Posted On: February 25, 2007, 10:14 pm CST

Posted By: temblor

Well, it may be more than just doing business with the wrong insurance co.

the only claim I've ever had involved a fire in my garage from an extension cord.

You would think cut and dried. I even told my public adjuster (my busiest time of year, I did not have time to deal with it (I sell commercial P & C) that much of the stuff in the garage I wasn't going to claim because, let's face it, there was a reason it was in the garage.

I had ~ 30 days of additional living expense while they cleaned up the mess and repainted the interior.

Kemper Insurance (remember the calvary?) could not have been nastier. At one point I was out of pocket over $30,000 and they had not yet paid $.01.

We could have stayed in a nearby Hilton (we have a nice house) but instead went to a modestly priced hotel which had refrigerator and microwave in the room, and negotiated a lower price based on staying 30 days.

Yes, we ate dinner out at restaurants, but most places serve more than we can eat, so we took it back to the room, refrigerated it, and that's what we had the next night.

We had some special paint effects on the interior walls which their adjuster agreed with my adjuster on the cost per sq ft to clean, sand, and repaint.

Their office adjuster rejected the figure without ever seeing their own field adjuster's report.

They took the cord and switch off my table saw, even thought it had nothing to do with the fire. It was a 20 year old saw, I could not get replacements, they would not return them.

They could not have been nastier, more difficult to deal with, and more wrong.

I eventually got everything I was claiming, but at a cost of far more time and effort than was necessary.

Of course, they are used to claimant's trying to screw them. But, being in the business I told them up front I was not trying to do that. I told them, quite clearly, I was only looking to be made whole on the repairs to the house, and replacement of the damaged stuff that I wanted to have replacements of. I even gave them a list of the stuff that was damaged but that I was not claiming, because the sub-woofer was blown and was in the garage waiting for me to dispose of it, the curtains in the which were hideous, I just had never gotten around to taking them down and throwing them away, the amplifier in the garage which no longer worked, it was there waiting my annual trip to recyclying, etc., etc.

It didn't matter how honest I was trying to be, they were going to be nasty and resist.

They did in the end pay the full value of our meals, technically, they were only responsible for the difference between what we paid eating out, and what we would have paid eating at home. And they paid for the hotel room.

Now this was an isolated claim, it wasn't one of 10,000's or 100,000's, and There was no reason at all for Kemper to be such assholes, but, by God, they were, to the end.

Now I know they are used to getting screwed. Fla building code says if your roof is over 25% damaged, you must replace it completely.

I have a client whose neighbor lost a few tiles off his roof. He got up there, removed enough more to be ove 25%, collected enough to replace the entire roof, then put the old tiles back.

20+ years ago my own brother had a metal roof on his house outside Orlando.

They had a bad hailstorm which put some dents in it. He claimed he was going to have to replace the entire thing, they gave him a check for $16,000. That same roof is still there.

So it's a combination of bad insurance cos. and bad insureds, but in a situation like Karina, they should be bending over backwarks to help their own customers.