I have to start off by saying that when I started posting on my website, the intention was never to shame anyone or to be negative towards other roofers or insurance providers (Although I have plenty of verbal ammunition that I could fire at other roofers and insurance providers.) In fact it was intended to help my customers and to answer the questions I get so often from customers.
But today will be somewhat of an exception. I hope it can still be helpful to a homeowner trying to decide if it makes sense to file a claim or not & also whether to self-insure if they have the ability to instead of pay a provider. The photo above is from a recent insurance claim I worked on. I will keep the provider anonymous publicly for the sake of my relationship with them, but I am happy to share privately if you’d like to know.
I work with these providers and their adjusters every day and I must say it is often the most difficult part of my day. I don’t mean challenging. I mean painful. These adjusters are often times nice people that are just trained to think in the wrong direction. In the photo above, the adjuster didn’t even show up for the inspection. The provider had me do the inspection for him. (If you are a fellow roofer, this is your hint as to who the provider is…) I documented very well over 45 places on this roof from all slopes of the roof that had wind damage from a specific wind event. The photos I took had GPS tracking and had a date time stamp to remove any possible reasons for denial. I also did my homework and created a verifiable weather report of the storm that caused this damage for their convenience.
As bad of shape that this roof was in from a wind storm, the provider decided that we should do 45 repairs on this roof rather than replace it, saving them a ton of money. But the money isn’t really what upsets me about this. What upsets me is that the homeowner will have a repaired roof that will never look right or protect the home like the original roof did. On top of that, I can’t put a good warranty on it when we are finished.
Insurance providers’ job is to indemnify a situation to its original state. This home will not be in it’s original state when we are finished. So let me put it plainly. They are not meeting their obligation to their customer.
Often times insurance providers don’t truly get a claim correct on their payout to the customer unless a 3rd party adjuster gets involved. Unfortunately, 3rd party adjusters aren’t interested in working small claims like this because there isn’t enough money involved for the work required. Of course providers know this. They know I won’t have the customer hire a 3rd party adjuster to get this payout right because it isn’t feasible. They also will not listen to me about the claim because I’m a biased contractor that “wants to replace every roof” and not a 3rd party subject matter authority.
Needless to say I don’t always see eye to eye with adjusters.
Lucas Heffner signing off for the day.
Over and out.
