At HeightVale Ltd., we understand the stress and concern arising from submitting a claim to your insurer. It can cause confusion, worry and disruption on a scale that you may have never previously experienced. Therefore, Heightvale endeavour to assist with making the journey as simple and as stress-free as possible, by overseeing every aspect of our area of appointment.
To elaborate upon this statement, you may have previously noted that HeightVale Ltd. are a comprehensive supplier who can assist with multiple-aspects of works, from stabilisation visits to limit further damage, to the drying of the property and the signing off as viable for building repairs to commence. In addition, Heightvale Ltd. can also carry out mould/trauma remediation works, over to the full building aspect of the claim to include storage and restoration of any household contents. Heightvale Ltd. does it all.
However, most insurance companies will not appoint the same company for all the above. Therefore, whilst from a continuity perspective, we appreciate it would make sense to appoint Heightvale for the entirety of the claim, it is unlikely this will happen. Therefore, you will be advised of which aspect/s Heightvale Ltd. have been appointed to undertake.
Once appointed upon the building aspect of your claim, the claim journey is a fluid process, as follows: –
PRIOR TO BUILDING WORKS
- Upon our initial instruction at Heightvale Ltd., you will receive a telephone call within 2 hours of ourselves receiving the documentation in relation to your claim
- At this point, a dedicated claims handler will contact you via telephone, to discuss further details of your claim and begin building a customer profile for yourself. We will discuss whether yourself, or a family member within the property identifies you as a vulnerable customer, and if there is any key information that we will require for your file.
- We will then discuss the reported damage in further detail, allowing us to can appoint the appropriate surveyor for the job. Here at Heightvale Lt., we have several specialist surveyors who deal with specific areas, from subsidence, internal cracking, floods, escape of water, externals, fires and more.
- The handler at this point will then briefly discuss the claim journey, what will happen next, and they will be available to answer any questions that you may have.
- Following the above, your file notes will then be finalised passed over to our diary team for the booking of the surveyor’s visit.
SURVEYORS VISIT AND BOOKING IN
- You will receive a telephone call from our diary team who will arrange a surveyor’s visit directly with yourself. They will ensure that the time and date is convenient before confirming the date in the diary.
- The file will then be passed to your attending surveyor to allow them to read the report from the insurance company and the information taken from the handler so that they are familiar with your claim, prior to their attendance.
- Upon arrival at your property, the surveyor will introduce themselves, and ensure that you are comfortable with their attendance and inspection prior to entering.
- Following this, the surveyor will inspect all affected areas, alongside appliances, kitchen/bathroom units etc. if applicable.
- They will check over separate rooms, and take any required measurements, alongside discussing the areas of damage with yourself.
- Once the surveyor has completed the above, they will then discuss with you any material choices you may have to make for your claim. They may leave paint colour charts with yourself and discuss laminate and wallpaper allowances and other choices that may need to be made. If there is a vast amount of material choices to made, due to time constraints, the surveyor may contact the office to book a timeslot to re-attend with samples to ensure that the time is allowed to assist you in this area.
- Upon our surveyor’s arrival back at the office, they will complete their report, flow of works, materials list and health and safety packs for all site trades. This documentation will then be passed to our scheduling and planning team who will submit the report over to the insurers for their approval, prior to Heightvale being given the authorisation to complete any works.
INITIAL WORKS
- Upon the receipt of approval from the insurance company, you will then be allocated with a claim’s handler within Heightvale’s Head Office. This person will be your dedicated claims handler, who will assist you throughout the duration of your claim with us. You will be given the claims handlers name, telephone extension number and e-mail address to keep lines of communication open for yourself, during office opening hours.
- Prior to booking in any works, if there is a policy excess outstanding to be collected by Heightvale Ltd., this will need be collected prior to our system allowing us to confirm any dates for yourself. You can contact Heightvale on the telephone number provided and request our accounts department to clear this balance.
- If strip out works are required prior to Heightvale beginning reinstatement, we will send in our damage limitation team to carry out these works. Once completed, our surveyor may re-attend to check over the areas that were not previously accessible during the initial visit. Here, there may be additional damage captured, which will be reported upon and sent to the insurers, or it may serve as confirmation that all has been captured correctly during the first visit.
- If drying is required following an escape of water claim, at this point, we would advise the drying company that we have completed initial strip out works, and they will then arrange a monitor drying visit directly with yourself. We must then await the completion of drying certification, prior to going any further in the claim journey.
- If a skip is required, we will discuss with yourself where would be best to place this. If placed onto a drive, you may require we place down ply board to eliminate possibility of damage, if a permit is required, we will also arrange this aspect of the claim for you.
REINSTATEMENT WORKS
- Once we are ready to book in the restoration works, you will receive a telephone call from your claim’s handler, ensuring that you have no holidays or appointments booked that we may need to avoid. To allow access if you are not present, you may wish to have a key safe fitted, or pass on a key to the attending trades that will then be locked in head office for any attendees – this aspect is a personal choice and is entirely up to yourself. Once we have taken any inconvenient dates from yourself, the workflow will then be passed to our trade diary team who will allocate the correct trades for your claim.
- Once returned from the diary team, your claims handler will then contact you to confirm the dates offered.
- Once confirmed with yourself, you may receive a call/email from our dedicated materials department to confirm your material choices if these have not been made on the surveyor’s visit. Occasionally, there can be lead times on materials which we may have to work around. For laminate and solid wood flooring, there must be a degree of acclimatisation time within the property, prior to fitting. Therefore, these will be delivered to yourself a few days prior to fitting.
- Following your confirmation, you will receive a letter/email from your claims handler to confirm the dates and the works to are to be carried out on those dates, for you to refer to as required.
ATTENDING TRADES
- HeightVale Ltd. employees are CRB checked, fully trained professionals who take pride in working at HeightVale. We enforce strong customer values, experience, and professionalism at all times, and we aspire to ensure properties are well protected during our work within the property. We appreciate that this is your home, and we will treat your home with the respect that it deserves throughout your claim.
- Following every trade visit, you will receive a telephone call from your claims handler to ensure that you are satisfied with the days works. If there has been anything left unsatisfactorily, we will endeavour to request the trade to re-attend to put this right to avoid any unnecessary inconvenience.
- During your journey, you may have visits from your surveyor to ensure that all works are running smoothly. The surveyor will have a conversation with you if you are on-site to ensure that all of our works are satisfactory to date. If there are any problems, please discuss at this point with your surveyor so that we can ensure that we make this right for you.
COMPLETION
- Upon completion of your claim, you will receive a telephone call from your claims handler to advise that all works are finalized and to ensure that you are happy with the works and the lifetime of your claim to date. At this point, we will sign off the job with the insurance company.
- We will then advise you of our standard 2-year guarantee upon all works (not to include general wear and tear). You will receive confirmation of this 2-year guarantee in the post, upon a dated letter for your own records.
The above is a simple claims journey flow. However, there may be slight amendments to this journey, dependant upon your claim type.
For larger claims, that have multiple damaged rooms and a higher overall claim value, we may appoint one of our site managers, who will supervise the full claim, with frequent visits. The site manager will oversee the job from start to finish. Site Managers are our most experienced trades. Often trained in multiple aspects of building works, they also have their own workforce teams that will attend where required. They will discuss the claim with you in a similar way as the claim journey above, however, you will also have a claims handler within the office also to answer any simpler queries that you may have.
