Dinesh S

Unable to process a fire claim (VCiB)

A fire broke out in our kitchen at Taste of India Bryanston at about 11 a.m. on July 8, 2022. We informed our insurance broker, Ms. Juanita Myburgh of VCiB insurance, who provided us a claim form and asked us to send the incident images, which we did and emailed back immediately. After a week following the occurrence, Mr. Johan Ras of PIP consulting was appointed as an assessor. It took them more than three weeks to figure out what happened. The only response we have received from Ms. Juanita Myburgh, Mr. Johan Ras, and Mr. Ian Gule (Claims Consultant at VCiB) after following up with them every other day is that they are still busy with the process and that we should be patient regarding the report. It has now been 5 weeks and their response hasn't changed. It's been 5 weeks and they still haven't fixed our restaurant or told us of the next steps. When we questioned them about their inability to get the firm up and running, they just stated that we had not selected a clause for 'Business Disruption.' Even if we did not choose that specific clause, the claim process was not expected to be delayed and handled inefficiently. We strongly advise against hiring these agents because they are inept in their respective fields. The business has been closed for more than a month, yet we still need to pay our employees' salaries, rent, and other fixed operational expenditures. If they were so unsure about the claim and the process, they should have told us sooner so we could have rectified it at our own expense and they could have paid us. At the very least, we would have been operational. Receiving such crucial assistance from an insurance provider is quite unpleasant for a business. Our company is stranded, our employees are suffering, and we have lost all our customers due to VCiB's inability to process a minor fire claim. We're not sure which insurance is better, but it's certainly not this one.