We had a lot of hail at my house in Madison so I'm naturally going to file a claim. My question is am I better off contacting my insurance company myself or allowing a roofing company to do it. I ask this because we've had a number of roofing salesmen stop by lately offering free roof inspections for past damage (which I didn't have). Can these guys do a better job of working with insurance adjusters than I can myself ?
Long read below, but I went through this last summer….few tips from my experience:
1) If you don’t have a dedicated insurance agent, get one. Just get plugged in to someone local who represents your current carrier, if need be. Believe it or not, they will be your advocate when the insurance company itself tries to 17 you over however possible. They’ll walk you through how to handle the BS if they are any good, including the appeals process. Their job is to get the claim closed with both sides happy, and to retain you as a customer. But they’ll also be honest with you, and let you know if they think the chances for success are low.
2) Contact roofer yourself and insurance company yourself. Roofer can’t file the claim for you, so you gotta do it anyway. Make sure the roofer is present EVERY time any adjustor shows up. But also, choose the roofer carefully. You don’t want a know-it-all prick who is going to hang all over the adjustor and piss them off. A knowledgeable but down to earth and approachable roofer will do the trick. Avoid anyone who tries to guarantee that they can get your insurer to pay out. That’s an empty sales pitch.
3) Be careful any time you are on the phone with the claims department and giving statements. Its always a recorded line and they are trained to make leading statements to make you walk into saying something that creates doubt about the legitimacy of the claim. In my case, they tried to say “well if your roof got hit by hail, don’t you think you’d also have all sorts of damage on your gutters, downpouts, and AC unit?”. No matter how rock solid the claim is, they’ll come up with something to challenge you. Identify when this is happening, and when it does, if you don’t have a rock solid and factual contradiction, simply defer to the expert opinion of your contractor who advised for you to file the claim. Don’t lie, but don’t fall into the trap either. Say as little as possible.
4) If insurance company says they are sending a 3rd party adjustor from some outside firm, just go ahead and get ready to get 17ed on the first go around. These are the clowns they pay bottom dollar for that all climb on 15 roofs a day and just go around denying claims left and right. In my case, they didn’t even do test squares and chalk the damage marks, because the insurance company actively trained them NOT to do this in spite of it being trade standard. Its the first line of defense that insurance throws out to get you to give up.
5) Don’t worry too much about an initial claim denial. Agent will walk you through appeals process if you have an agent. Some robot on a phone line will do the same thing, but a good agent will also help you voice displeasure in a way that gets the claims department’s attention. Again, refer back to #1.
6) Ultimately, you want one of the insurance company’s official field adjustors to review the claim and the damage, with your roofer present. This will be your ticket to getting it approved one way or another. These guys hate the outside mother17er’s they hire on the front end, so they’ll often just completely disregard their judgment and start from scratch.
7) If you have a long tenure with your insurance company with no major claims, leverage the hell out of that if need be. Make sure the agent gets that point loud and clear if you get an initial denial. Remember he or she is not the one making the call on the claim, but they do know who to call to help get shít moving if they think you’re going to drop them if there’s a denial. So be firm but remain cordial in the dealings with the agent.
It took me 3 months, but I eventually got a new roof on an approved claim after an initial denial. The damage I had was fairly obvious, but not overly substantial. I have All State, who as stated above are one of the two most notorious roof claim nazis on the planet. Might not have gone my way without me doing all of the above. Good luck.
bluelineconstructionms.com
