“Additional water mitigation exceeding the $3,000 limit would be completed by Citizens managed repair contractors at no cost to the policyholder.”
This is a practical disaster. First, water mitigation contractors are not going to know the minute they hit this $3,000 limit (often these charges are disputed/negotiated between the insurer and the contractor anyway after the fact). Second, how long will it take for Citizens to get their managed repair contractor in after the first contractor leaves? Third, what contractor will want to assist a Citizens policyholder when they know if the costs rightly exceed $3,000, they will be pulled from the job? Finally, what contractor will want to share liability with another water remediator – if the homeowner later alleges faulty dry out and mold issues, who is to blame? What a nightmare.
I’m glad to see Citizens doing something to combat the scam that is AOB and water damage remediation. I hope that lots of other companies do the same. I totally hate to see scam artists blatantly displaying their trade right in front of the world to see.
Organized auto insurance fraud; assignment of benefits; W/C fraud; 3rd party injuries………these things cost the insurance industry and eventually the honest , hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
First step may not be the final solution, but I’m glad they’re doing something.
sorry to tell you but Barry Gilway has repeatedly stated, in the media and in Citizens rate hearings that this change will have ZERO affect on AOB abuse. He has confirmed that this is something that must be addressed legislatively. So the only thing this does is increase litigation costs for Citizens.. rates for policyholders and leaves anyone who doesn’t want to use Citizens bought and paid for restoration people because they recognize the inherent conflict of interest, in the lurch.
so many things are wrong with this. Sadly Citizens policyholders won’t understand the extent of the scam Citizens is pulling until they have a claim – then it will be too late.
We personal suffer from the AOB abuse, we had an event where our water heater broke and flooded our laundry and , kitchen , after closing the water main, we called a plumber and while he arrived we cleaned the water. The plumber came and did his job but in the process started to talk about drying out, that it was critical, knowing him for years we followed his advice ,we called “his” refereed dry out compact and “his” public adjuster. The water dry out compact came few hours later, they told us “don’t worry sign here and your insurance company will pay us”, we did it without reading (what a mistake) , they set 5 fans and one other equipment, drilled holes all over the place (we though they knew what they were doing) . 4 days later they came back and removed their equipment.
The public adjuster filed the claim and the insurance adjuster came a couple of days later. 60 days later we have not been paid, PA did not answer our calls, the PA had submitted an budget for repairs for almost $40,000, , the PA was pressuring us to hire his attorney and saying that can “make” thousands more if we sue but we are not in the “make ” business, we wanted to fix our home , we settled for $12,000 but the PA took 20% of it.
After all of these issues, we started to fix our place, our GC ran some mold test before removing the kitchen cabinets , we found out that the kitchen was not dry out properly as well behind the washer and dryer (walls had insulation), we had mold behind these walls, we had $10k mold cap in my policy and it costed about $14K to do the mold remediation by a true pro. We ended paying out pocket to fix our house. With this mess we called our trusted plumber, complained about the dry out people he reffed to us, he disclosed he got a $1,000 referral kick back from the dry out company. Nice very nice of him.
months later we received a subpoena for a deposition, the water dry out company had an AOB in their contract, billed over $9,000 for their job (we never saw their invoice) if we knew that 1st day with these moneys we could have replace all the walls , so why we needed their services? My insurance had paid them about $1.400, as per the letter we had received months before. But with the AOB, they stand on my shoes, they hired an attorney and sue my insurance company for the balance . On the deposition we learned that their bill was 5 times above market, they billed for going to our house every day to inspect and they did not, they billed for 14 hrs of technician and they verily spent less that 3 hours the 1st day, and 1 hour the last day, they billed for a supervisor , for setting the equipment and removing it, for cleaning the water on the floor but we had done it, for cleaning walls, cleaning the cabinets, and 10 fans vs. 5 fans they had and some other equipment we never saw etc, etc , with our deposition our carrier was able to quickly close the sue and the dry out could not defraud our insurance company.
After this ugly experience we talked with our agent, we learned that AOB is the latest racked in So. Fl thousands of water claims all with AOB and litigation, and the trial attorneys making thousands .
We understand Citizens and we applaud their actions , Our mistake was not calling our insurance company first (it was not Citizens) and let their expert vendors and contractors do their job. (It works same as my auto insurance or heath insurance with a list of approved and reputable service providers )
My advise to all readers, do not allow any one advise you to use a dry out company that is not an approved vendor by you insurance company, call you agent or the insurance company first , let the insurance co do its job, that is what we paid for with our insurance policies , at the end we all benefit because the cost of all AOB ligation is pass into our insurance cost
“Additional water mitigation exceeding the $3,000 limit would be completed by Citizens managed repair contractors at no cost to the policyholder.”
This is a practical disaster. First, water mitigation contractors are not going to know the minute they hit this $3,000 limit (often these charges are disputed/negotiated between the insurer and the contractor anyway after the fact). Second, how long will it take for Citizens to get their managed repair contractor in after the first contractor leaves? Third, what contractor will want to assist a Citizens policyholder when they know if the costs rightly exceed $3,000, they will be pulled from the job? Finally, what contractor will want to share liability with another water remediator – if the homeowner later alleges faulty dry out and mold issues, who is to blame? What a nightmare.
I’m glad to see Citizens doing something to combat the scam that is AOB and water damage remediation. I hope that lots of other companies do the same. I totally hate to see scam artists blatantly displaying their trade right in front of the world to see.
Organized auto insurance fraud; assignment of benefits; W/C fraud; 3rd party injuries………these things cost the insurance industry and eventually the honest , hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
First step may not be the final solution, but I’m glad they’re doing something.
sorry to tell you but Barry Gilway has repeatedly stated, in the media and in Citizens rate hearings that this change will have ZERO affect on AOB abuse. He has confirmed that this is something that must be addressed legislatively. So the only thing this does is increase litigation costs for Citizens.. rates for policyholders and leaves anyone who doesn’t want to use Citizens bought and paid for restoration people because they recognize the inherent conflict of interest, in the lurch.
way to go Citizens.
So are you a PA, trial lawyer, or contractor?
so many things are wrong with this. Sadly Citizens policyholders won’t understand the extent of the scam Citizens is pulling until they have a claim – then it will be too late.
We personal suffer from the AOB abuse, we had an event where our water heater broke and flooded our laundry and , kitchen , after closing the water main, we called a plumber and while he arrived we cleaned the water. The plumber came and did his job but in the process started to talk about drying out, that it was critical, knowing him for years we followed his advice ,we called “his” refereed dry out compact and “his” public adjuster. The water dry out compact came few hours later, they told us “don’t worry sign here and your insurance company will pay us”, we did it without reading (what a mistake) , they set 5 fans and one other equipment, drilled holes all over the place (we though they knew what they were doing) . 4 days later they came back and removed their equipment.
The public adjuster filed the claim and the insurance adjuster came a couple of days later. 60 days later we have not been paid, PA did not answer our calls, the PA had submitted an budget for repairs for almost $40,000, , the PA was pressuring us to hire his attorney and saying that can “make” thousands more if we sue but we are not in the “make ” business, we wanted to fix our home , we settled for $12,000 but the PA took 20% of it.
After all of these issues, we started to fix our place, our GC ran some mold test before removing the kitchen cabinets , we found out that the kitchen was not dry out properly as well behind the washer and dryer (walls had insulation), we had mold behind these walls, we had $10k mold cap in my policy and it costed about $14K to do the mold remediation by a true pro. We ended paying out pocket to fix our house. With this mess we called our trusted plumber, complained about the dry out people he reffed to us, he disclosed he got a $1,000 referral kick back from the dry out company. Nice very nice of him.
months later we received a subpoena for a deposition, the water dry out company had an AOB in their contract, billed over $9,000 for their job (we never saw their invoice) if we knew that 1st day with these moneys we could have replace all the walls , so why we needed their services? My insurance had paid them about $1.400, as per the letter we had received months before. But with the AOB, they stand on my shoes, they hired an attorney and sue my insurance company for the balance . On the deposition we learned that their bill was 5 times above market, they billed for going to our house every day to inspect and they did not, they billed for 14 hrs of technician and they verily spent less that 3 hours the 1st day, and 1 hour the last day, they billed for a supervisor , for setting the equipment and removing it, for cleaning the water on the floor but we had done it, for cleaning walls, cleaning the cabinets, and 10 fans vs. 5 fans they had and some other equipment we never saw etc, etc , with our deposition our carrier was able to quickly close the sue and the dry out could not defraud our insurance company.
After this ugly experience we talked with our agent, we learned that AOB is the latest racked in So. Fl thousands of water claims all with AOB and litigation, and the trial attorneys making thousands .
We understand Citizens and we applaud their actions , Our mistake was not calling our insurance company first (it was not Citizens) and let their expert vendors and contractors do their job. (It works same as my auto insurance or heath insurance with a list of approved and reputable service providers )
My advise to all readers, do not allow any one advise you to use a dry out company that is not an approved vendor by you insurance company, call you agent or the insurance company first , let the insurance co do its job, that is what we paid for with our insurance policies , at the end we all benefit because the cost of all AOB ligation is pass into our insurance cost