first couple of questions, I told them I could give them the Makro card statement if they doubt me. After that they just said it's OK and "paid out". More like got The Digital Experience to replace the stuff.
I had receipts, some boxes and some photos I think.

On that note, you could use this bad luck of yours to upgrade. I argued long to get them to agree to suitable replacements (quad core i5 instead of dual core with HT, MB with 2 ethernet ports etc). When they settled on what they would replace it with, I said, OK, now we use that value as a base to determine what I have to pay in to upgrade.

Another interesting part, I got a screen as a performance reward, that was the exact same model I had bought a couple of months earlier. I also brought that screen home with me on the same day I was burgled. They didn't bat an eye at "they stole a screen exactly like that, but not that one which I brought home from work."

All in all, I had a pretty good experience with dial direct.

Edit: they had no problem paying for the 40" TV, which I bought through a guy I knew. I think I only gave them a skype transcript and bank statement there. Still, even though I had no DSTV or even a TV aerial, they asked questions about the PS3... Wonder what else I would do with a TV.
 
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The Dial Direct assessor showed up today to record my statement and to take pictures of my existing household content. She said that I'm under-insured. Her words were: "To be both fair to you and Dial Direct, your claim amount will be adjusted with a percentage that is explained in your documentation. This percentage is based on the value of your current household content and then worked out based on the amount to replace the stolen content.". So now I need to go through everything in my house and fill in a form she provided me along with the replacement value of everything before they pay me some amount. Also, she has to get quotes from places in order to get the replacement value of my stolen stuff. Are other insurers this anal to their customers? I mean, I pay them monthly to insure my stuff, I pay an exorbitant amount for excess, and now I'm losing out on my cashback bonus of thousands of Rands.

And now she's going on holiday for the rest of the week so yeah... :-(
 
If you're under-insured - then yes, its a problem... but go through your stuff yourself, EVERYTHING, and add a value to it - if you disagree about being under-insured, raise it.

To give you quick examples - my insurance sends someone out every three years to value my house contents, every-time there have been issues - e.g. the first year they valued my wives clothing in the hundreds of thousands (it doesnt break a hundred thousand; second year they got my home audio completely wrong (e.g. they had one 2.5m speaker cable at R3,000 - and the exact same speaker cable, but 3m at R2,000).

(PS - the first time they did the valuation, I was under-insured by about 300%)
 
Ozz_7 said:
, I pay them monthly to insure my stuff, I pay an exorbitant amount for excess, and now I'm losing out on my cashback bonus of thousands of Rands.

(
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You can only really blame yourself for falling into that marketing trap.

Forget all about the bucks back bonus and move to an insurer that doesn't reel you in with low premiums and high excesses with caveats like bonus payments.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Forget all about the bucks back bonus and move to an insurer that doesn't reel you in with low premiums and high excesses with caveats like bonus payments.
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Who do you suggest?

Jup I've fallen deep into this mess and it's going to cost me thousands of Rands.

Crime pays :-(
 
SauRoNZA said:
You can only really blame yourself for falling into that marketing trap.
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If you want to talk blame, then I blame my security company, MCS (Moot Community Security).

I had a very expensive beam installed infront of my house in Feb this year. They didn't wire this thing correctly so it didn't even trigger when the criminals ran passed it. MCS had a look and saw a loose wire.

So if this beam worked my losses might've been less.

Either way, I need to get myself a good lawyer and start the fight with MCS.
 
Ozz_7 said:
If you want to talk blame, then I blame my security company, MCS (Moot Community Security).

I had a very expensive beam installed infront of my house in Feb this year. They didn't wire this thing correctly so it didn't even trigger when the criminals ran passed it. MCS had a look and saw a loose wire.

So if this beam worked my losses might've been less.

Either way, I need to get myself a good lawyer and start the fight with MCS.
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Eish that is *** luck.

Then again I wouldn’t trust any company called Moot.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Go to a broker and skip the direct route.
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This, brokers offer far better service, even if you do pay a small amount to them, you will also generally get a discount from them. Really wish I could convince my old man to get away from Outsurance to save him money but yeah stubborn like a mule.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Go to a broker and skip the direct route.
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I disagree. Before DD we had to deal with Santam and a broker. The assessor used a formula where they calculated if we were under or over insured by counting the clothes hangers. We got royally screwed by them. Compared to them DD was a dream experience.

Getting quotes and calculating the value of the stolen stuff is standard procedure.

The cash back bonus was never yours to begin with. It's just there to entice people not to use insurance for what it's there for. They even make it an optional extra you can choose to pay for, as if it adds value :crylaugh:
 
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