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Insurance Claims Step by Step Process - Part 8

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

I got some money to my contractor today. We have the siding color picked out which is similar to what we had.  He got the permits pulled for the roof and the siding today.  He is going to start on the property tomorrow, and work on the siding, roofing, wraps, garage door, exterior window painting this week and should have most of it done by the weekend. He is hoping to finish by late Monday or Tuesday at which time he will fax the claims department to tell them that he is done so that they can mail out the remaining “depreciated” amount of what’s owed.

I have to really rush on it since we are trying to close by the end of the month, plus what I’d like to do is just finish it by the weekend and close the property and then wait for the remaining check to come by mail, but what will happen is I’ll get another check which will be made out to the lender, which I’d have to mail in and have endorsed by them, which they probably won’t endorse since I will have closed and paid off their loan, plus their would be a new buyer, so that would complicate things.  Plus the contractors are going to have to sign lien waivers, and even the subcontractors will need to sign lien waivers.  We have to think ahead on properties like this for the closing date.  I will update everyone as the process moves on.  I got my 2nd insurance check in to the lender yesterday by mail and hope to have that endorsed and back anytime.

Sept. 10th

Rather then start a new 9th post on the I’ll just end with this. It’s been probably another 5 weeks after this last post at least. I had to receive up to 5 checks.  2 of the last 3 checks were smaller and I didn’t have the lender named on them, so that made it easier for depositing.  We are getting ready to close on Friday and I got all of the lien waivers from the contractor and I paid them in full.   It took a couple of adjusters, many months, 5 checks, and many many hours, but I finally got all new siding, all new roofing.  I could probably write a short e-book on the entire process, but all I can say is never give up.  Keep on the insurance company until it’s done. Take the time to coordinate everything.

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Insurance Claims Step by Step Process - Part 6

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

It’s been 3 weeks since my last post, and the process had not been going smoothly at all, it was much more work than I planned on.  The insurance company just didn’t want to pay for the siding.  This past 3 weeks has been very long, let me try to explain what has happened.  The last post I wrote I had the check mailed to me right away from the lender, endorsed, and I was able to deposit it, that was one hassle that I got over.  The problem for the last 3 weeks was convincing the insurance company to pay up money for the siding.   Let me walk you through some of this.  The adjuster took a piece of my siding and said he found a match with a local company.  We have been talking back and forth with the contractor the insurance companies claim department, etc and telling them that this local siding company has not enough left to do the entire place and it doesn’t match.  Let me get into why this claim is so unique.  This is a twinhome. The neighbors insurance company instantly was ready to pay for new siding, my company wanted to repair a few pieces.  The problem is that in their mind their was enough to fix some of my cracked pieces, that’s all they were concerned about.  My problem is I said even if it did match, let’s say my pieces get fixed, obviously the neighbor has to choose a color of siding also, their isn’t enough to go around to do both sides. We went back and forth for 3 weeks, and got nowhere. I talk to the claims department by phone a couple of times, his supervisor decided not to pay a couple of weeks ago, I was not happy with him, he could tell.  I talk to my insurance agent of many years, he was coming up with reasons to only pay for the broken pieces.   The contractor had some very serious talks with the claims department and he wasn’t getting anywhere. No matter how many times we told them their just isn’t enough siding in the country they stalled and didn’t seem to care, in their mind they gave us a little money already for everything else.  Here is the part where we started to make progress after 2 1/2 weeks.  We had the contractor get a piece of the siding from the local company , that supposedly had a match.  He then held it up against my current siding and took a photo.  At this point we found it to be pretty obvious that it wasn’t going to be a match based on the photo.  The contractor emailed his invoice and the photos to the claims department at the insurance company to show that it didn’t match and that he needed a check to cover the invoice.   I asked the contractor to email me the photo.  I then emailed the claims department the photo also and said this is not a match and I would like someone to rush out and take a look at this, this is not acceptable , and I wrote some other things in a paragraph to them.   From there, within about 72 hours they were now sending out a second adjuster to come out to the house. Keep in mind it had been about 5 weeks since the last adjuster was out there.  The 2nd adjuster made it out there yesterday, my contractor was out there.   The contractor put the adjuster on the phone and she basically said about 2 sentences, “we won’t find a piece big enough for this, so we’ll just send you a check then, is it the same address.”  I couldn’t believe after like 5-6 weeks that she got it, and no one else did, all because we just showed them a non matching piece, and had a 2nd adjuster.  I had talked to other contractors in the business and basically what they have told me is you have to just keep at it, they won’t want to pay, you just have to be persistant, it takes time.   Looking back, I have agreement to send this check and get started now on the job.  It took about 6 weeks at a minimum, had we not been persistent, it could have taken 3-4 months.  Think about it, how quickly would an insurance company want to hand over money, they are going to make it challenging.   Keep persistent, hire a contractor that knows what they are doing, and just keep on it every day.

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