RACQ insurance diary

Author: Shez and Chris

  • PRIVACY AND DISCLAIMER

    About your personal details

    We created this website to discuss our experience with RACQ home insurance, no other purpose.  If you send us an email and trust us with your details, we promise not to share, rent or sell any of your information.

    We collect statistics on this website, only so we understand how effective our efforts are.

    Disclaimer

    We aren’t lawyers.  If you find something on this website that concerns you, please contact us.

    Our understanding of trademark infringement is that so long as our reference to any trademarks is truthful or satirical we aren’t infringing a trademark.

    Because of this understanding we have taken care to ensure that every claim we make on this website is truthful and can be evidenced.

    Still though we aren’t journo’s, content creators, lawyers or web designers.  If anything, we are royally pis*ed off and with that comes emotion.  So, if we make a mistake – maybe misuse a term, our promise is to fix it and admit to the same.

    We both work more than full-time jobs, and this isn’t a hobby for us.  If anything, it’s a total pain the A necessitated by an unbelievably poor experience with RACQ over which we stand to lose a small fortune, on top of not being able to return to our home for more than two years.

    Far too many times RACQ have ignored our correspondence and pleas and so here we are, serving it up nice and cold.

    We stand by our claim that the damage RACQ have caused to our property (through neglect and action) is far worse than a tornado and overflow event combined.

     

     

  • CONTACT US

    If an insurance company is making your life hell,
    please contact us …

    Sad but true, too many vulnerable people are being screwed over by insurance companies. We often say to each other that we are lucky. We don’t have kids so that really cut down on a lot of pain. 

    We’ve been ignored soooooooo many times but fortunately we know how to make a noise, create content and publish a website.

    And we have more than a sneaking suspicion that a class action may be needed to help others in our circumstances and are committed to having those discussions with our neighbours.

    If you have a story to share or just want to connect, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

    CLICK HERE TO CONTACT US

  • RACQ HOME INSURANCE OVERLAND FLOW

    JANUARY 1, 2024 – definitely overland flow, possibly karmic – second insured event

    So, we’ve been unlucky.  Not only did we cop our fair share of what we will call the ‘tornado’, (might have been a derecho – people are fighting about this), anyway, we then caught an overland flow event.

    A whole bunch of trees and crap from the tornado had built up at a local bridge, up the road from us.  The Council simply didn’t have time to do anything about it and then it rained.  And then she flooded.  Right through the ground floor of our home and Mum’s home.  It took out our colour bond fence, gates and everything around it.

    It was a freak set circumstances and we were the only people effected, along with one set of neighbors.

    By the time we saw the damage (3 days later) we could tell there was only ever about one inch of water trapped in our home, because of the tide marks on the skirting boards.

    We laugh now we when realise that the mismanagement of this small amount of water would lead to us loosing practically everything.  As at February 2026, 99% of our home repairs have not even been attempted.  We say 99% because in December 2025 RACQ quite magnanimously finally managed some roof repairs.

    Our house is totally infested with mould.  You should wear a rated face mask and full suit to enter.  Not that the exterior allows for safe entry.  It’s surely doesn’t.  RACQ never established safe access for us to our property.  They did not ever complete a storm clean up.

    Yes, we had a policy that allowed for, let’s call it, ‘storm clean up’ and our assessor told us the coverage should be in the region of $200k.  Have we seen a cent of that money?  Absolutely not.  Do we have storm debris all over the place?  Absolutely do.  We have so much debris still in place that it is unsafe for us to walk the grounds.

    When it comes to storm clean up RACQ have not extended the full benefit of our policy to us.  When it comes to cleaning up their own mess, RACQ have extended no benefit.  We didn’t ever receive anything for food spoilage etc etc etc.  All those little extras in the policy – we haven’t seen half of it.
     

    EDIT – LET’S GET THS STRAIGHT
    RACQ did clear a tree from our property and they did dump some fill in our driveway. So they did attempt some clean up. They just didn’t do nearly enough clean up and so prevented us from having safe access to our property and homes. As at February 2026 you can’t even mow the lawn outside our property because they left so much crap out there whilst trying to build a colour-bond fence.

  • RACQ CONTRACTORS AND SECURITY

    RACQ contractor leaves home unsecured and animals bleed all over the place

    The bloody, claw marks really frame the view nicely …

    On many occasions we have had to complain about RACQ contractors and security concerns for our home.  Very rarely do they ever respond.  For us the most disturbing example of RACQ not securing our home properly would be the one that led to biological waste left all over the place.  RACQ never responded to the below email or made any attempt to clean up.  To date (February 2026) my house still features this disgusting mess.

    Below is the email I sent to RACQ claims, home insurance in September 2025, which was ignored.

    *********************************************************************************************

    From: Shez
    Sent: Tuesday, 9 September 2025 12:37 PM
    To: RACQ Claims <claims@racq.com.au>
    Subject: RE: RACQ Claim # HH05987943 – blood and security

    Dear XXX

    On the weekend my husband and I attended my property to try to determine what had been recently stolen.

    There has been another incident.

    Someone (a contractor) has entered via code at the security door and then opened French doors on the ground floor, which are normally dead bolted.  They can only be opened from the inside.

    They have then left the property but not closed the French doors.  This has happened before.

    As a result animals have been in the house and something has been killed.  There is blood and faeces all up the staircase and on the top floor of the house to ceiling height over the stair case.  Windows are covered in blood and claw marks.

    Please advise which of your contractors accessed my house last week?  I would like to write to them directly because I don’t believe RACQ is adequately handling my complaints regarding security. 

    Please organise to have the blood and faeces cleaned as a priority.

    Kind regards,

    *********************************************************************************************

  • RACQ HOME INSURANCE MOULD INCUBATION

    RACQ people dump and leave contaminated contents in car port for more than two years = still there as at February 2026

    Another image we aren’t sure when we took it.  Doesn’t matter though, because if anything as at February 2026 it’s worse.

    Early 2024, RACQ home insurance people claimed none of these items were insured and dumped them in our carport.  Yes we have complained many times and been ignored on as many occasions.  When they dumped these items RACQ people knew the items had been exposed to level 3 contaminated water.

    Pretty obviously we can’t access our house safely from this entry point and this has been the case for more than 2 years.

    More importantly though, all this debris has been identified as one source of moisture that ultimate contributed to our house becoming totally infested with mould.  We have had an expert mould report completed in September / October 2025 that said as much.

    On two occasions RACQ have brought in a skip bin, positioned it beside all this mess and still failed to clean this up.

    Here’s what our carport looked like immediately after tornado and overland flow events.  We feel pretty sure anyone would agree we were better served by a couple of natural disasters …

  • DEBRIS DUMPED BY RACQ CONTRACTOR

    RACQ Home Insurance – Debris created and dumped by RACQ people prevents safe access for home owners

    We are honestly not sure when the below image was taken.  Could have been 2024 or 2025.  Point being it’s worse now.  We’ve not had safe access to our property for probably the entire time RACQ should have been honoring the terms of our insurance policy.  (Currently we can’t enter our home without full PPE and haven’t been able to step foot inside since approx’ September 2025.)

    True, our policy included a benefit for storm clean up, that to date has not been extended, and we have complained many times in emails, AFCA complaints and even at conciliation.  But this debris is not from either of the insured events and in actual fact there are far too many instances of it located inside and outside our property.

    As at today this rubbish pile has grown and the part that upsets us the most about it is that it contains items that have come from some other site.  Literally RACQ contractors have dumped doors and other building debris in our yard that did not come from any part of our property.

    RACQ home insurance contractors have used our home as a rubbish dump and as at February 2026, we have not been able to do nothing about it.

    This photo is a relatively mild example, except that it makes one of the entry points to our property unsafe.

    RACQ rubbish dumped by contractor in our driveway

  • Our RACQ home and contents insurance policy

    Our RACQ home and contents insurance policy is probably different to most in that we lived on acreage (5 acres) and had two houses and large shed.  All of this was specified at the time.  RACQ were well aware what they were insuring was not a standard residential home and not a standard contents arrangement.  We went so far as to make them note our shed on the policy.  My mothers’ contents were noted separately.

    We always assumed our ‘acreage/multiple structures situation‘ was why we were paying approx. $5k per annum for our policy.  By nearly anyone’s measure that’s a lot of money.

    Honestly, we now think this is why we have had such a horrible time with RACQ.  It seems to us that at no stage have they ever really been able to cope with the ‘acreage / multiple structure situation‘.  We don’t believe they have shown an appropriate amount of respect for the condition of our acreage or our safe access or security, and that’s probably because it doesn’t even rate as a concern to them.  We guess they look at our file and think – residential property.  People who live on acreage know, that is not the case.  Acreage needs love and attention.

    We’ve had claims running with RACQ for more than two years as of 28 January 2026 and during that time we really believe they have failed to respect our property/grounds/acreage and allowed our homes and property to fall into a near derelict state.  Now covered in noxious weeds, spread by an RACQ contractor, new related issues are developing on the regular.

    After more than 2 years we are not able to live at our property, and our absence has certainly not helped many of our issues.

    We keep trying to tell RACQ what is going on and they keep ignoring us.  There have been so many issues and so many attempts by us to avoid the next damaging issue and so many times RACQ have just ignored us.  There have been so many AFCA complaints.  (God bless AFCA.)

    When we took out our RACQ home and contents insurance policy we did so on the phone with my mother.  She’s in her 70’s and doesn’t handle admin’ well.

    We found out when we went to make our first claim that RACQ had changed our policy only a matter of weeks after inception and in some way (we still don’t really understand what happened here) only advised our mother.  RACQ didn’t tell us that they had removed contents cover from our house.  We complained to RACQ and AFCA about this and ultimately, RACQ reinstated our contents cover.  This was a very stressful time for us but also meant (in our observation) that RACQ delayed works on our house.  About an inch of water was left on the ground floor, interior, of our Queenslander home for some weeks, whilst our complaint re contents insurance was dealt with.  In our opinion, this ultimately resulted in our first mould outbreak and our home being reduced to studs on the ground floor.

    At this date (28.01.26) we couldn’t tell you what happened to all our contents that were located on the ground floor.  Some was certainly thrown out without manifesting, some most likely stolen, and maybe some could be in storage.  We don’t know about the storage and we don’t know about the state of items that might be in storage.  RACQ have never adequately responded to our contents and storage concerns.  There have been so many emails and a huge AFCA submission – but still nothing acceptable.

    RACQ were / are responsible for all of our contents.  Their contractors assured us they could sort through all our possessions and manifest everything.  Throw out what could not be saved and restore what could be saved.  Anything that could be restored would then be moved to storage.

    That’s not what happened though.

  • RACQ home insurance – the first insured event …

    25 December 2023 – a Tornado on the Gold Coast and we are covered with RACQ home insurance???

    On 25 December 2023 the Gold Coast Hinterland located, Queensland, Australia, experienced a tornado like event. (For visitors who aren’t local, we don’t do tornados. On the Gold Coast we rarely even do cyclones but to be fair, we often experience freaky storms, and they can get funky.)

    In Australia, especially Queensland, Home insurance matters. It’s expensive to insure your home properly, including flood, but you don’t F around. You pay the money, so when sh*t goes down, your life doesn’t turn into a total nightmare.  Our property was insured with RACQ home insurance when the tornado hit.

    As at February 2026, RACQ advertise on their website,

    “RACQ’s home insurance provides the cost of repair or replacement of your house when things go wrong.”

    At the time we took out our RACQ home insurance policy, we are sure they were talking about “peace of mind”.

    A lot of Queenslanders are insured with RACQ home insurance. At the time we took out our policy they were not the cheapest option by any means, but we thought, the most comprehensive home insurance provider with a half-way decent reputation. (The annual premium for our RACQ home insurance policy was more than $5k (per annum) at the time of our first claim.)

    *****************************************************

    When the tornado happened, xmas day 2023, our home was one of a number effected in our area. Trees were snapped in half or pulled out of the ground. Power was down. A lot of people lost roofs. Some families lost everything.

    To be fair, we were actually very fortunate. We had some tree issues and relatively minor damage to two roofs, on our home – a Queenslander, and on our motor-home. We believe a large tree had fallen on the corner of our homes’ roof and landed on an external staircase. (We lived on a 5 acre property and had two houses and one motor home that we used for accommodation, one house was a Queenslander which we renovated, loved and lived in, and a secondary, new dwelling created for our mother.)

    Our Mum was home at the time of the tornado, solo. We were overseas on holiday. (It was actually the first time we had not taken her on holidays since Michael passed away, and the tornado scared the hell out of her. Mum has seen wild weather before but describes this tornado event as something she never wants to experience again. She speaks specifically of the noise being other worldly.)