DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/30/24 2:24 p.m.

After 2 years the saga of Hurricane Ian is almost over for the Boost family. Lots of people have asked how it’s coming, what’s going on, and what’s the deal. I will update everyone that cares.

For those that don’t; with any car that is available as both a soft-top convertible and a coupe from the factory, the coup is the better looking car. 
The MGA is the exception that proves the rule.

Ok, on to Ian.  The recap is that we suffered damage to Ian. Many people had much more damage, so we were and are grateful. We filed a claim with our insurance company. They sent an adjuster out that spent maybe 15 minutes on site, and didn’t go in the house because he (without going in the house or having our policy on hand) deemed our damage to not be covered. Now, I can’t give out all true numbers because of the settlement so I’ll do my best.  They gave us two checks that, when combined with our deductible means they claim that our damage amounts to between $10K and $14K.
Here’s the damage to our house, that they determined amounted to 10-14K:

  • Fence destroyed (600’ of 6’ PVC privacy fence, 4 gates) – not covered (estimate was $54,000)
  • Shed damaged (minor) – covered (no estimate, I can handle it myself for a few hundred)
  • Water softener and plumbing (outside) destroyed – not covered ($4,000 estimate)
  • Florida room (‘sunroom’, hard-sided room with windows, hard walls, door, electrical, carpet, HVAC, etc) damaged beyond repair – not covered ($40,000+ estimate, plus electrical, + HVAC, + carpet)
  • Soffits blown all over the county – covered ($2,000 I think)
  • Well pump burned out (pipes broken, prime lost, pump ran dry) – not covered ( I can't remember the amount here)
  • All but 1 window screen AWOL – not covered, simply ignored and left off all documentation ($360 on up)
  • Water damage on all outside interior walls from water entering around widows that were flexing due to wind – not covered (thousands as by law the entire room must be repainted, walls only)
  • Water damage to ceiling from water coming in due to lifted shingles – not covered. (thousands as by law the entire room must be repainted, ceiling only)
  • New roof - denied responsibility. They said the damage must be a coincidence that happened before the storm. The roof was 7 months old. ($34K estimate)
  • misc other stuff for a few thousand more.

Incidentally, with the exception of the well pump, all of these are covered as stated in our policy. The insurance company just tries to weasel out of paying because they are crooked. It’s part of the insurance game.

In an effort to come to an agreement we tried to contact the insurance company many, many times. Phone. E-mail. Text. USPS. Smoke signals. A message in a bottle. They completely ignored us. Ghosted us. One day we get a check in the mail for 5.4% of our claim. That’s enough playing with these criminals. We hired a public adjuster (PA). For those that don’t, it’s an adjuster that isn’t hired by the insurance company. Their job is to fight for you, not against you like the adjuster the insurance company hires. They collect 10% of the settlement as payment.

The insurance company ghosted the PA for months. Now and again they’d say they need this form, or that form. Each form we provided would start a (usually 20-business day) clock. They were playing games to delay things. We played the games and eventually sent a letter of intent to sue them.

More ghosting. Eventually, after the Discovery process of pre-trial stuff they offered a few more dollars, bringing the total on offer to less than 13% of our claim. Keep in mind that I’ve paid them 100% of our monthly premium for 2.5 years at that point.  No negotiating, no settlement.  The next step is depositions. More time wasted.

Then just last week we have non-binding mediation / arbitration. Our claim is now adjusted for today’s rates since they’ve dragged their feet for 2 years in an effort to wear their customer out and avoid paying what they owe. After “Introductions”, basically opening arguments, we are to make our offer. I tried to explain things, but I can’t really do that without giving out info that might get me in trouble. So I’ll sum it up by saying we asked for the full claim amount, they came back with a single-digit percentage of said amount. We countered by reducing our ask by about 10%. They upped theirs about 2%.
Screw them.
Our attorney said we should come down another 8% or so. I said “If that’s what you think we should do, then yes, let’s do that. But I need to tell you I’m pretty upset. We have come down $XX,XXX and they’ve come up $X,XXX. They are wasting my time and I’m done. Keep in mind that everyone on this Zoom call is being paid a few hundred dollars an hour, except my wife and I. We took time off work to have [the insurance company] waste our time? Nope. I have more enjoyable and productive things I could be doing. I could be cleaning the litter box, or getting a colonoscopy, instead I’m here playing games? Nope, this is the last round. I’m done”.
She relayed that to the mediator. They came back with a bigger counter, but still at 16% of the claim.

At that point we gave them our final offer and gave them until the end of business Friday to get off their wallet, or we’ll see them in court. They know they won’t win against a jury of other folks that have been screwed by their insurance companies. They came back with a number we could work with, if I do much of the work myself. The number we settled on is 90.2% of the 2022 claim number, 77.4% of the 2024 numbers.

I’m happy to have it (almost) behind us, but not happy because the insurance company acted in malice (in my opinion) and was doing everything they could to wear us down so we would settle for 10% or less than what they owed us. 

So, why did I settle, instead of sticking it out and going to trial? Well, one part of that is to get this chapter closed. We have buckets in our dining room that we simply don’t put away anymore. We just stack them in the corner when the rain stops, and distribute them around the room when it rains. Our poor dog is putting on weight because he can’t run free in our yard until it’s fenced off. There are other issues like mold, etc. Just tired of it. Did I say ‘screw the insurance company!’ yet?
The other, more complicated reason is the way the laws work down here. I’m going to explain it with nice round numbers for the sake of simplicity. 
Let’s say that we must have $100,000 to do the work. The insurance company offers us $4.87. No settlement, let's sue them. We have to go through arbitration before court. Now, let’s say that the arbitrator says the insurance company should pay us $80,000. Well, that’s not enough so we should go to court, right? Well, that number, the $80K is now the target. If the jury awards us less than 75% of the arbitrators suggestion, so anything less than $60,000 means we are awarded $60K, but because it’s less than 75% of what was offered, we now have to pay the insurance crooks legal fees. At the time of mediation my legal fees were $25K. So add in the fees associated arbitration, then court, then double it for the other side and I end up with enough money to buy a Big Mac. Not the meal, just the burger lol. 
I believe the arbitrator would have had a very reasonable offer, probably more than we settled for, but not a lot more. I didn’t want to take the risk, and just wanted it over.
In about 6 weeks we should have the money and can start putting our lives back together. 

Lessons learned:
1 – you think insurance companies are difficult when you have a claim. They can he impossible when the claim is large. I can’t believe the number of houses around here that still have tarps on their roofs 2 years later. Incidentally, it cost almost $9K to have two large tarps put on our roof. And they were the same quality you’d get at Home Depot.
2 – Public adjusters are your friend. But make sure they have a lot of experience, and better yet, actual experience IN the insurance industry. Ours did. It was invaluable.
3 – Instead of a Public Adjuster, next time I’ll just to right to a law firm. You’ll save the 10%, and I think the attorney’s correspondence will carry more weight than a PA. The issue with that is, not working through a PA, they will probably need money up front, and moving forward.

 

So that's it.  Thanks for caring.

TRoglodyte
TRoglodyte UltraDork
10/30/24 2:37 p.m.

Did you "bundle and save"?  

Lof8 - Andy
Lof8 - Andy GRM+ Memberand UltraDork
10/30/24 2:45 p.m.

Man, that is miserable.   I really hope to never have to deal with a major claim.

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
10/30/24 2:55 p.m.

Reminds me of the time I got in a car accident where the other party admitted fault, and my Samurai was given a non-negotiable valuation of $750. Just days before the crash, a guy was hounding me in a parking lot to take his $3800 for the Samurai and I turned him down. Because in that jurisdiction whatever valuation the brand's dealership unilaterally coughs up goes, my only option to challenge that valuation would've been to hire a lawyer to try something creative. After the other party's insurance tried to illegally contact me and get me to accept a settlement in an underhanded way, I lawyered up and decided that squeezing them for some injury money looked like a good practical option, so I got a little more that way but was still nowhere close to recovering the repair costs. Luckily while it was a huge loss relative to what I should've been paid to be made whole it wasn't so huge in absolute terms. But it also goes to show that the insurance industry is willing and capable of ripping you off for just a few grand.

Indy - Guy
Indy - Guy UltimaDork
10/30/24 3:05 p.m.

In reply to DrBoost :

What an absolute cluster berkeley.  I'm glad you stuck to your guns and finally got paid in the end.

 

(side note: Holy berkeley ! $54,000 for fencing !)

maschinenbau
maschinenbau GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
10/30/24 5:02 p.m.

Man what the berk. Please name and shame the company once your check clears. 

DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/30/24 5:03 p.m.
TRoglodyte said:

Did you "bundle and save"?  

Haha. No.

DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/30/24 5:08 p.m.
Indy - Guy said:

In reply to DrBoost :

(side note: Holy berkeley ! $54,000 for fencing !)

Yeah, I was surprised too!  But 600' of this equals $54K I guess.  

 

Those dang fence pieces are what chopped up my plumbing and water softener. Then also are part of what messed up our Florida room. A picket (this is just PVC, not wood) went through our metal back door!  I wish I had a camera when that stuff was flying around at 140 mph.

Indy - Guy
Indy - Guy UltimaDork
10/30/24 10:23 p.m.

In reply to DrBoost :

Wow.  That looks awful.  Curious, with it causing that much damage, are you / the insurance company putting up the same stuff again, or going a different route this time.

Opti
Opti UltraDork
10/31/24 7:54 a.m.

I had two claims on 2 different house 1 year apart, 2 different insurance companies.

2nd one took 3 weeks from start to having all repairs done and paid.

1st one took about a year to get approval, for a considerably smaller amount than it actually should have been, and I had to do a ton of work myself to not have to come out of pocket too much. The Claim started at 900 dollars and finished at 32K, and I'm still about 10K out of pocket and getting close to being done. The process had stalled, even after getting a public adjuster involved and it wasn't until the insurance representative probably violated the state laws while being recorded, and when that got bought up, they got real helpful real quick.

My neighbor's roof was tarped for 2 years, at first they told him no damage (not no coverage) even though you could be stand on his roof and reach into the attic and pull out insulation, they declined the public adjusters quote, then they just stopped responding to him. He finally got a new roof put on about a month ago.

The lesson I learned was the insurance company you choose is incredibly important.

DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/31/24 8:36 a.m.
Indy - Guy said:

In reply to DrBoost :

Wow.  That looks awful.  Curious, with it causing that much damage, are you / the insurance company putting up the same stuff again, or going a different route this time.

My wife and I went back and forth on this. We have grown to like the privacy aspect, but we didn't want this happening again. Had the insurance company paid promptly and the full amount, we probably would have gone with chain link. Chain link is more expensive.
In the end I discovered that the contractor that did our fence, and pretty much every PVC fence in the county did crap work. The posts were not always set in concrete (though none of ours pulled out, so it wasn't really an issue for us) and there are brackets and screws that go inside of the posts, that tie the top rails together, and prevent the post from flexing side-to-side, allowing the pickets to go into orbit. I decided to stick with PVC for two reasons:
1 - I can salvage a decent amount of what's there to make the budget work

2 - I am doing it correctly

Now some would say that if I can salvage some of the panels to make it work, then what I call the underpayment by the insurance company is enough. Here's where I disagree. I pay insurance premiums to return my house to the state it was in before. My fence was in perfect shape. No broken or bent pieces. That's not exactly the case now. I'm doing the work for free. In fact, I'm going to probably pay for some labor to help, and will have $500 in equipment rentals that all go against that low payment. So no, I don't consider me having to salvage panels and work for free part of what I'm paying insurance for.

DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/31/24 8:40 a.m.

In reply to Opti :

That lesson is the biggest. Our real estate agent gave us this insurance company's number. We were driving down I-75 working on closing the deal on the house we were selling, and getting ready to close on our new house. We didn't take the time to do research. Shame on us. We have learned that valuable lesson too.

Talking about your neighbor and the insurance company saying there was no damage. That's what they tried to pull on us. In the mediation hearing they said there was no damage. I asked where the water damage came from. Our home inspection (less than 1 year before the storm) showed no water damage and a roof that was in good shape, but was 16 years old. 7 months later we put a new roof on. They said the water damage was 'from something else' but no offer of what that something else was. 

Toyman!
Toyman! GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
10/31/24 8:45 a.m.

Glad to hear you are getting some resolution. What a PITA. 

We have had one claim for about $12k for a roof. It was amazingly painless. The adjuster looked at it. We got three estimates. They wrote a check. Done. Total time, less than 3 weeks. I guess I'll stay with who I have. 

 

 

maschinenbau
maschinenbau GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
10/31/24 9:26 a.m.

I'm gonna need yall to say who your companies are otherwise these data points are useless! I'm with State Farm in GA and we had a collapsed sewer line claim last year that was pretty smooth and painless.

DrBoost
DrBoost MegaDork
10/31/24 10:21 a.m.

I don't know if I can publicly say who this provider is, but I'll say we had a MUCH smaller, but not insignificant claim with State Farm years ago. Flooded basement. They we on that like white on rice and were great to work with. In fact, when they found out that we sucked the water out of the basement with a shop vac, then hauled everything out of the basement that we could (with friends helping) they paid us a little over minimum wage times all the man hours we asked for. THEY offered that. 
I would still be with State Farm, but our house down here is older than they will insure.

Toyman!
Toyman! GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
10/31/24 11:14 a.m.

In reply to DrBoost :

We are with State Farm. Last I heard they have pulled out of Florida. They are also pulling back on coastal SC some.

maschinenbau
maschinenbau GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
10/31/24 11:15 a.m.

In reply to DrBoost :

I wouldn't publicly say anything until that check clears! But afterward...please spill :)

CrustyRedXpress
CrustyRedXpress GRM+ Memberand Dork
11/1/24 12:04 p.m.

Glad things are finally working out. 

I'm in the process of filing a claim in the same county for my roof and fully expect it to be a long and drawn out process. 

Florida has massive issues with insurance, as well as climate change. 

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