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A lorry driver smashed into our Grade II listed home, doing £22,000 of damage – now our insurer won’t pay up

QOne morning in March last year my partner was studying in our home office when our house was hit by a lorry, badly damaging the Victorian railings and Portland stone gates at the front.

We are in our 60s and were badly shaken. Liability for the damage, which totals about £ 22,000, was swiftly accepted by the driver’s company and the police are prosecuting him for careless driving. Yet despite all this Aviva, our insurer, has settled only £13,000 of the claim.

We have no idea why. As our home is Grade II-listed, to rebuild the wall and gates we are obliged to use certain materials that are vastly more expensive than other types. However, this is reflected in the building insurance premiums we pay Aviva.

Everything has been done properly, with a loss adjuster to assess the work, yet Aviva is not sticking to its promises. There has been no communication about whether or when the remaining bills might be paid. Our builder is a small specialist and, despite the rise in material costs over the past year, he has kept to his estimates but now finds himself waiting for payment from a large insurer.

The rebuilding has involved several craftspeople, from blacksmiths to plasterers, all specialists because of the nature of the building and all with an expectation of being paid as agreed. Surely the point of insurance is that if a lorry hits your house and liability is accepted, and if you are properly insured, your insurer is there to pay out?

– JM, Swindon

A Satellite imagery of your house shows that it is located around a sharp bend, where the speed limit is 20mph. The lorry in question came hurtling round the corner, overshot the pavement and smashed straight into your property.

It was a stroke of luck that no pedestrians were there at the time, as a tragic accident might have occurred. I can see why you and your partner feel so shaken.

You bought this Aviva policy via a broker that specialises in listed properties such as yours. You say it has done everything it can to assist you, but the matter comes back to Aviva. It was a year since the lorry crash and enough was enough.

You were worried that the higher cost of materials and specialist labour was making Aviva wince and causing it to try to see what it could get away with not paying. However, I have established that what actually happened was a breakdown in communications. After I contacted it, Aviva quickly responded, saying it wasn’t even aware the money hadn’t been paid. Within days it agreed to pay the remaining £8,000 it owed. It described the delays as “regrettable” and said a problem with a “third-party processing system” was ultimately to blame.

Aviva also said it was sorry you were disappointed with the frequency of its updates, but pointed out that, when brokers were involved, they and the loss adjuster should usually be the point of contact. In light of the delays you faced, you will receive £50 for the “inconvenience”.

Now that this is sorted out, you can start to petition the local council to erect some bigger warning signs around that hairy road bend.

Boots vitamins contained mystery pill

QI bought a tub of own-brand vitamin D tablets from my local Boots. My family and I had taken them for a few days when a totally different pill came out of the tub. It was smaller, with “p2” on the front, whereas the vitamin D tablets were plain. The only other tablets I have in my home are paracetamol and ibuprofen. It matches neither of these.

Concerned about what this rogue pill might be, I contacted Boots. It asked me to return the unidentified tablet to the shop so that it could investigate. But then it went quiet. I emailed customer services repeatedly for the outcome. Eventually I was told the results had been misplaced.

In December I visited the shop in person and spoke to the manager, who had the investigation results on his desk. He said he had been chasing Boots’ head office to ask how to proceed, but no one there was responding. Then Boots sent me an email saying there was no way the tablet could have got into the tub during manufacture and offering me £30 as a goodwill gesture.

However, I feel Boots is missing the point. I am not interested in a payout. I want to know what this rogue pill is and how it got inside a sealed tub of vitamins. I, my children or my husband could have ingested something harmful. – LD, Salisbury A It was only a few years ago that you were out shopping in your home town when Sergei Skripal and his daughter were struck down there by a deadly nerve agent planted by Russian agents. You were shaken by the incident, which still plays on your mind. I totally understand and sympathise. While the chances of something being

planted maliciously in your Boots vitamins were extremely small, I felt the company should have done more to put your mind at rest, so I asked it to send the pill off for testing.

Boots said it had used an online pill checker to match the tablet’s appearance to a generic ibuprofen. However, it could not be 100pc sure this was right, it said. Boots insisted the pill was highly unlikely to have made its way into the tub during production, thanks to strict safety protocols. It seemed reluctant to do a formal lab test. I think Boots suspected the pill was an ibuprofen tablet from your home that had somehow made its way into the pack. You insisted that could not be the case, though I admit I was starting to doubt this. Still, I was disappointed by Boots’ dismissive attitude. We both agreed it should go ahead with the lab test. Hopefully, the pill would test positive for ibuprofen, allowing you to relax.

Two weeks later the lab test for ibuprofen came back negative. On top of this, Boots said the pill had been destroyed, so no further tests could be done. Its composition remained a mystery and my curiosity went through the roof. I studied the photo you provided and noticed that the pill’s surface was somewhat crumbly. This, and the fact that Britain’s biggest pharmacy chain had failed to identify it, led me to wonder whether it had in fact been manufactured illegally. I asked how old your children were, and you said 16 and 22. Both still lived at home.

I asked whether you thought there was any way the pill could be an illegal drug, such as ecstasy. You said it was extremely unlikely, as your children were quiet, home-bird types. You took no offence at my suggestion and agreed to have a conversation with them. In the meantime, I contacted a drugs expert at Tictac, a drugs identification service, who took one look at the photo and said he thought it was an oestrogen tablet. Of course, without testing it he couldn’t be 100pc sure, but, comfortingly, he said he would bet his own house that this pill was not an illegal drug. So your children were off the hook and your mind was put at rest.

A quick search on the Tictac database by this expert brought up a very strong match to a medication called Elleste, an oestrogen and progesterone pill taken by menopausal women.

This is the best guess we may ever have as to what the pill is. I asked you whether it could be something of yours and you said you didn’t think so, as your hormone-replacement therapy treatment was in the form of a spray.

So, despite Boots’ initial disbelief that the matter could relate to its own supply chain, I think we have to consider this as a serious possibility. No safety measures, however stringent, are infallible. Had Boots done more to quell your anxiety before my intervention, it would have saved you from a great deal of stress and from having to ask your children whether they were druggies. Stranger – and scarier – things have happened than a rogue oestrogen tablet winding up in a pot of vitamin D.