Insurers fear wrath of Kiwi weka wrecker
Homeowners filing claims for household havoc caused by pets, stray animals - and even a rogue weka - have learned that not all policies are created equally.
A weka wrecker rates as one of the less common causes of domestic mayhem that insurers pay to repair, but Mike Davy, general manager of insurer MAS, said: ’’You’d be surprised the damage a weka can do to carpet if left wandering in a house for a while!. All I can say is weka faecal stains are hard to remove.’’
Davy, who wouldn’t reveal how much it cost to replace the carpets of the affected property, said the weka had got into a Kiwi home that was temporarily unoccupied, so it had plenty of time to inflict damage.
That client wasn’t the first homeowner to learn of the staining power of weka poo.
South Island author Keith Tonkin wrote of an encounter with a weka in his Westland home which resulted in a broken table, broken dishes and a stained carpet.
Although MAS policy does cover damage caused by pets, other insurers provide more limited cover. The AA Insurance policy, for example, provides no cover for ‘‘scratching, chewing, tearing, soiling, or vomiting’’ by pets.
All policies exclude damage cause by ‘‘vermin’’, but there may be differences in cover even there. The AA policy provides no cover for ‘‘any loss, cost or liability, directly or indirectly caused by, arising from or involving insects, pests, vermin, rodents or possums.’’
However, the MAS policy specifically says possumdamage is covered.
Cases have come before the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman where insurers and policyholders have not seen eye to eye.
In one case, a pet rat escaped its cage and damaged a twoseater sofa. The insurer wouldn’t pay the claim, saying there was no cover for damage caused ‘‘by insects, rodents or vermin.’’
The householder said the clause in the policy was clearly meant to cover wild vermin, not ‘‘pets held in cages’’.
The ombudsman sided with the policyholder, finding the pet rat was not a pest.