Fred99:networkn:Geektastic:SteveON: Priorities ... Not sure if you noticed but there was a few major earthquakes over the last few years. It will happen but you're just not important enough I'm afraid.
But the point is that the claim is so small it should be paid without so much review. It's an insignificant sum the responsibility for approval of which should be delegated a long way down the pile. For example, they could require insurers to settle claims below $10,000 immediately once accepted and then require the insurers to claim back from them on an annual basis. Much better for customers as more claims are likely to be small in a normal year than large.
When they combine this with a protocol that allows them to refuse to cover your actual costs in getting repairs done if you choose to do it first say because water is coming in, it just looks like ACC - good on paper but c**p in reality.
So claims should be handled by size rather than the order in which they are received. Personally I think that would be terrible. There are hundreds if not thousands of people worse off than you. Why don't you just get it repaired if it's a major problem for you, and wait for payment to reimburse you?
IMO EQC should never have been involved in assessment / claims processes directly. Prior to the Chch quakes they were just an office with a few staff shuffling paper, and were not capable of upping resources to handle the number of claims faced. They wasted $300 million of taxpayer/EQC stakeholder money, as those assessments were toilet paper - produced by people with no expertise or credibility.
But there's also a problem if EQC handed assessment of all claims to private insurers, as there's no incentive for those insurers to minimise claim values. EQC needs to be (and will be) "revised" soon. Hopefully that will change the relationship between EQC, private Insurers and property owners in a positive way.
The negative will be that (IMO) low excess for EQ damage is unsustainable. Already the private insurers have changed excess for "out of (EQC) scope" damage to driveways etc, to $5-!0,000 (this quietly while they also changed from "full replacement" to "sum insured"). There's been a massive amount of work going on in Chch fixing minor damage to gib board by EQC, and replacing cracks in concrete driveways by private insurers, limiting resources available for more important repairs.
NZ has never had a disaster of the scope of the Christhchurch earthquakes, of course we were not prepared for it. It was going to always be hard and to boot, it's uncharted territory. If not EQC then who? Name one company that has expanded from 10-20 people upto 300+ in a matter of weeks, and show me them doing a better job.
It's 100x more complicated than you realize I think, and after all, it's made up of humans who are prone to mistakes.
The OP's complaint and the other made of a smaller claim further in this thread are simply not real problems compared to the issues faced by others in Christchurch and I think some understanding and compassion should be employed here.