Settling a Property Loss.

As I've mentioned in other blogs, I'm an independent insurance claims adjuster for property damage claims. This would involve your home or personal property not vehicles. For some time now we have heard on the news about the terrible state of our infrastructure and then the terrible fire in San Bruno due to a pipeline break and sinkholes damaging home. Recently I handled a claim damage due to a pipeline break and after giving this some thought decided to blog about insurance and claims handling. For this blog I will address damage due to another persons negligence.

When I handle a claim I assume that the insured or claimant does not know how their claim is to be handled, only 1% or so will have had a prior claim or have knowledge of the process. It has become routine to explain to the person what to expect. But be forewarned that I do not hold myself out as an expert, these are thoughts only based on my limited experience.

I did start in claims in 1990 with State Farm, was sent to their 3 week school to learn to read policy and then a special construction school. I now prefer to handle catastrophe claims.

First I must explain that your property depreciates over time, analogous to a car. An example is that your paint and flooring get old and that depreciated amount is subtracted out of your claim. So for example, if you have flooring that would cost $100. to replace but is 10 years old, you might only get $50. after $50 is taken for depreciation. If you have a policy with Replacement Cost Benefits then you will get that depreciated component back after the job is finished and you present your adjuster with the receipts verifying the completion. If you do the work yourself or just leave the work undone there will be no further payment.

If you do not have Replacement Costs available in your policy or a 3^rd party's insurance is paying for the damage it will be settled on a theory of Actual Cash Value. This means that you will get only the amount of the depreciated item.

Now the Actual Cash Value policy is not bad if this is your choice and you don't want to pay the premium for a Replacement Cost policy but it is bad if the damage is not your fault. With infrastructure damage, or that due to government, the loss may or may not be covered under your homeowners policy. When there is no coverage under your own policy then you must file a claim with the whoever covers the offender. These claims are settled at Actual Cash Value and the claimant is penalized by depreciation being subtracted out of their settlement and having to replace their property at a greater value.

Additionally, to add insult to injury, there are times where the claimant is told to mitigate their damage, but what does that mean to someone who maybe is a working class and is looking for guidance from the damaging company? That claimant may not know that they to cut out the wet carpet immediately and throw it away. They are then penalized for not mitigating their damage.

As I was working this last infrastructure failure claim I was reminded that this settlement system is not fair. The loss is not the fault of the claimant, they were just living their lives and now they will be out considerable cash to get their lives back to where it was before the loss.

One may hire a Public Adjuster who will promise to get more money for you but they do take 10% or so of the final settlement and the claim will still have the depreciation subtracted out. An attorney will take about 30% of the settlement so one must balance if it is worth the attorney or or public adjuster.

Just some things to consider.  

The DIY'ers

We have an 18 year old house that is now looking its age, poor thing; flooring is stained from grand kids (easy to blame them), tiles chipped and scratched, cabinet finish dried and flaked off and on and on. Since I've not been working much I decided now is the time to get in gear with the house.

I had planned to paint the fascia this week then start on painting my bedroom next week. I went out to take a close look at the fascia and found that 2 trees, which were shrubs when we moved in, are too close to the house. I thought I'd just quick clip a few branches off to access the fascia but when I climbed my ladder to the roof over the dining room I discovered a huge mess: dried leaves probably 6” thick, branches on the roof and animal nests in the debris. I called Dale and told him we weren't going anywhere except up to the roof to start cleaning.

When Dale got on the roof I pointed out how when debris is packed up on roofing or in the valleys that rain will actually back up and run into the roof causing water damage to ceilings and walls. Dale cleaned valleys that have never been cleaned and were now packed with debris and dirt while I clipped branches then we both swept off the tiles.

We discovered that the tree next to the dining room has a root that has cracked the patio slab and stucco is loose around the crack and the stucco on the garage next to the tree has cracked. Our neighbor had the big idea that Dale and I could remove the tree. I mentioned it to the family across the street and one son pipped up that he has logged trees before. That is next weeks job then I can finally paint my fascia.

Driving and Hoping Not to Get Caught

Usually I drive a fairly new American made truck, XM Radio, Cruise Control, AC and so forth. Not lots different than many people drive, except for my son. Nate, my oldest son who has the almond business, owns a well worn minivan and now a little Honda. The Honda belonged to another student at UCSB but they didn't need it so loaned it then gave it to my son.

The Honda is a little blue/green civic with lots of dings, really dirty and just generally torn up by kids, loaning it to everyone, and hauling around hundreds of pounds of almonds. There is a radio that works only by pushing the magic button, which I've not discovered yet, no A.C., no cruise control and crank windows.

So this morning I had to take a load of almonds to my son, a 2-1/2 hour drive away, he mentioned that he might want to use my truck but was uncertain. I didn't think anything more about it and went on my way, driving to where my son was working a farmers market.

We'd had lunch and my son said that he was going to need my truck for a couple of days as he'd mentioned earlier. That was fine, not great, but fine. After we'd cleaned out his Honda and I was about to get into the Honda, my son said “the plates were stolen but I filed a police report and the new ones haven't arrived so if you get a ticket just give it to me”. Yikes! A 2-1/2 hour drive home in an illegal car!

I started for home and had the thought; I'm driving this ratty little car, am Hispanic, look Hispanic, with no plates. Now here is a combination for a disaster. I thought that I'd better drive the speed limit at least so that I wouldn't stand out from the pack drawing attention to myself as usually I set the cruise control for about 80.

I was driving along I-5 going in the lane next to the slow lane when I started thinking about some work issues and all of the sudden I found myself in the fast lane doing 80mph. I quickly slowed down and moved over to the slower lanes but then, as I was driving by the CHP office found myself in the fast lane and doing 80 once again.

As I continued down the hill I realized that my foot wouldn't let the car go less than 75, it just couldn't happen so I joined the traffic and drove home. I do think I'll leave the car parked until it the plates arrive.

A Kid Gone Great!

It is great to watch a kid grow into a wonderful adult and I'm not sure that we had much to do with it. We got to know Camilo Vasquez when he was in the same high school class as our boys. He became much like another son as he hung out at the house so much. We tried to encourage him to go to school and then college. He called me Mom, as he still does today.

Camilo came from a working class family but finally joined the military in an attempt to make a better life. He did try to go to college but life got in his way and as many kids, it wasn't his priority. We lost track of Camilo over time, he married and started his own family, had his own troubles but finally worked thru them.

In the Spring, just when we had decided to start working at the farmers markets in Bakersfield I found Camilo on Facebook. I asked him if he knew of anyone that might need a job working the markets, at that time we only would need someone 2 times a week. He asked his brother but when his brother said no Camilo decided that he really needed the extra work so would take the offer; he and his wife were working several part time jobs to survive.

Camilo has been working with us for several months now. When we expanded into other farmers markets Camilo was working them, now he manages our work in those markets. When we decided to move all of the roasting and processing of the almonds to Bakersfield we put Camilo in charge. An example of his work ethic is a few weeks ago when the almonds shipped late and he was so concerned about getting the product out that he sorted then roasted almonds the entire night. Camilo now has 3 people working for him.

It is important to let people know when they are going great work. Too often we don't say anything about the good, but when someone does something bad the word is spread among many. Hence, here I want to praise someone who took a chance and changed. I'm so proud of this “kind of” adopted son.

Murphy's Law with theTV

At 5:30am the tv decided not to work at all with the remote. We'd switched over to ATT U-verse and I loved it until a week or so ago. At that time I'd had to reset the box but lost the guide and other features. Now this morning when I turned on the TV everything was in Spanish and soon after nothing would work.

I reset the receiver box but nothing. I then called AT&T but had to talk to the computer, I hate talking to a computer. I yelled at the computer to no avail of course. It tested the remote told me the remote was fine and then hung up on me.

I called AT&T back this time telling the computer that the problem was the TV and finally got a live person. In the meantime I'd uplugged the box again then plugged it back in and now I just had the logo on the TV screen. The remote did nothing. The guy, who actually spoke english, asked what had happened so I was giving him a blow by blow account of my woes. After I'd given him the details of all that had quit I just pushed the guide button and wouldn't you know everything worked perfectly. It appears that I wasn't letting the receiver reboot completely so it never had time to reset.

I had to laugh, of course everything would work perfectly with the technician on the line! Now if only all of the other broken items would repair themselves.

No Silk Duvet for Me

For about 14 years we had a cat named Chelsea, a fat, lazy, onrey cat. She slept on our bed during the day and then again at night. During the night I'd wake up on the edge of the bed with Chelsea stretched out between us.

A couple of years before she passed I went to China. I was shopping for silk and found a beautiful piece to make a duvet cover for my bed, but once home I realized that Chelsea would lay all over it ruining it. I put the silk away for another day.

5 years ago Twinks was born and our son and his wife got her for their kids Christmas present, she was a little ball of fur. After Chelsea died the kids thought that it would be a good idea for us to take Twinks in until they returned from China and found a place to live that would accept a dog. We were not anxious to take Twinkle but every time we'd go to our daughter-in-law's parents home Twinks would jump into our truck and hide behind me. She'd look at us with her big brown eyes as though pleading for us to take her. Poor dog; she had to stay outside all of the time and all of the other dogs tormented her constantly. Finally I couldn't take it any longer and we brought her to live at our house.

Immediately Twinks took over where Chelsea left off; sleeping on the bed, commanding us to do her bidding. I soon realized that the silk was not going to work anytime soon.

The kids returned home from teaching in China but moved into an apartment where no dogs were allowed so Twinkle has remained with us until now. The kids have now moved out of their apartment and looking for a place that will take their dog and soon she will be gone.

I was looking for some fabric yesterday and ran onto my piece of silk. I immediately thought “Oh great, finally I'll get to make my cover. Oops that was short lived; grand kids have reminded me that we will need to get another dog as soon as Twinkle is gone. I imagine that the new dog will get right down to figuring out that the best place to sleep is on my bed. I'm giving up on any bed cover other than a beach towel. Maybe I can start a new trend!