Our Durban property suffered heavy rain damage about 3 weeks ago when the roof leaked quite badly. The good news is the assessor passed the claim and the insurance company will pay for the necessary repairs. This is always a worry as you just never know even though you maintain your property. I have had storm damage rejected in the past and you just hope you have an understanding assessor. The repair costs for the storm damage were rather high with a long list of items that needed repairing or replacing. The problem is I am 500 kilometers away and have no idea what has been damaged and relying on tenants.
Yesterday the insurance company phoned that they were going to pay out the damage repair costs directly to us which I declined. The problem is to find a company to do those repairs at the insurance companies supposed quoted price. I told the insurance company to arrange that the repairs are done and I will then gladly pay the excess.
One of the items that was damaged was the control board for the electric fence and who knows unless you know how much this would cost to replace this. Electrics and electricians are known to charge extras and would feel more comfortable having which ever company quoted actually do the job and deal directly with their client being the insurance company.
Unless you know someone who you have experience with which I don't in Durban then you are always going to end up paying more than what was originally quoted to the assessors. We don't get given the itemized quote and under normal circumstances the insurance service providers do the repairs.
Someone I know a few months back asked me about solar and I gave them my installer who I know and trust. Like a fool they got someone else locally in their area to do the installation and only once the job was completed and paid did they do a comparison asking my installer to quote. They removed the prices from their invoice and my installer quoted $1K less. This price also included his 4 hour drive to their property and back. He told me he was a little stunned at the difference in price plus the local installer had not done the installation correctly and still needed to be redone.
The problem like everything else is if you don't have a reliable service provider you use regularly you just have no idea what you are paying for. This is why it is so important to keep the details of a company or individual who does a decent job at a fair price.
My solar installer is also my electrician and last month our geyser in our Johannesburg property stopped working. We phoned the insurance company as this geyser was replaced recently by the insurance company and had to be under warranty. The plumbers came out and reported it was an electrical issue so the insurance company assigned the job to an electrical company. They never arrived plus the back up company could not do the job as they had a 3-4 day delay due to excess work.
The waiting time was unacceptable and called in my electrician who completed the repair that same day and was half the cost of what the excess would have cost paying the insurance company. The non show service providers this time saved myself money so having your own trusted providers being plumbers and electricians is always advisable.