I have often said: if the horse is dead, it's time to get off the saddle. Yet in some insurance companies there are characters who not only keep riding the dead horse but even try to advertise it. Today's story is about how an insurance firm attempts to exhaust a client with absurd versions of events.
It all began on 15 December 2025. In my client's apartment, water started dripping from the seams of concrete panels in the kitchen. The chairman of the apartment association was called. He looked at the ceiling and announced with a perfectly straight face:
«This is condensation. You were probably just cooking soup.»
And left.
Does any of this make sense to you, dear reader? According to this «expert's» logic, an ordinary borscht is capable of penetrating a concrete ceiling and causing a local flood. He unfortunately did not specify the recipe.
Next, the insurance giant entered the scene. The client received a denial response that resembled a cheap crime drama more than a professional claims settlement.
The insurer claimed in its official response that the apartment association chairman had visited the upstairs apartment No. 52, moved the refrigerator, and checked the situation.
Small detail: nobody visited apartment No. 52 and nothing was moved.
The entire «investigation» was essentially based on the same soup theory. Later the reason why such a version was needed also became clear.
The insurance company's partner sent a specialist on site. He looked at the ceiling and honestly admitted:
«I am not a construction expert. I won't open the panels, I might break something.»
At the same time, he orally noted that the condensation version seemed implausible. But he did not wish to add this to a written report.
Then the archive came into play.
And what do we find? A document from 2022. In the exact same apartment, an identical incident had occurred three years earlier. And the same apartment association chairman had written in his own hand in the report that the cause was the upstairs neighbour's melting refrigerator.
A question arises: why was the refrigerator to blame in 2022, but in 2025 it was suddenly the «facade» and «soup cooking»?
The answer seems quite obvious: someone did not want a possible regress claim.
Since the insurer was dragging the matter out indefinitely, I drove to Sillamäe myself. The panels were opened in front of a video camera.
The result? The concrete behind them was practically perfect:
👉 no mould,
👉 no fungal damage,
👉 no traces of long-term moisture.
Any construction specialist will say that such a situation indicates a one-time and strong water breakthrough. If the problem had lasted for years, the picture behind the structures would have been completely different.
Today we have reached a situation where:
👉 the repair estimate is 2151 euros;
👉 my expertise invoice is 280 euros.
And then comes the response from Swedbank:
«We will not change our decision, but we are willing to pay for the opening of the panels. We only ask to remove the word EXPERTISE from the invoice.»
Do you understand what this means?
They want to create the impression that it was simply «demolition work", not a technical assessment that refutes their entire facade and condensation version.
We removed nothing.
We submitted a detailed complaint to the TTJA:
👉 false information about alleged inspections;
👉 insufficient technical investigation;
👉 video of clean concrete;
👉 the 2022 document;
👉 references to laws and Supreme Court practice.
Now the insurer must explain to a government agency why they spent five months trying to convince the client with the „soup theory".
The most comical thing in this entire story is how the claims version changed constantly, like Estonian weather:
👉 first the facade was supposedly to blame,
👉 then condensation,
👉 then moisture in the wall again.
To the question of where this condensation is now and why there is no mould on the ceiling, there is still no answer.