Brush Fire Damage and Wild Fire Damage

It’s that time of year again throughout Florida. It’s dry. It’s hot. There are wildfires and brush fires. Some are contained, while others spread and get out of control.

A lot of people don’t think about these in the context of insurance claims, but for one group of Floridians, those brush fires spread to an overflow parking area near a southwest Florida airport, damaging and destroying over 3500 cars! https://weather.com/news/news/2020-04-04-florida-brush-fire-destroys-cars-at-airport

We don’t typically handle auto insurance claims (with the exception of very specific instances), and this is hardly the typical damage, however, homes are at risk from these types of fires.

As we saw last year in California, there’s a relatively high risk that these types of fires spread to inhabited areas and cause significant fire damage to homes.

An even higher risk is the risk of smoke and soot damage. Even if your home is not directly affected by the heat or flames, smoke and soot are significant problems. Both types of damage can require testing by an environmentalist or hygenist and a prepared plan of restoration because of the carcinogens contained in both smoke and soot. These particles can also attach to the electronic components of your appliances and other devices causing damage you might not even be aware of.

If your home in the Treasure Coast area, in Fort Pierce, Port St Lucie, Vero Beach or other surrounding areas has had a wild fire in the area, call VIP Adjusting for a free consultation with one of our public adjusters today.

You might also be interested in:

Business Interruption if your business is damaged by fire or forced to shut down by the government

More information on fire damage and smoke damage claims

Civil Authority Closures to Businesses

Civil Authority

We’ve found ourselves in strange and uncertain times. A pandemic has spread across the world and is starting to affect everyone’s daily lives. What does that mean for your business?

Although it’s an odd time to think about it, you may have insurance coverage if your business is required to be closed under a provision in your commercial insurance policy titled “Civil Authority.”

Commercial insurance policies vary widely, and there’s likely to be a lot of fighting over these provisions, so it’s best to check the language of your insurance policy and the policies declarations before moving forward, but the most common policy language requires that there be “direct physical loss” or damage to a nearby property.

This type of coverage usually comes into play when a fire or collapse result in the police or fire department shutting down a street, but the spread of a novel virus between people to the air and surfaces in the area may well be covered under this scenario.

Scientists will have to weigh in and there is certain to be a lot of fighting in court on these issues among the lawyers, but there will be no shortage of orders from federal, state, and local governments.

As we’ve evaluated some of the orders from various state and local government entities, the language in those orders is looking favorable to recovering these types of damages from the insurance companies, and the companies are also being pressured by the government to pay some of these losses.

It has even been suggested at the federal level that these claims should be paid, and will be reimbursed by a subsequent stimulus bills, essentially making the insurers a third party administrator for the government to pay these losses.

In any event, if you’ve found yourself in this situation, have a public adjuster like VIP Adjusting review your policy to discuss whether or not you may have a viable claim. Call us or contact us for a free insurance policy review today.

You may also be interested in:

Business Interruption Claims;

the more common type of disaster claims in Florida, hurricane and windstorm damage

Additional Living Expenses (in the midst of a natural disaster)

Additional Living Expenses, sometimes referred to “ALE,” “Loss of Use.,” or Coverage D is a coverage under most homeowners insurance policies that affords compensation in the event of a loss when an insured location, or a part of that location, is not fit to live in or use for its intended purpose.

It can cover a number of things, but is generally an intuitive coverage that operates on the common insurance principle of making an insured “whole.” That means you should be put back in the same, or as similar as possible of a position as you were in before the loss occurred.

With regard to living expenses, incurred costs (yes, you typically MUST spend this figure up front and be reimbursed afterwards) necessary to maintain your normal standard of living is paid, up to the policy limits.

What does this mean in general? If a part of your house is not functioning, say, your kitchen plumbing, and you typically cook your meals at home, you would be reimbursed for meals eaten at restaurants (excluding alcohol, which makes sense, and often excluding tip, which makes less sense) for the shortest possible time to get the kitchen functioning again. Sometimes, this amount may be more accurately calculated as the difference between your average grocery bill and the amount you spent at a restaurant.

If all of your house is not habitable, because there’s no power, it’s not secure after a theft, you have health concerns related to moisture, it’s unsafe after a fire, etc., there are significantly more things that are covered. A short term rental or hotel stay may be in the cards. Or maybe longer. If you have pets, you may be entitled to a more expensive rental that will accommodate those pets, or boarding costs. If you can stay with a relative and you are paying rent or bills, you are entitled to that reimbursement IF you are actually paying it (Please do not write a check that no one ever intends to cash. That is fraud.) If you have to travel additional miles to work or other places you regularly commute, you are entitled to fuel or mileage. There’s more, but these are the most common.

So what about in the aftermath of a hurricane or other disaster causing widespread damage? How do you deal with a dwindling supply of rental properties or hotel rooms?

This was a large problem in the aftermath of hurricane Michael. One of the easiest ways around the problem, if you can be accommodated by it, is to obtain a trailer or camper.

With limited supply of available rentals or hotels, and a skyrocketing price that quickly eats up your policy limit, a trailer or camper can be brought in from anywhere and be had at a semi-reasonable price.

BUT…

You aren’t supposed to be able to BUY a trailer or camper. Why not? “My neighbor got one,” someone might say. Your insurance is supposed to make you whole, not better. You’re supposed to be put back in the same position as you were before, and not a better one.

If you didn’t have a trailer or camper before, and you buy one, you’re in a better position.

HOWEVER…

If you’re hemorrhaging money on a rental or hotel and you’re definitely going to exceed your coverage, you may be mitigating your damages by buying a trailer or camper. You might be “better” but you’re fulfilling a policy duty to prevent damages and saving your insurance company money at the same time.

This type of purchase can be approved, but a cost benefit analysis would need to be done and presented to the insurance company for approval first.

If you’ve found yourself with damage in your home that makes it unlivable, or where the home is uninhabitable during the repairs of damage, contact VIP Adjusting to discuss your options to maximize recovery for your claim.

You might also be interested in:

Learning more about Additional Living Expenses and Loss of Use Claims; or

More information about Hurricane Claims

Persistence Pays

It’s been a while since we updated the blog, and we’re trying to get back into the habit. I wanted to touch on a topic I try to provide to all of our clients.

The old adage goes “Good things come to those who wait.” But, with what we do, it’s more than waiting. You have to persist.

Insurance companies are at an inherent advantage from the minute an insured has to report a claim. The insurance industry has drafted the insurance contracts, and gradually changed the forms over time to be more favorable to its profits. They’ve lobbied to try to get the law on their side. They’ve appealed to try to create case law in their favor. And that’s all before the claim happens.

On top of all that, your first thought isn’t “the process.” It’s stopping the problem. Calling a plumber. Calling an electrician. Calling a roofer. Whatever type of claim you have to make, you have to make sure that it’s not still happening.

You have to protect the property. Fans. Dry the property out. Clean up water. Move debris. Make sure the property is safe to be in. Can you stay there overnight? Medium term? Is it a health risk? Did you save the failed part or component to show your insurance company? No? You weren’t thinking about it at the time? We don’t blame you. All these things are happening simultaneously in a big jumbled mess.

There’s a lot going on, and you have to deal with all of it before you even start thinking about getting that first dollar of reimbursement.

You’re at a disadvantage because you had more than one thing to think about and the insurance company knows it.

Once the dust settles (both literally and figuratively) and the insurance process begins to wear on, you have to start to balance things. You need to make those temporary repairs to protect the property, but you have to hold off on the permanent repairs because the insurance company needs to see them. Then they need to see them again. And maybe again. Or an engineer.

Each time the insurance company does something, a new timeframe kicks in.

There’s no set timeline for how long a claim can take.

Fla. Stat. 627.70131 says an initial coverage decision and undisputed payment should be made within 90 days. Some companies wait until day 89. Some are faster. While others go over the deadline and send you a vague letter that says they’re still investigating.

After that, everything generally moves in 30 day increments. 30 days to review an estimate and respond with a POL is a set timeframe, although they can take longer if they send that vague letter again.

Most other things move in 30 day increments just as a rule of thumb. Setting up an inspection should happen within 30 days. A report following an inspection should be finished within 30 days. The desk adjuster should review and respond within 30 days. Sometimes it requires management approval.

With all these moving parts, delays can compound and it can be 6 months or a year post-claim before you know it. All the while you’re living with damage and your home ripped apart, or worse yet, unlivable.

This can create the ultimate advantage for your insurance company. Desperation.

If you can’t take it anymore, you might be tempted to slap together whatever duct tape and band-aid repair you can just to be done with it. If you do that, you might compromise your claim. If you get desperate, please, call us before you do anything.

If the insurance company employs this strategy on your claim, the best outcomes are the ones that stick it out until there’s an agreement. It’s hard to fathom up-front, but this should be something that you’ve prepared for early on in your claim.

If you aren’t immediately prepared to wait as long as it might take, you have to have a short term, intermediate term, and a long term plan in place to make sure you’re fairly paid.

In the short term, you should plan to make repairs to protect the property and prevent further damage, and if your home is unlivable, you should have arrangements for temporary housing.

If your claim takes 6 months or more, you should have an intermediate plan that includes more temporary repairs if your insurance company hasn’t paid you. This can be anywhere from making your home livable, like making sure there’s running water and functioning sanitary/waste, to making sure electrical is working safe. If you can get back in your home, even if there are missing walls, carpets, floors, etc, it will impact your bottom line when the time comes to settle.

If your claim is denied or you have to file a lawsuit, you might need to be ready for the long haul. There’s no telling how long it can take at that point, but again, persistence pays. You either have to be mentally prepared to live long term with the intermediate plan, or if your home is still unlivable, a plan in place for long term housing (with your policy’s limits probably coming into play, creating additional leverage for the insurance company).

In the alternative, if you haven’t been paid enough, you might need to consider funding permanent repairs out of pocket, or through alternative financing if you truly can’t take it. This can create new sets of issues, as well, since it can cap your insurance recovery at the amount you paid (if you’ve truly done ALL the repairs), and can allow the insurance company to shift its defense to claim that you’ve “improved” the property. Your insurance is meant to restore you to pre-loss conditions, which includes replacing things with “like kind and quality.” The overwhelming majority of our clients only want that type of restoration, but many times, if you replace a 20 year old middle grade cabinet with a new middle grade cabinet, the more modern design makes it look newer, which gives the insurance company this argument. This type of decision is entirely up to the homeowner, but those types of impacts are what need to be considered to make an informed decision.

There are a lot of different routes an insurance claim can take, and they all reach an eventual conclusion, but those willing to jump through the hoops are the ones that usually end up in the best position when it comes time to repair.

We cannot stress enough that the worst claim outcomes are the ones where someone gets so frustrated with the process that they decide, instead of calling us to discuss, they’re going to just get a family friend or day laborer in to slap together some repair, and at that point, they may have already shot themselves in the foot.

If you find yourself in this position, please call or email our office to discuss your options moving forward.

You might also be interested in:

Why you should hire a public adjuster; or

Persistence is necessary in dealing with your mortgage company once you have your claim check

Propaganda

It’s no mystery…

Big businesses lobby in this country, and the insurance industry is one of the biggest. Insurance companies routinely spend more than $130 million annually to lobby, and more than $70 million annually in campaign contributions to influence politics, politicians, and legislation in their favor, and that’s just what we know about.

Before you ever make a claim, the deck is being stacked against you and it’s been stacked against you, for years.

As part of that strategy, insurance companies also rely on news articles and favorable reporting on issues that are often misrepresented to the public.

Let’s look at an example in the Miami Herald, before hurricane Irma.

South Florida’s leaky pipe problem poses risk to homeowners insurance

A brief introduction referencing the decade without a hurricane, followed by the presentation of a new boogey man. LEAKY PIPES! YOUR PREMIUMS ARE GOING TO SKYROCKET! CONTRACTORS ARE CHARGING TOO MUCH!

Don’t get me wrong, YOU should always remain in charge of your claim, and the contractor issue does need to be dealt with, BUT the main point of this article is that as homes age (or construction booms for new homes results in subpar workmanship), there are a LOT of pipes leaking.

Prior to Irma, plumbing claims were easily more than 50% of claims.

This is a job for underwriting though. If this were actually the problem, a better investment in underwriting and actuaries would solve this problem. But instead, for years, insurance companies in Florida have been fighting plumbing claims head on attempting to continually increase record profits. In addition to that, behind the scenes, they’ve been slipping in policy changes that work against you, before you even have a claim.

Plumbing leaks completely excluded from coverage? We’ve seen it.

$10,000 cap on plumbing claims? We’ve seen it.

$3,000 cap on emergency repairs to protect the property? We’ve seen it.

Complete exclusion on emergency repairs? We’ve seen that too.

The kicker is that these policies are often being sold with a negligible premium discount. For example, on one of our own homes, we got a quote from an insurance agent for a policy that completely excluded plumbing claims, and it only resulted in a $40 premium discount FOR THE YEAR! That’s a difference of $3.33 a month, for the most common type of insurance claim.

If plumbing problems were truly that much of a burden, would the premium difference really be $3.33 a month?

I don’t think so. That smells of a trick to trap the people just looking for insurance at the lowest price.

The lesson here?

Stay vigilant, educate yourself, and seek representation.

To help with that education, we’re working on compiling a bunch of information, both to let you know about our services, and to give you insight into what you’re up against. Feel free to check out our pages on:

What to expect if your home has suffered a break in; or

What to expect if your home has been flooded

Competition

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far. The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time. Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die. But when a business ceases to be creative, when it believes it has reached perfection and needs to do nothing but produce-no improvement, no development-it is done.

~Henry Ford

We wanted to draft a blog post relating to competition. We believe that in business, healthy competition is the American way. Many captains of industry have come and gone, but the businesses and individuals with staying power are those at the forefront of innovation and those who are willing to adapt.

Sure, an idea can become stale and you can lose it all, but as long as you continue to strive for greatness, you can build it all again. Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple and bought it back on the verge of bankruptcy before transforming it into a world leader. Warren Buffet has given away nearly all of his fortune time and again and continues to perpetually be one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet.

Why are we talking about this? This is a blog about insurance and insurance claims.

We’re drafting this blog post after receiving a call from a competitor that he was upset that we started this business and wants us to shut it down because he believes he’s entitled to a certain territory.

We started VIP Adjusting for two reasons. 1) after family members relocated to the Treasure Coast, we had an opportunity to work together and combine our talents and experiences, and 2) because we believed the the public adjusting industry had suffered a noticeable dip in quality of service since 2013 and wanted to provide a better service.

To elaborate on that second point, around 2013 a few important developments happened, where insurance companies were attempting to pass legislation where public adjusters couldn’t represent certain claims and many insurance companies did away with appraisal as a remedy to disputed claims, attorneys became kings of the industry. But public adjusters still had the marketing advantage.

What ensued was a deterioration in the work product of many adjusters where they realized that the claim might end up in the hands of an attorney anyway, so why not put in the least effort possible. In the last 5 years, adjusters on the whole have become less informed and put in less work than before. Adjusters became glorified “runners” for attorneys. Some adjusters don’t even estimate claims.

With a return of appraisal in many policies, (and with the relocation of family) we started VIP Adjusting with the intent that we would give every claim 100%. We would leave it all on the field. If a claim that we handles ends up in the hands of an attorney or in litigation, it’s not because of slack from us.

We want to give every claim the best chance to resolve in the first 90 days after it’s reported. If there’s a dispute, we’re willing to go back through our documentation and estimates to have an intelligent and open minded discussion about what can be done to resolve the claim fairly.

That’s the service we provide, and that’s the representation we have earned and will continue to keep.

We’re going to keep working to provide provide the best service we can provide, and if for some reason we do something wrong or make a mistake, we want to hear about it so we can try to make it right, or so we can learn from our mistakes so we can do better the next time.

Nothing is going to stop us from working our hardest for our clients.

You might also be interested in:

Learning about the games property insurance companies play

Or some more about games insurance companies play

You want to get paid but don't want to file a lawsuit, no matter what

We often have new clients that come to us, and when we walk them through the insurance claims process they will tell us up front "we want to be paid what we're owed, but under no circumstances do we want to file a lawsuit."

"Lawsuit" and "Litigation" have become bad words to some people, and they have a pre-conceived notion that it's going to become some complicated, life consuming, and expensive process that they can't (or don't want to) handle. We're going to let you in on a little secret. It's not. Here's why:

We don't want any of our claims to go to court. We put in as much effort as possible to work with your insurance company to resolve your claim in a fair and efficient manner. BUT, we don't write the check for the insurance company, and sometimes the insurance company will issue a wrongful denial of your claim, or refuse to accept that your loss might be worth more than they evaluated it for.

If your public adjuster has done everything possible for you, you should have done almost everything you need to do by the time your claim is denied or underpaid.

That means, if your claim requires legal intervention, your participation would likely be limited to 1) an additional inspection or two, 2) answering some written questions and maybe searching for some extra documents and 3) attending a deposition where an attorney will simply ask you to walk them through your claim. That's it. The rest is in your attorney's hands.

Insurance litigation, these days, is a relatively natural extension of the claims process. Especially in Florida.

Many times, insurance companies will force litigation, even though it costs them more money (they will have to pay their own attorney, and likely pay for your attorney as well), just as an additional hurdle to see if you will jump through it.

In today's insurance market, the ones who are paid fairly are the ones who are willing to withstand the psychological games the insurance companies play. Even if that's not your forte, we'll help. You paid your premium. You should get paid fairly for your claim. 

If your insurance company has put you in a tough spot, contact us or call today for a free claim review.

You may also be interested in:

Persistence pays when you’re making an insurance claim

Learn more about our background and how we’ll set you up for success if you need to sue.

Why you should hire a public adjuster

We've been meaning to start our blog for some time, sharing our thoughts on a variety of topics and some of our experiences, but got a little distracted after hurricane Irma.

It's probably cliche, but it's necessary. We want to tackle the question: Why should you hire a public adjuster?

This isn't an all inclusive answer. More of a general overview.

As we mentioned in Our Mission, insurance started as coalitions of neighbors who pooled their money for that inevitable time when a whole neighborhood would catch fire (because apparently everything was on fire constantly in the 1700s) but , like everything else has become a behemoth for-profit industry that has (largely) become another way for investors to make money.

In order to sustain that business model, insurance companies have relied on consultants to provide business strategies with regard to claims that are similar to the underwriting process. Claims handling is mostly done large scale, as opposed to on a case by case basis, and as I tell the majority of my clients, involves a psychological component designed to wear a homeowner down so they'll either drop their claim entirely (seriously, there's a major Florida insurer that if you call to check the status of your claim, you will be put on hold and forced to listen to a recorded message that repeatedly talks about going to their website where you'll find a form  that you can complete to withdraw your claim), or just mentally break you over time so you're willing to accept less money. 

If you'd like a good analogy to think about what insurance has become, you can compare the classic sport of basketball, that is subject to a very specific set of rules and guidelines, to the carnival game that purports to be basketball. Sure, insurance is not a game of luck or skill, but if one person is operating under the traditional set of rules, and suddenly find themselves holding an overinflated basketball that has a different weight and diameter, and the rim is 6 inches higher and bent into an oval, then the deck is stacked against you (and if you do win, the prize was made with inferior materials in China for $.05, but we digress). Your shooting percentage from a certain distance may have just dropped from 75% to 10%. And that IS the point. To the insurance company, insurance is a long game of odds with many different variables that are almost exclusively in their control.

This applies more especially in Florida, where not only do we have to compete with standard insurance hazards, as well as increased risk due to shoddy construction, and the risk of being one of many in a high volume claim situation like a hurricane.

Florida's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA), which is the research arm of the state legislature, completed a study of  homeowners making claims with and without a public adjuster following the 2004, 2005 hurricane seasons, which saw significant activity. 

The results of that study found that homeowners making a claim with the assistance of a public adjuster recovered an average of 747% more than homeowners pursuing their claim alone.

Now, that number can be a little bit misleading in a number of ways. First, people love just harping on the number itself, with no context. 747% is not a guarantee that you will get that much more on your claim. Further, claims at or around the deductible can skew the figure. The actual figures from the study are that the average claim of a homeowner alone received $2,029, and the average claim with a public adjuster received $17,187.

The point of the study isn't so much the number itself, but the fact that homeowners that choose to retain a public adjuster received significantly more for their claim, more than justifying the fees a public adjuster would charge.

If you have suffered damage to your home or business and want to discuss your situation, contact us through our web form, or give us a call at 772-600-4663, today.

You might also be interested in:

Our most frequently asked questions

What to expect if your insurance company won’t play ball (a lawsuit)