This public adjuster reveals the dirty secrets of some homeowners insurance providers who prefer to
Delay, Deny and Defend a claim, rather than pay it. On March 4th, 2018, after a recent wind storm blew through Southern Chester County, PA, shredding shingle roofs, vinyl siding, and aluminum rake board capping, Drew Cope of Cope Construction and Renovation, in Cochranville PA interviewed
Anthony Scheirer of Metro Public Adjusters to try to learn more about the process of filing a claim with your insurance company.
As a company policy, Cope Construction and Renovation believes it is both unwise, and unethical as a conflict of interest for a Contractor to negotiate with an Insurance Company, on behalf of a client. There are lots of teams who will do it. We don't. We'll explain more about this, in this video and the following article.
An insurance policy is a contract. And like any contract, there are included items and excluded items. Is your homeowners policy written on an HO1, or an HO3, or an HO5? It matters because there are different lists of included and excluded perils at each of those levels. Sure, a company save you money if you switch... but are you getting the same coverage? Or did they downgrade you from HO3 coverage, to HO1 coverage. If you are insuring rentals, they may refer the policies as DP1, DP3, and DP5.
Did you know that your Words Matter? Several times, we have experienced a claims agent asking our team a leading question! A leading question is where they include the answer they want to hear, in the question itself. "So you found rot, right?" Had we said yes, Anthony tells us that affirmative answer would have likely caused our client's claim to get denied because "Rot" is not a covered peril. But "Water Damage" was covered by the policy. Our team responded by saying, "No, we found water damage to X, Y, & Z." Had we not had this conversation with Anthony, we might have said the wrong thing. The claim could have been denied... and our client might have gotten mad at us, or tried to sue us. So as a rule, knowing that some claim agents can be manipulative, as a company policy, we do not negotiate with insurance companies on your behalf. We leave that to licensed public adjusters who are trained, and have the errors and omissions insurance coverage for that type of work.
Can you give me an Itemized quote for my insurance company?
As a company policy we don't itemize our quotes. One of the many reasons for this is because unit prices don't reflect the true value we create for those who decide to hire COPE. Our team strives to provide a high quality installation that live up to our
"it's not just done, It's #CopeBUILT" standard using our very experienced and highly skilled in-house craftsmen. We can't provide the same experience bidding on individual blocks of work. Doing so would be compromising our integrity.
McDonald's and Ruth Chris Steakhouse both serve beef, but the prices and the experience are wildly different, and neither one explains to their clients how much they pay for the beef,
dishes, table cloths, chairs, carpeting, the dishwasher, the busboys, the wait
staff and the hostess. Neither do we provide detailed breakdowns. There are lots of McDonald grade "contractors" around... We aren't one of them. A client, Kiersten G. recently
shared her nightmare with us which should serve as a cautionary tale.
We are not Public Adjusters and we are not licensed to negotiate with insurance companies, and our business insurance probably wouldn’t cover us, if we did. If the Insurance Company has questions about the estimate, then they need to take that up with the customer for clarification, and if our customer needs more detail from us, then we can work with them to provide that. We will not be responsible for “saying the wrong thing” and causing a clients claim to be reduced or rejected. Too many adjusters have tried to trap us with a leading question, “you found rot?” to which we always respond, “no, we found water damage.”
If you would like the services of a Public Adjuster, we would be happy to refer you to Anthony Scheirer whose contact information and links are included above. He offers a free consultation and will review your policy for coverage, and possible gaps in coverage, make recommendations, and determine if he feels his services will increase the size of your insurance settlement. He also works with clients BEFORE they have a loss to help them determine if they've purchased a good policy, but he'll need to see the rider in order to do that, and typically most companies won't send you the insurance contract until after you pay for coverage. Its still a good idea to get it double checked. You can always cancel the policy or request changes.
Will you talk to the claims adjuster from my insurance company?
Regretfully, we’re not going to be able to assist you with that… From time to time, we've had a claims adjuster call us, allegedly on behalf of the homeowner. Sometimes they are questioning our prices, or trying to get us change to square foot pricing broken down by tiny little steps, or trying to tell me that I should be able to hire labor at $14 per hour (according to their software) to move furniture around at the start of the job. And then I should send those guys away, and bring in skilled carpenters at a different labor rate to do smart work. And then send them home, and bring the $14 an hour college kids back in for two hours to put things back, and pray they don't break my clients personal belongs and furniture. We're very frank whenever a claim's agent calls.
(1) We are a Home Improvement Contractor… and our agreement is between our company and our clients. Regardless of what insurance does or does not cover, our client is ultimately responsible for paying our invoice.
(2) Unlike their Xactimate software, we don’t quote jobs by the square foot… we quote it by the project, and what it’s going to take our team to complete that work, and those figures and calculations are confidential and proprietary and we don’t give those out.
(3) We are not Public Adjusters and we are not licensed to negotiate with insurance companies, and our business insurance probably wouldn’t cover us, if we did. If the Insurance Company has questions about the estimate, then they need to take that up with the customer for clarification, and if my customer needs more detail from me, then I can work with them to provide that. We will not be responsible for “saying the wrong thing” and causing a clients claim to be reduced or rejected. Too many adjusters have tried to trap us with a leading question, “you found rot?” to which we always respond, “no, we found water damage.” There is a book called “Delay, Deny, Defend” linked above, which may be worth reading.
(4) If our customer requires the services of a Public Adjuster, we would be happy to refer them to Anthony Scheirer 484-788-3190 or
Doreen Sundelin of Metro Public Adjustment, who are licensed public adjusters in the state of PA. They offers a free consultation and will review your policy for coverage, and possible gaps in coverage, make recommendations, and determine if they feels their services will increase the size of your insurance settlement.
And if they are truly aggressive, demanding answers because they want to sit at their cushy claims department cubical, rather than drive out to the client's home to inspect the damage themselves, we may also ask them the following.
5 - what labor rate is your xActimate software say I should be paying my guys?
6 - what kind of labor and skill do you think I could hire and retain at that rate?
7 - have you been up on that roof and figured out what its going to take to do this job safely and properly?
8 - how do you come up with what insurance companies charge me for worker’s comp on roofing?
9 - how did you come up with what insurance companies charge me for general liability on roofing?
In the Judea Christian New Testament, there is passage in the 20th chapter of the book of
Luke, verses 1 to 8, which concludes "
So they answered that they did not know where it came from. And Jesus said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
In Conclusion
We could share with you many more stories where Insurance Claim Agents from various different insurance companies have tried to manipulate our staff into saying the wrong thing, so that the agent could get the claim denied, but I think we've divulged enough to explain our policy, and your options when it comes to dealing with these types of situations.
Here are some blog posts we have written which may assist you as you work through your deliberation process of which contractor to hire to repair the damage to your home.