Horrible insurance kerfuffle gone good(blog.plover.com)
blog.plover.com
Horrible insurance kerfuffle gone good
https://blog.plover.com/brain/insurance.html
26 comments
A former boss had a beach house in Galveston that was destroyed by a tornado/strong wind during a hurricane. Insurance claimed that the house was destroyed by tidal surge and did not want to pay. By sheer chance, a weatherman from a Houston tv station was doing coverage live from the field and did a segment in my boss’s front yard, clearly noting on-air that the house was destroyed by a tornado. More coincidental, my boss was watching the channel at that time. Once the insurance argument came up, he requested a copy of the footage from the tv station and sent it to the insurance company. The insurance company cut a check, no questions asked.
I think my insurance company is pretty lenient but my agent is a jerk.
I had a time when I was late making a payment and she was pretty abusive about it even though I was offering to pay right away.
I've talked to many people in business who were frustrated about a payment being past due but until then everyone I met was 100% cool after I told them it was a mistake and payment in full was immediately forthcoming.
I've been thinking about changing my insurance but there are numerous features about my house that make it hard to insure, such as the fact that it doesn't have central heat. (I've got the same propane heater you see in many anime and also two wood stoves though.) It is coming up in February and maybe this year I will look for a new agent.
I had a time when I was late making a payment and she was pretty abusive about it even though I was offering to pay right away.
I've talked to many people in business who were frustrated about a payment being past due but until then everyone I met was 100% cool after I told them it was a mistake and payment in full was immediately forthcoming.
I've been thinking about changing my insurance but there are numerous features about my house that make it hard to insure, such as the fact that it doesn't have central heat. (I've got the same propane heater you see in many anime and also two wood stoves though.) It is coming up in February and maybe this year I will look for a new agent.
I have a similar sounding house. I use Amica for my insurance. They are super easy to work with and send you a dividend check back every year as a "thanks for being a customer" benefit.
Amica is the best!
Get Farmers if you can. I live near a wildfire impacted area and nobody with State Farm got what they should have (if anything at all) unless they sued for it. Everyone with Farmers got what they should have, and in a timely manner.
Why did you keep interacting with Brenda? It takes like 2 seconds to call up an insurance company and have them write you up a policy. If you have a mortgage, many insurers will take contact info for someone at the mortgage company to negotiate the change in policy.
When I first got my own car insurance I went with the agent who had previously been handling insurance when my car was on my parents' plan. It was through a State Farm Bureau, and the agent kept trying to push me to buy coverage for things that didn't apply to me. He told me I would get better terms by having my parents' history grandfathered into my account. So I held that insurance for a few years until I got married and moved in with my wife. I added my car under her insurance, which represented a savings mostly for having both on the same account. Notified my agent, who told me I would receive a refund for the remainder of my term (annual term, would expire 3 months after I cancelled, so this was maybe several hundred dollars.
I start getting renewal notices saying I would lose coverage, and every time I received one I would call the office and the assistant would offer to stop the message, since my account was closed. Then I would receive a voicemail that "why don't you tell me about your situation, maybe I can get you a better rate." Told this to the assistant the next time, and she would again promise to get it cancelled. After several months I just gave up because my account was cancelled. But I would still receive a mailer from the lobbying arm of the Farm Bureau, and warnings that, without paying the annual Farm Bureau membership I could not receive insurance coverage. So I started calling the office again, same runaround.
I got fed up enough that I finally emailed the Farm Bureau complaint department, detailing the mail I continued to receive that all vaguely suggested I was delinquent on insurance. The next day I got a worried voicemail from the agent, offering to immediately cancel my account, and he could do it retroactive to the date I originally gave him. Based on the communication I got from the organization it must have gone straight to his supervisor, who have him an earful. I hadn't even mentioned the rebate I was supposed to receive.
A week later I received the refund in the mail, and I have been pleasantly free from the Farm Bureau's bills and propaganda ever since.
I start getting renewal notices saying I would lose coverage, and every time I received one I would call the office and the assistant would offer to stop the message, since my account was closed. Then I would receive a voicemail that "why don't you tell me about your situation, maybe I can get you a better rate." Told this to the assistant the next time, and she would again promise to get it cancelled. After several months I just gave up because my account was cancelled. But I would still receive a mailer from the lobbying arm of the Farm Bureau, and warnings that, without paying the annual Farm Bureau membership I could not receive insurance coverage. So I started calling the office again, same runaround.
I got fed up enough that I finally emailed the Farm Bureau complaint department, detailing the mail I continued to receive that all vaguely suggested I was delinquent on insurance. The next day I got a worried voicemail from the agent, offering to immediately cancel my account, and he could do it retroactive to the date I originally gave him. Based on the communication I got from the organization it must have gone straight to his supervisor, who have him an earful. I hadn't even mentioned the rebate I was supposed to receive.
A week later I received the refund in the mail, and I have been pleasantly free from the Farm Bureau's bills and propaganda ever since.
I live in Florida. Recently a major insurance company, Gulfstream Property and Casualty Insurance Co., has gone insolvent and liquidated. I'm pretty sure the reason is all the free roof replacements that they were handing out to people with hail or wind damage. One neighbor gets their roof replaced, tells another neighbor how to play the system, roofers get paid big by claiming the roofs are worse off than they are, getting full replacements for minor problems. Next thing you know, insurance companies are pulling out of Florida. People with rooves over 15 years old (even if they're rated for 30 year) have next to no options, and the one or two they have are now 50% more expensive. I got nailed by that. No free roof for me, and now I have to pay more. Great system.
Check out Kin Insurance. They rate by roof age. Insurance tech startup out of Chicago.
I know this is an awful RL story, but I love the Kafkaesque tone of his writing.
Wow they were very patient, hope they get second opinions earlier next time like ultimately solved it. Same with health, don’t blindly trust the first doctor for anything significant if it doesn’t seem right. Don’t shop for the opinion one wants but get a second one.
>Brenda presented me with one option: Company S. I said I was surprised at how high Company S's premium was. Brenda told me that Company S had by far the lowest premium. I asked if she had called the company that provided the insurance for my previous house.
>The new guy was able to arrange new coverage for me with an insurance premium 15% lower than the one Brenda had gotten me.
>Brenda had arranged too much insurance for me; I was paying to have the Company S agree to spend up to $X to rebuild my house, but rebuilding the house couldn't possibly cost more than $⅔X.
I honestly don't understand the approach of blindly trusting someone with a clear incentive to extract the maximum amount of cash from you, and then be surprised that they did what they were incentivized to do. Also, the general rule of thumb is that middlemen tend to increase prices and reduce efficiency, so unless there's a legal requirement to conduct business through them (e.g. car dealerships), it's always better to go directly to the vendor.
There's also a particular type of middlemen with asymmetric incentives (i.e. rewarded if the deal goes though, but not penalized if it fails). This setup usually attracts the most lazy and useless kind of people that would just sit on their ass, reassuring you that everything is great, and would then act surprised and shrug once it all goes to hell. Because, well, they still get their commission from the other contracts that panned out (with no help from them).
I don't know if it's specific to Canada, but when I needed to get house insurance, I just went directly to several insurance companies, answered the questionnaires and got estimates. I then got an appointment with the one I chose and was able to get a very itemized quote (fire/theft/flood/etc) and even tweak it (e.g. lower the rate by raising deductibles). No sit-on-their-ass middleman would do this for me.
Also, on a side note, when you are buying a house, you usually start with a conditional offer that gives you about a week to do a house inspection and secure a mortgage, before committing to the purchase. Doing a thorough house inspection at that point would cost you about $500 and would find all the issues that bothered the insurance company BEFORE you make the final decision whether you want that house for that price.
>The new guy was able to arrange new coverage for me with an insurance premium 15% lower than the one Brenda had gotten me.
>Brenda had arranged too much insurance for me; I was paying to have the Company S agree to spend up to $X to rebuild my house, but rebuilding the house couldn't possibly cost more than $⅔X.
I honestly don't understand the approach of blindly trusting someone with a clear incentive to extract the maximum amount of cash from you, and then be surprised that they did what they were incentivized to do. Also, the general rule of thumb is that middlemen tend to increase prices and reduce efficiency, so unless there's a legal requirement to conduct business through them (e.g. car dealerships), it's always better to go directly to the vendor.
There's also a particular type of middlemen with asymmetric incentives (i.e. rewarded if the deal goes though, but not penalized if it fails). This setup usually attracts the most lazy and useless kind of people that would just sit on their ass, reassuring you that everything is great, and would then act surprised and shrug once it all goes to hell. Because, well, they still get their commission from the other contracts that panned out (with no help from them).
I don't know if it's specific to Canada, but when I needed to get house insurance, I just went directly to several insurance companies, answered the questionnaires and got estimates. I then got an appointment with the one I chose and was able to get a very itemized quote (fire/theft/flood/etc) and even tweak it (e.g. lower the rate by raising deductibles). No sit-on-their-ass middleman would do this for me.
Also, on a side note, when you are buying a house, you usually start with a conditional offer that gives you about a week to do a house inspection and secure a mortgage, before committing to the purchase. Doing a thorough house inspection at that point would cost you about $500 and would find all the issues that bothered the insurance company BEFORE you make the final decision whether you want that house for that price.
> general rule of thumb is that middlemen tend to increase prices and reduce efficiency, so unless there's a legal requirement to conduct business through them (e.g. car dealerships), it's always better to go directly to the vendor.
With “market search” middlemen, the reason people who are aware that middlemen add cost go with them anyway is the perception (which can be more or less accurate in different markets) that while there is an added cost compared to the best direct deal with the best vendor, it is worthwhile because there is a savings after considering value of time and the likely matrix of direct deals vs time invested in securing them. This may be more justified in the same market than it would be on its own when the item with the middleman is a necessary component of a larger transaction with other moving pieces that require attention, which can increase the opportunity cost of time focussed on that one piece.
With “market search” middlemen, the reason people who are aware that middlemen add cost go with them anyway is the perception (which can be more or less accurate in different markets) that while there is an added cost compared to the best direct deal with the best vendor, it is worthwhile because there is a savings after considering value of time and the likely matrix of direct deals vs time invested in securing them. This may be more justified in the same market than it would be on its own when the item with the middleman is a necessary component of a larger transaction with other moving pieces that require attention, which can increase the opportunity cost of time focussed on that one piece.
Except, they don't guarantee anything legally and hence don't give a flying fuck. They will hook you up with whoever pays the highest commission (or has a direct deal with them) using the least effort on their side, as the OP had just discovered. So all you get is a false sense of security.
The approach in this case was: I was in the middle of buying a house and had a hundred other details to attend to. Investigating Brenda's brokering wasn't in the top fifty.
I knew at the time that I could shop around for insurance once everything else was dealt with, so there was no reason to prioritize getting the best possible deal on the insurance.
And in fact the amount by which I was being overcharged was relatively small.
And in fact the amount by which I was being overcharged was relatively small.
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