Our home insurance provider is not covering all of the expenses for a remediation company that dehumidified and tore out dry wall and cabinets after we filed a water damage claim. Now, the restoration/remediation company sent us a letter from a lawyers office to collect the debt (remaining balance) for the work that was done.
The remediation company (RC) was a certified vendor from insurance agency, and RC and our insurance agent were constantly emailing back and forth regarding the claim before and after the work was done.
The RC sent in a first invoice for $5,000 to insurance, after the work was already done, and insurance sent them a check for the full amount which was undisputed. Here’s when it gets tricky.
The RC company then submitted a second invoice, for an additional $17,000. Now we’re at two invoices, to a total $22,000. And, they said they never received the first check for $5,000 from our insurance and to provide proof it was sent. Well, our agent sent them the proof that the check had been CASHED. But, then our insurance agent denied their claim for more money on the second invoice because 1) they sent an additional invoice after the first one was already paid, and 2) they somehow “lost” the insurance check they did receive. Eventually, the RC agent acknowledged it was cashed. For these fishy reasons, and for the unreasonableness of some of the line items the RC company listed, insurance refused to pay out again. After the RC company couldn’t get insurance to budge, they stopped contacting us and then sent us a letter of collection for an amount of around $12,000.
We’re going to dispute the debt, but has this happened to anyone before? What did you do, or do you have any advice on how to phrase the refusal of debt? The RC company certainly didn’t do many of the items, and we think they’re fudging the numbers to get a better pay out. We agree with all the reasons our agent listed, so why should we pay?
My Insurance Won’t Pay All of the Remediation Invoices and Now They Want Us to
byu/Murky-Gur8788 inInsurance
Posted by Murky-Gur8788
2 Comments
You basically have the same arguments as your insurer re: why the RC invoice is unreasonable, so perhaps your insurer can give you some insight. Will the insurer help you fight the RC company? Sounds like a mess. Good luck!
This is so totally normal and typical in the insurance world. Most the time the insurance companies use third party prostitutes to supposedly review the mitigation contractors estimate and chop it by at least 50%. They don’t feel like they’re doing their job unless they chop it by 60%. These are people behind a desk that are working on memes and they’ve never actually held a hammer or cut drywall and they have these weird ideas that all properties can be dried within 3 days no matter how much water ran. On the other hand the mitigation contractor is probably trying to milk it for all they can but how can you really blame them because they get screwed by the insurance company so often and it takes them so many months to get paid. So basically you’re caught in the middle of a giant s*** show circus. I’m sure some of the items on the mitigation bill the insurance company doesn’t want to pay are perfectly legitimate. But there’s probably also some fluff in there. But due to the dysfunctional nature of insurance adjusting nowadays the adjuster will just take a hard line and they can easily ignore you because there’s no repercussions for them doing so. So you going to have to go after your insurance company or just take it on the chin and pay the mitigation contractor their bill. It used to be the insurance adjuster would act kind of borderline Sleazy and fight with the mitigation contractor and come to some kind of agreement. But nowadays they’ll just shut down and won’t communicate. So you’re stuck in the middle. You can always go to appraisal and then hopefully two people with more sense will come to an agreement on some compromise amount but then you’ll have to pay money out of pocket for the appraisal process. Basically you have to understand that dealing with insurance is like the DMV on steroids. You’re going to get screwed no matter what. You could quit your job and devote your attention full-time to dealing with this and it still won’t work out in your favor at least not for months. Sorry for the bad news. But just keep one thought in mind. Your insurance company has really nice well produced ads on the Super Bowl and people get a really warm fuzzy feeling when they watch those while they’re eating guacamole and drinking beer.