Claims due to power cuts
10 April 2006 | Views Letters Interviews Comments | All | Angelo Coppola
Readers are interested in real cover as this is a real problem.
* You mentioned in the Editor's note that Blackout Insurance is available .
We are a small Short Term Insurance Broking Firm that has been in this business for a very long time.
When the electricity problem in Cape Town happened we approachedsome of the major Insurers and asked them how they will deal with a claim for loss of Gross profit in such an instance. We had varying reactions andsome still owes us an answer to the question of loss of income due to power failures like in Cape town. The answers we got were that we must refer to the wording of the Extended cover under MM111.
The Public utilities extended cover granted by Multi Mark 3, restricts cover due to damage directly or indirectly caused by; the exercise of an authority empowered by law to supply water, gas or electricity of its power to withhold or restrict supply unless such with holding or restriction is directly attributable to Damage toproperty of such authority.
The problem is what happens in case where the demand for electricity exceeds the capacity to supply, and this causes black outs. As the wording of the extended cover now stateswe are of the opinion that the insurers will not pay for such claims.
Please let us have details of the cover you referred to and the name of the Underwriter.
* The only such insurance I know of is an extension under the Loss of profits section under MultiMark 3 policy - it carries a 24 hour excess and (wait for it) does not cover foreseen (i.e. announced) power outages according to opnion that I have had from SANTAM. so these 2-hourly, daily outages are not covered by the standard policy.
* Would the case of suing Telkom for poor service? Telkom upgraded my ISDN line to ADSL on Thursday last week, after very little help form the Telkom tech we managed to get connected to the system, however Telkom have still got my land line numbers on the ISDN connection. When I found out on Friday I contacted Telkom re the problem at about 3.00pm, to be told that nobody could help me as they had all gone home. We phoned again on Monday morning 2 hours later just been passed around different call centres & speaking to 20 people, we where given a ref no. Earlier today we phoned & the same procedure took place my land lines are down & my clients are unable to contact me & I can't get somebody to talk too.
I wish I had the resources to take on Telkom for loss of earrings & down time in my practice.
