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Julie2Oregon
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 01:56pm
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So the house was nearly ready to be sold, and I now have 3 interested buyers. I hired a contractor to handle the roof and the drywall, insurance sent me a check to cover the roof (which it did) and *some* of the drywall. The adjustor saw the water marks coming down a wall and an actual gap in the wall. I also pointed out to him how damp the carpet was.
My contractor, when he was up on the roof, saw how and where the water was getting in, near a vent by the ridgeline. It all added up. One whole interior wall along that ridgeline needed to be redone. Insurance allowed for one 4X8 section. Heh. I told him to do what needed to be done and I'd deal with them.
So for a couple of days, it was massive drywall dust. I had to move out of my master bedroom. OMG, how I hate that stuff. Dust migrated everywhere.
Tarping the roof, stripping it and installing the new one in between storms had released a bit more trapped water into that bedroom/the flooring. We hoped it would dry out on its own and had fans going constantly. Nope.
So, the drywall is done and I was about to paint the bedroom when I started to feel sick in that room and smell mold. I lifted up the carpet and saw some mildew. Immediately, I called ServiceMaster. They removed the carpet, and installed 4 fans and a dehumidifier. It took 3 days to dry out the OSB. Thankfully, no damage and we got to it just in time before mold set in. They billed my insurance company.
I get an angry call from my insurance company the other day saying that they're not paying that bill. That the leak couldn't have possibly caused the carpet damage and if I thought it did, I needed to call them so they could send out an inspector. I said, um, what?! I SHOWED the initial adjustor how damp the carpet was. This isn't a surprise.
And how could they rule that the whole roof needed to be replaced and that *some* interior drywall was damaged and now claim that there was no covered leakage? The first adjustor SAW the water marks, the wall separation, and the damp carpet. She said he didn't write it down or take pictures. Oh, really? Well, guess what, sweetheart? I DID!
I expect to have to go Full-Metal Yankee on these people and I'll win. The bad part, however, is that they're sending another adjustor and ordered me to stop rehabbing the master bedroom until he comes. Next Thursday, grrrrr.
Oh, well. I'm STILL finding drywall dust in weird places around the house. Gah, I hate that stuff. Plywood, baby. Plywood for the cabin. 
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sparky30_06
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 03:55pm
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call you local agent and get them involved that's what they are there for and why you pay them
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Julie2Oregon
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 05:48pm
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Yeah, sparky30_06, that's what I'll do after I meet with this adjustor on Thursday. Honestly, the first one was inept. I don't mean to be ageist but he was way past the point where he should have retired. I mean, what kind of adjustor doesn't take pics?! He even misclassified my laminated, architectural shingles as standard 3-tab and I had to call them on that when I got the report and check. Maybe they have him so they can skimp on payouts, I dunno.
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Don_P
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 09:51pm
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It flooding down in Texas, they call the retired agents when it gets busy.
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Julie2Oregon
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 10:32pm
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Ahhh, that explains a lot. 
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Don_P
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# Posted: 10 Jun 2016 11:33pm - Edited by: Don_P
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After the durecho here a few years ago we had an agent show up where we were pulling a tree back out of a house, decided he was somewhere between 70 and 200 and bless his heart everything his tired brain did was a mess.
Aside, I've been helping get the gears turning after a fire at a friends business this week. A detail had been missed in '57. A couple of bucks of drywall to form a firebreak in the ceiling would have cost him a burnt machine instead of the entire roof, trusses and all.
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Julie2Oregon
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# Posted: 11 Jun 2016 12:34am
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Geez, on both counts. People know when to say when. It can cost the rest of us a chunk of change.
I knew something was up when I was puzzling through the report. I'd needed the roof redone several years ago after a big hail and windstorm. Different insurance company. The report clearly showed the breakdowns -- materials, labor, contractor's profit. This only showed some labor for the roof tear-off and the drywall. Not for the roof installation. I questioned it and the company insisted it was on there. Nope, it wasn't. They tried to say it was lumped in with the shingles cost. Huh? It made no sense.
So, here I sit with house buyers on hold, unable to get the carpeting installed and the master bedroom repainted. If they hadn't messed up my claim, I'd have a closing scheduled by now. Of course, I haven't told them I'm selling the house because then they'd be thinking I'm up to something, trying to get money out of them for other stuff. No, I'm simply trying to fix the stuff that wasn't damaged before the storms. And I'm saving the jerks money by doing some of the work myself.
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Jabberwocky
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# Posted: 13 Jun 2016 10:13am
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Julie, home insurance claims can be a huge mess sometimes. I had a hail and wind damage claim on my house a few years ago and it took 6 months to finally sort out entirely. I don't know if this is your situation, but in my case, the start of the trouble was the fact that the original appraiser I got was an independent CAT appraiser who didn't care about doing things the right way.
When there is a large enough weather event, the number of claims being filed overwhelm the local staff appraisers, and the insurance commissioner is forced to declare a catastrophe, or "CAT" as it's called in the industry. The insurance company has to hire out independent appraisers to inspect and process claims in order to provide timely service to their policyholders. Unfortunately, this results in them getting people who can be very inexperienced.
CAT adjusting can be very lucrative for someone willing to follow big storms around, and it requires relatively little investment to get into. I personally started to go this route, but eventually changed my career path after discovering the stress involved. But basically I spent $6K in tuition and certifications and equipment, and about 4 weeks total of training and I was good-to-go. I would've felt sorry for any people who would've gotten me as their adjuster, because I was GREEN LOL. It attracts a lot of people though because it is commission based pay, and a person who can process a lot of claims and get hired for the right storms can make six-figure salaries. Not bad for no college degree requirements! What's more, these adjusters are only in the area for a few weeks or months, depending on storm size, and they don't have any further responsibility beyond the initial inspection. So they don't give a flying flip about how accurate their estimate is. And even if they did, they likely wouldn't be reassigned to the same claim anyhow.
I hate to paint independent appraisers in a bad light, because some of them have been doing it for a long time and are good at it, but oftentimes this isn't the case.
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Wilbour
Member
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# Posted: 13 Jun 2016 11:56am
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I've had 3 x 100 year floods in my home over 15 years. Each time the insurance company tried to screw us over like it was our fault. (Town messed up on the water drains years ago and filled in our flood plains and built massive homes uphill)
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Julie2Oregon
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# Posted: 13 Jun 2016 04:21pm - Edited by: Julie2Oregon
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Jabberwocky
It sounds eerily like my situation. Based on that initial adjuster's "work," they expected me to get a 1400 sq. ft. architectural shingle roof and the water damage done to a 200 sq. ft. bedroom remediated for $5K. That includes my deductible. No carpeting, no tarping of the roof despite the constant storms was included, and they only allowed for one 4 X 8 section of drywall even though there were water stains down one whole wall (and floor to ceiling is 9 feet, besides).
I'm big-time out-of-pocket right now because I saw and am living with the damage and just want everything fixed and done right. I suppose I could have done the "Band-Aid" approach and maybe even have pocketed some cash but that's not honest. I wouldn't feel right about selling a house that wasn't repaired properly.
That CAT thing is scary.
Wilbour
Yeah, that's how they have tried to make me feel -- that this is my fault. Suddenly, it's "that wall separation could have been caused by a number of things. It could fall under maintenance." Oh, really? So, it's just a coincidence that we got bad storms, the roof was damaged, the wall separated a bit, water leaked in, and the carpeting got wet all at the same time? And how in the heck do you fail to "maintain" a wall? 
We had a bad series of storms in a very short period of time, I saw the wall start to separate and water stream down, I went out and looked at the roof and saw shingles missing, and I called the insurance company. Very straight-forward.
I really despise these people.
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