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Tesco Finest ±«Óătv Insurance customer Sally Pritchard

The world of insurance policies can be a tricky one to negotiate, and it can often be hard to work out if you’re getting the best option for your money.

For customers of Tesco’s Insurance, they’ve decided to help you out and have created their range to match their famous food labelling.

There’s the value insurance, standard and finally finest.

And when nurse and mum-of-one Sally Pritchard was looking to insure her family home in Ponthir she decided to go for the best, with Tesco's Finest.
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And when she came home to a flooded kitchen last May she expected the service to live up to its name.

She told X-Ray, “All the tiles on the kitchen floor were soaking; I could see water coming down the walls - both sides of the walls. I was frightened because the electrics were there, I didn’t know what was going to happen, whether it was going to blow up.”

After calling Tesco Insurance she was advised to call out a plumber to source the leak and take out the kitchen units and thought it would all be sorted in a few weeks.

And with the kitchen stripped bare, Sally and her son needed to move back in with her parents.
She said, “It’s so much pressure for them to take on me, my little boy, my two dogs, my cats and my chickens and my ducks.”

But Sally's hope of a hassle free and quick fix was not to be as the leak kept coming back. And things went from bad to worse when Tesco sent in the builders to try and get to the bottom of the problem.
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“When I was in work my mum rang me”, Sally told X-Ray’s Rhodri, “She said the builders just contacted her and said the house was structurally unsafe because they’d made a hole in the wall during taking the plaster off.

“I was devastated because I was on shift, you can't leave the ward when you're working. So I had to work the rest of my shift thinking that my house might fall down.”

Sally called out a structural engineer. Tesco also sent out someone to check out the property. It was declared safe but Sally refused to have the builders back.
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The confusion carried on for months. Eventually Tesco asked Sally to submit quotes from two new builders – which they then refused.

Then in December 2011, Sally was offered a settlement of £5,650 by yet another new claims management company employed on behalf of Tesco’s Finest Insurance.

But this time there was no offer of a builder to carry out the work as promised in her policy.

Sally said, “The settlement wouldn’t even cover the builder and a whole new kitchen.”And Sally was certainly not happy with the service she was getting. She told us, “The stress has been unbelievable with people constantly calling, me having to arrange my shifts to meet people.”

Nine months on, Sally and Ben seemed no nearer to getting back into their home but after we got in touch with Tesco Insurance they had some good news. Tesco said they were sorry for the distress and inconvenience this complex claim has caused our customer. They have offered Sally a settlement of around ÂŁ8,000 for a new kitchen, and currently just over ÂŁ5,000 for accommodation costs for the period that Sally and her son have been out of their property.