Pushing pipe insurance – what’s in it for your water provider?

I fail to see the difference between selling this type of product to vulnerable customers and a bank mis-selling payment protection insurance. My parents (both over 80) were paying over £300 a year for Homeserve insurance like this sold to them by their water company Veolia because they’d been frightened into thinking they couldn’t cope if something went wrong with their water. When I found out and we rang to cancel the renewal, we were subjected to hard sell tactics (and an offer to almost halve the premium which we declined).

You seem to exclude our area in both the Water Pipe article and Broadband/Phome packages. Whatever happened to Yorkshire Water?

Back in 2001, we received a letter from Homeserve c/o East of Scotland Water (now Scottish Water), it was the first mailshot of probably 10 or 12 since.

In 2001, as a consumer representative for the East of Scotland Water region, I was extremely unhappy with the tone of the letter – it was a scare story of burst pipes – and the fact that it was in a water authority envelope and headed paper. I made an immediate complaint to the Water Industry Commissioner. The upshot was I succeeded drawing attention to the letter, and the wording changed, but the Commissioner Alan Sutherland let the relaionship continue and more mailshots followed.
I then made several complaints over several years, trying to stop the marketing on various counts , to successive consumer bodies in Scotland. By sheer persistence, I got my concerns about Homeserve and Scottish Water collusion up to the Scottish Executive. Time and again Scottish Water and Homeserve were green lighted to continue this marketing. I met resistance at every turn from the Commissioner, supposed consumer champions for water and civil servants. I recently received yet another mailshot from Scottish Water and Homeserve. At present, I have notified the new consumer body in Scotland, whose Chairman had appeared in the newspapers taking credit for investigating the issue, that they were repeating much of the work I had already done over the years. I got a reply thankIng me for my information, saying the Chairman would perhaps follow up with me. So thats my story, vanguarding since 2001 to get the relationship between the Scottish water authority and Homeserve investigated and exposed. The water industry commissioner, successive consumer bodies, several water authority CEOs and the Scottish Executive all condoned the letters and the insurance by their various indolences, and collusions. As a water consultant I am pursuing several other unacceptable practices here in Scotland, meeting similar barriers to change. I call it D,L,O – deny, lie and obfuscate, with so called Scottish consumer champions as more lap dog than guard dog.

Our water supplier is Anglian Water. We took out an insurance with Himeserve to cover our watermains and sewage pipes. After noting that the water mains is covered by Anglian Water, we cancelled the first part. Our property is rural and prone to subsidence being on the Cambridgeshire Fens, The sewage pipe connects to the manhole adjacent to the house, then proceeds to another manhole on my property before going off at an angle across a neighbouring field. As I understand the new regulations the Water company is now responsible for the mains sewage. I called in an Anglian Water engineers to ascertain the layout of the sewage pipes as a new development was proposed on my neighbour’s land.

I was informed that although the sewage pipes were on my land I would only be responsible to the first manhole. I have now cancelled the second part of my insurance. Therefore the illustration on page 23 of May 2012, Which, may not tell the whole story.

My home insurance renewal has just arrived and I note that the insurers have applied a £250.00 excess to the policy for claims for escape of water from – A fixed, a) water installation, b) drainage installation, c) heating installation, d) A washing machine, dishwasher, waterbed, refrigerator or deep freze cabinet.?
Could this be associated with the selling/not selling of the water company policies for pipe insurance.

I’m with Homeserve because my insurance company doesn’t cover the supply pipe within my boundary and I can find no reference on the United Utilities website to any free repair schemes. I would appreciate help in working out how to find it, especially as in a phone call some weeks ago I was told that no such scheme exists.
Some nine months ago Homeserve ‘gave’ me extended cover to include repairs within the house putting the cost up from £35 to £72. When I told them that I didn’t need this extra cover and wanted the supply pipe cover only, I was told that it would cost the same anyway! I am having to buy something that I don’t need or want – which is why I’m trying to find a way of moving away from doing business with Homeserve.

We had a leak a few years ago and I paid to have a full new pipe installed with a ten year guarantee, but i still get two or three letters a year from Homeserve which go straight into the recycling

I wrote to United Utilities about two claims by Homeserve. Firstly “one in ten homeowners have suffered a water supply pipe emergency at some point” and, secondly “One and a half million homes have suffered a water supply pipe burst”. Both were totally meaningless without a timescale; one year, fifty years, a hundred years, two hundred years?

I wrote to U.U. but they defended the advertising. I also wrote to the F.S.A. which regulates Homeserve and has, I believe, been investigating the company on another matter.

Why not Sue Homeserve for instilling fear into public minds and there by making money? Boom!!

I had my incoming water supply pipe insured separately up to about 3 years ago. I changed my house insurance provider and asked them if the water pipe from the pavement to my house was covered by their insurance and I was informed that it definetly was. As this negotiation was carried out over the phone I do not have a record of the conversation. Now guess what? I have a leak on my incoming water pipe and the insurers are now telling me that I am not covered. I have been on the insurance merry go round being passed from department to department all of which tell me that they can not help.

We have a leak in a pipe which runs across our land. It does not receive water from our buildings – not clean water, or run off from the roof, or sewage water from loos or brown water from sinks/washing machines. We have been in touch with Severn Trent who are not interested – they say the pipe is not on their map so is not their responsibility. Our insurance company are not interested either although 18 years ago they repaired it when it got blocked with tree roots.

The pipe seems to run across the front of several houses down to a drain in the road. We have no idea where it originates. I thought that the water companies were supposed to take responsibility for shared pipes from October 2011. Can anyone cast light on this?