Plumber in hot water over incident
Just Geysers, a now ex-service provider of Nedgroup Insurance, did not meet standards when installing a geyser
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When Katja Correa experienced a broken geyser in her home, the first thing
she did was call her home insurance company, Nedgroup Insurance, who sent a
plumber to look at the problem.
Nedgroup Insurance, until then, was working with Just Geysers and the
company employs several professionals in their branches to deal with geyser
problems and other plumbing emergencies.
Unfortunately, Correa's intuition that the plumber "didn't look very
professional to me", proved to be correct and on the same day, after the plumber
had supposedly solved the problem, the geyser "kind of exploded."
"Boiling hot water shot out of the overflow pipe, burning one of my dogs as
well as my husband slightly, and damaging my concrete veranda floor," said
Correa.
The homeowner's main complaint was how Nedgroup Insurance could subcontract
such a "useless plumber".
When Correa did not receive a reply from Nedgroup Insurance, she contacted
the media who got involved. A professional plumber determined that the geyser
installation did not comply with South African National Standard codes and when
this was brought to the insurance company's attention, it duly contacted the
Institute of Plumbing South Africa.
In a letter to Just Geyers, the head of the Institute for KwaZulu-Natal
wrote: "I was saddened that neither the operator nor his installer are, in fact,
actually qualified plumbers in the sense that the operator had claimed that he
has been in the industry for three years and his installer for six months."
Nedgroup Insurance has since struck Just Geyers Durban from its list of
subcontractors and is examining the issue further.
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