I can’t believe I got tangled up with these assholes. I’ve had all my insurance with State Farm for 10 years, during which I’ve paid them thousands of dollars in premiums. In the last 10 years I had one claim, when someone knocked a side mirror off my wife’s car. Cost State Farm $168.00.
Last year a very bad hailstorm went through my neighborhood. Everybody’s roofs were damaged. Before yesterday, 90% of the houses in my neighborhood, and all but 3 of the houses on my street, had new roofs, paid for by their insurance companies. Guess what insurance company covered all three of the houses on my street without new roofs? State Farm. Everyone else had a different insurance company and was approved on the spot when the adjuster came out. Every single State Farm house was denied. Luckily I happened to get hooked up with a very dogged contractor that kept after them until they agreed to pay for a new roof, installed yesterday. He’s going after them on the other two houses now, with my attorney Sister-in-Law waiting in reserve; she informs me that Indiana statute says State Farm will have to pay triple damages if they lose a lawsuit of this type.
What the fuck is with these fucking fuckers? Apparently they deny everybody across the board, and then if pressed, pay up. I’m sure some people take their word for it that there is no damage. The first bitch who inspected my roof went to great lengths to try to convince me that there was no damage, using lots of technical terms and shit. I’m sure a lot of people just believe her, and State Farm saves money.
A few years ago, we had hail damage on three sides of house. There was no way to match the style of siding, and if there were a comparable siding, the color wouldn’t have matched the color of the 4th side, which was 17 years old. It took endless letters, phone calls, calls from contractors…
In the end, we were selling the house anyway, and the buyer wanted a different color siding, so i signed over the check for three sides to her, and she paid for the 4th in the color she wanted.
When I was in veterinary school, a classmate had his car stolen. It was eventually found, but it wouldn’t run. . . it had a blown engine. The guy’s car insurance company initially refused to pay because he couldn’t provide receipts showing preventative maintenance. The insurance people basically said that the owner was at fault for not taking good care of the car. Lucky for him, “forensic mechanics” found that the car thieves put something in the gas tank intentionally.
State Farm is getting sued because of their refusal to pay to Katrina victims too. It seems they are known for this across the board. Hopefully some other companies will learn from this and step up to be a better alternative. I think a competant, fair insurance company (ok, there could be one somewhere )could pick up a lot of disgusted State Farm customers.
My dad had State Farm for his cars. They wanted him to put me on his policy after I turned 16. He tried to avoid this by returning my license but they still wanted me on the policy simply because I lived in his house, nevermind the fact that I couldn’t legally drive anymore. That’s when he changed insurance companies.
Yes. The lady told me that she had gone over every square inch of roof with a fine tooth comb and could not find a single incidence of hail damage. Then, when the second adjuster came to my house, and my contractor went up on the roof with him, and pointed to about 20 hail hits in a 100 sqft area, the adjuster approved it on the spot. So the first adjuster was either completely incompetent or a fucking liar. My money is on fucking liar.
Weird, I have had a great experience with them. I had an accident that was my fault last year and my premium did not go up. Mom on the other hand, has had terrible luck with her insurance (not State Farm.) No accidents, but her premiums go up every year.
and recognized that all of that came from things that could be changed somewhat easily. . .well, like you said, I don’t like to think about very much.
We need to get people back to square one. To realize that we need insurance collectively because we don’t want to be personally destroyed financially by one mishap, and that we’re willing to take the chance of paying for our fellow man to avoid having his life destroyed.
That can apply to homeowners, car-owners, health, whatever.
Instead, we all just happily agree to have our pay checks reamed each week, somehow not realizing that each year we’re dumping in thousands of dollars to receive hundreds of dollars worth of services. And, the “smart ones” (I guess) are the ones who feel like they gotta get their money’s worth, not realizing that they’re just jacking themselves and their fellow man year after year.
Pay for my own maintenance. . .and get some protection against catastrophe. That’s all I want. It doesn’t have to be a massive fucking clusterfuck.
But somehow we got to the point where “paying for maintenance” became something people didn’t want to do. But, why is it like that? Because no one knows how to save one fucking dime of their money for future scenarios any more. A guy making $75,000 a year would miss a mortgage payment if he had to come up with a $1000 for a medical procedure so he’d just rather the company take $4000 a year out of his paycheck so that the medical coverage is there if he needs it.
All right, I’m flipping out now. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg in what I think about this “business”.
I’ve found the best way to alleviate my angst at it all is to buy stock in insurance companies.
Insurance companies both health and auto have a simple mantra. Deny every possible claim. It increases the bottom line. They are not there to provide a service. They exist to make a profit. The customers ,once signed on, become problems and must not cost money.
I’ve also had great experience with them. After hurricane Lily, the adjuster was out the next day and wrote a check on the spot for everything from the new roof to the $2 fake shutters. I wonder if it has anything to do with the agent. We’ve had the same agent for 15 years, who’s based out of Shreveport, over 3 hours away.
Operating costs need to be taken into consideration. It is my understanding that, for several insurance companies, the spread is darn near zero. I have no cite.
Of course they are a bunch of crooks and liars. This is a company that is suing the two whistleblowers who came out to say that their supervisors were systematically demanding that Katrina damage reports be buried, changed, or redone to avoid paying claims in Mississippi. They’re being sued by Katrina victims all over the Gulf Coast because of refusals to pay valid claims.
Same type of experience here. After the '94 quake they were way more than fair in their settlement with me on the house. My house got burgled right after the earthquake, and again they were super fair. I think I had one question on the value of one item which they answered to my satisfaction.
AHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! {gasps for breath}
I don’t believe for one femtosecond that insurance companies are not making profits hand over fist. Companies with a very low profit margin don’t build themselves office towers downtown. Maybe the profit margin is lower for Joe’s Insurance and Auto Repair, but not for the big players.
The kicker to what you’ve already mentioned, Trunk? You pay into insurance for decades, you finally have cause to make a small claim, and your insurance rates GO UP, or they cancel your policy because you’re a bad risk now. Hey guys, how about using some of those thousands of dollars I’ve paid you over the years for my claim? Oh, sorry, all that money was used for part of the CEO’s vacation property in the Cayman Islands. My mistake.
Dammit, you’ve got me thinking about this now, and my blood pressure’s going up. :mad:
Because I am in the “insurance is a scam” camp it pains me to admit it, but when it comes to State Farm I’m a stick-er up-er for-em. My oblivous parents refused to teach me how to drive, lied on the under-18 “have you driven XX hours with your child/ward?” forms, and were utterly[Claude Raines]shocked. SHOCKED![/Claude Raines] when I racked up seven claims in five years*. At the time, however, the State Farm agent (who also allowed me to have MN insurance on a FL-titled car while living in FL, DC, ME, and HI) was a family friend. State Farm ultimately paid more in claims on my “starter car” than I paid in car loans.
To be fair: One accident was caused by a drunk driver, one claim was in regard to Hurricane Andrew, and I was rear-ended twice. The other three were me being digustingly un-educated and inexperienced in the rules of the road.*
**Oh, but my latest accident, three years ago? Utter incompetence and stupidity on my part. By that time I should have been smart enough to look BOTH ways.
State Farm is in major hot-water legally and media-wise. In addition to featuring on some recent exposés on Anderson Cooper (Youtube, part 1- begins with Allstate but includes State Farm and primetime news shows, they majorly pissed off Trent Lott (one of my least favorite politicians but a really stupid choice to piss off nonetheless) who’s suing them for not covering Katrina damage and using his senatorial office to launch further investigations. In addition to Katrina homeowners they’re particularly under fire for their automobile insurance irregularities with a major trial starting this week (G=news). This is going to be a real fustercluck if it loses because they’ve got litigation lined up around the Continental Divide to sue their asses. (Evidently AllState & State Farm both hired the same consultant who advised them to slow pay and challenge everything possible, especially if medical bills were involved.)
The whole thing is right out of Grisham’s The Rainmaker. Grisham advised in the book to always sue an insurance company if your claim is genuine because they’ll frequently try to weasel out of it, but AllState/State Farm evidently began blasting away at lawsuits to scare people out of suing, but now they’re paying gazillions in legal fees as what was once an occasional David v. Goliath that could go either way has become there’s been a pitchfork toting/guillotine erecting peasants rebellion.
)could pick up a lot of disgusted State Farm customers.