How to Get More Money From Insurance Adjuster
Today we’re going to talk about insurance claims and how to handle them.
Flood or Other Disaster
Let’s say you have a flood or fire, or some kind of disaster in your house. In North Texas, we get a lot of flooding! You call your insurance agent or company, and they will typically send out an adjuster to look at your damage. They do a quick assessment of what the house looks like, or what the house used to look like before the damage.
The Money You Receive
Then they will usually write you a check. Typically this check is far less than what you will need to have repairs done. Depending on the amount of damage you have you might see a $20,000 or $50,000 check. This seems like a lot of money! But when you take it to a contractor, you’ll have trouble finding someone to do it for that price. If you do find someone who can do it for the price of the initial insurance company check, they either don’t know what they are doing or they will end up cutting a lot of corners to adjust to that budget.
How We Help
We do things differently. When we come out to do an assessment, we make a line item of each thing that needs to be done, the way the insurance requests it. We submit this quote to the insurance company, then we submit for what’s called “supplemental.” The supplemental request is where we add in items that weren’t on the original assessment. For instance. We are working on one house in which the backsplash was damaged during water mitigation. This damage wasn’t on the original insurance assessment, because it wasn’t damaged then. But the whole backsplash will have to be taken out and redone.
A Recent Job
This house also had some doors that were badly banged up and damaged by the drying equipment that was brought in. We will try to fix this damage, but often in these cases, the doors end up with cracks and splits. That’s not the way the doors were before the damage happened!
Total Restoration
Our goal is to get you back into the same shape you were in before the damage happened. That’s our goal. We are looking out for your best interest, and we want to make sure that you get every area of your house that needs attention covered under your plan. We are not lawyers, but we are construction experts and we can tell you what needs to be added to your quote and how to go about it. This is how we can get you covered for extra texture repairs, doors, paint, anything that wasn’t initially included. It all adds up! If your broken door is not included, that could be $300-$500 in repairs out of your pocket. $500 here, another $100 there … by the time you try to put this house together, you are thousands of dollars short.
Your Next Step
That’s where we come in. If you don’t want to deal with insurance, and if you feel overwhelmed by the process, give us a call! We’ll be more than happy to help you. We can help you by looking at your house and giving you a free estimate, and then by explaining to you how our process works to get you back on your feet!
