I don't want to sound morbid, but just imagine something with me here,
imagine that you've been in a terrible accident, you've got broken bones, internal damages,
you're in bad shape. They rush you to the hospital, but they take you to a hospital that is legally
financially responsible for your care and your recovery, and the hospital assigns a doctor to
come visit you in the emergency room and make a diagnosis about what kind of operations and
procedures you're going to need so that you can get back to 100 percent. That sounds crazy, right?
But effectively that's exactly what's happening when you call your insurance company and your
insurance company sends out an adjuster to scope the loss of damages that you have on your property
after some sort of catastrophic event, and then the adjuster is the one who has to assess
a value of those damages so that you then have enough money to get the repairs done.
Hi everybody, I'm Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing and welcome to today's walk in the park
video where we take just a few minutes to answer your questions about roof repairs, roof
replacements, and the insurance claim process. Today we're going to tackle the big tough hairy question:
is your insurance company lying to you? So, I know that was really kind of a crazy analogy, but it
really kind of holds true to what happens in the insurance industry when you have a catastrophic
claim you've got property insurance for your home and you call in a claim and the insurance company
who is legally financially responsible to pay for the repair of the damages to your property
is the is the entity that is sending out somebody to assess the value of the damages
on your property, I mean, look at how that works. So, you've got this, this big company
who is beholden to their shareholders, they have a responsibility to their shareholders to show
a profit, so that the shareholders earn their dividends, and so then that insurance company
sends out a representative to tell the insurance company and you what it's going to cost to get
the repairs done on your property. Your insurance company just, by the nature of the relationship
does not and cannot have your best interest in mind, because there's a conflict of interest.
The adjuster that they send out is going out there and right out of the box the adjuster, even though
even a good adjuster who wants to take care of the homeowner, wants to make sure that the claim
has everything in it that needs to be in it, that adjuster still has a conflict of interest, because
if he's maximizing every claim and putting everything in there that needs to be in there
so that you get fully indemnified and get back to a hundred percent pre-loss, then that means
that that adjuster is costing the insurance company money. So, the insurance company that
he works for or represents, he's costing that insurance company more money. Now let me make
a very important disclaimer, I am not saying that insurance adjusters are bad people, I'm not saying
that insurance agents, or the claim representatives who answer the phone at the insurance companies, or
even the insurance companies executives are bad people, or ill-intentioned people, I'm not saying
that at all, what I'm saying is that the way the system works is set up to provide an automatic
conflict of interest for you the insured so when an insurance company tells you we're on your side
or you're in good hands or we're like a good neighbor to make you feel warm and
fuzzy about using that insurance company, by the nature of the system they can't,
in a, in a property damaged claim, they can't really be on your side, you can't really be in good hands
when there's a conflict of interest built into the system. So, when you have a catastrophic event
hit your property, here it's primarily hail storms, if you have a big hail storm hits your property
and you have a lot of damage, and an insurance adjuster comes out to your home, the system is
built up so that they're automatically looking for ways to minimize the amount that they're going
to pay you for those repairs. It's really, like I said, it's no different than if the hospital was
legally and financially responsible to pay for your care after a major accident. And so the way
that the process then works is, when the adjuster comes out and sets an initial value for the cost
of repairs for the damages, then if you've hired a contractor who says it's going to cost more than
that, especially if it's significantly more than the adjuster's estimate, then that starts a huge
battle with the insurance company because then you or your contractor or both of you, have to engage
in this battle of trying to convince the insurance company that it's going to cost more, and then has
to, you have to try to jump through all of their hoops to prove to them that it's actually going to
cost more than their so-called expert adjuster said that it's going to cost. Let me give you
a real world example of this. This is, this is a situation that we just went through this summer. So,
there was a hail storm up in the north end of town earlier this summer and it did some damage, and
so, a homeowner called us and we have worked with this homeowner twice before. We've re-roofed this
particular house once before, so, we know exactly what materials are on there, we know exactly
what it's going to cost to replace, like, kind, and quality for the materials that are currently on
the house. But that insurance company sent out the adjuster, the adjuster sent all of the information
back to the insurance company and the insurance company came up with their estimated amount for
the repairs of that roof, and surprisingly their estimated amount for the repairs was actually two
thousand, two thousand dollars less than it cost to repair the roof the last time, six years ago.
Now, in what world is that reality where the cost of construction goes down over a six-year period,
especially a significant amount like two thousand dollars? Now, our estimate for the re-roof of that
house was around twenty seven thousand dollars, it's an expensive roof. It's kind of a luxury
shingle on it, it was a steep roof, cut-up roof, and a big roof, but the insurance company was way,
way, way below that on their initial estimate. So after fighting with them, and fighting with them,
and fighting with them, they finally came up to about five thousand dollars less than where our
estimate was. But still, five thousand dollars too low. So, then we had to go and fight with them some
more, fight with some some more, we had to jump through all of their hoops, so then we had to go
back through the battle with them. They kept telling us that it wouldn't, that it wasn't going
to cost that to, to replace that roof, that they knew better with the cost of replacement for that
was, and that, that 22 thousand dollar figure was as much as they were gonna pay, they were not paying
any more than that. Well, so what does that do? That leaves the homeowner stuck in the middle,
because he doesn't know right who's right or wrong he doesn't know how much it's gonna cost
to replace a roof. He's trusting both of these entities to, to tell him what
the truth is about what it's going to cost to replace that roof. Finally in that situation, we had
to resort to hiring our attorney to send a demand of payment letter to the insurance company stating
that this was the cost of the roof replacement and why it cost that and demand that they make full
payment to the homeowner who could then pay us. It was literally the same morning that they received
that letter that we get an email from them saying, okay we've agreed to your estimated amount and
we're going to release all of those funds. So, let me ask you to think about this particular question,
who do you think is more closely aligned with your interests when it comes to having to replace your
roof because of storm damage? Do you think that it's your insurance company and the adjuster
that they send out? Your insurance company is the one that's going to have to pay you,
your insurance company is the one that's going to suffer loss, because of your loss. Or do you
think it's the contractor, who is responsible, who has been tasked with the responsibility of
making sure that your property gets put back into the condition that it was before the loss, that
the project the re-roof project meets local and international building code,
that the project meets manufacturers installation specifications, and that you
as the client and as the property owner are thrilled with the job that was done? Well I'm
going to argue that it's your contractor who is more closely aligned with your interest,
and I'm going to argue that it's your insurance company and your insurance adjuster who have
the conflict of interest in this situation. Well you might be tempted to think,
well of course you think that the contractor is more closely aligned with my interest,
because you're trying to make money out of the deal. Well your insurance company is definitely
going to try to convince you of that too. Oftentimes, desk adjusters, claim representatives
and field adjusters, will do their best to convince you, that your contractor is charging way too much
for this job, he's got way too many things included in it, and because he's just greedy. Really?
And your insurance companies not greedy because they're trying to avoid paying an extra several
thousand dollars in the claim, they're trying to avoid having those extra expenses that are
necessary? Look, the reality of it is your insurance company has millions of customers, if you have a
bad experience with your insurance company and you go to a different insurance company, your insurance
company is not going to care, a contractor on the other hand, especially if he's a local contractor,
he doesn't have millions of customers, he has maybe, hundreds of customers, or if he's super
small, maybe he only has dozens of customers. If he does a bad job, if he doesn't take care of you and
you leave and you're telling your friends about what a rotten job he did,
he's going to lose out. Your contractor, your local contractor has a financial incentive to do the
best job for you that he possibly can. Well, another thing to consider in all of this, is which party do
you think is more qualified and better equipped to determine what you need to get your property
back to pre-loss conditions? Do you think that it's an insurance adjuster who comes out there with a
template of line items that he's just filling in that's the same for every single house, or do you
think it's a contractor, who is the one responsible for knowing what needs to be done to reconstruct
or restore your property back to pre-loss conditions, while meeting building code and
manufacturing installation specifications? I hope this video has been profitable for you,
if you've got any questions about this, please call our office right up here
719-433-6991 you can also visit our website that's right down here homesteadroofingcolorado.com
we've got a ton of information out there lots of blog articles, lots of other educational videos for
you. If this has been a hot button topic for you and you want to rake me over the coals about it
I'd love to hear from you, leave your comments in the comment section down below.
If you've got questions, leave those in the comment section down below too,
we read and respond to all questions that we get on our videos. We'd also love it if you'd
subscribe to our channel, click the bell icon up there so that way you get notified when we've got
new videos, and until our next walk in the park I'm Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing.