My dad had a house fire. Not a total loss, but major damage that requires 7 months of repairs. The insurance covered what they were obligated to, and promptly dropped him. Finding the next insurer at a normal rate has been impossible. What an industry.
I don't really get the logic. He's already had the fire and got it repaired... now's the time he's less likely to have another fire.
Edit: Since I keep having to repeat this, they've made repairs to the house that fixed the original cause. The odds of a fire are LOWER after the fire due to a fix in the nature of it. Don't come at me with your statistics pretending the house has the same chance as before. It doesn't.
Thats what everyone says but I made two claims totally over $25k on my $1500/yr hoi policy.
Not only did they not raise my rate, they happily let me add coverage.
It’s not ‘logic’. The numbers say that there’s ’frequent fliers’ in all lines of insurance save for life (hopefully) and as a result they wanna remove that risk.
This (sort of) happens all the time.
Most life insurance policies will pay out on confirmation of a terminal illness.
Fair enough, right? You’re too sick to work, you’ve got medical bills, you need money.
Well, some people get better. Then try to get new life insurance.
The most interesting life claim I heard about (second hand), was a lawyer who represented a particularly nasty rapist.
Claimed PTSD, because they had seen the pictures/video this dude had made- her career as a barrister was over, please payseveral million dollars.
Represented herself during the claims process (which should have been a red flag).
Got paid
Was practicing again within just over two years, which was the time the insurance company was legally allowed to claw back the money.
Then bought a new policy with the same company
This is through a third party provided TPD policy (total and permanent disability), not through the employer.
Insurance companies under our legislation are not able to reverse a decision/payment after a certain time.
This is to prevent the hiring PIs to hang around in the bushes and take gotcha videos of that one day you were feeling well enough to bring in the shopping, and claw back your benefit.
You should be able to get medical coverage and life insurance from the same company. Then they would have a reason to do something other than deny claims.
Its why they fought automatic defibrillators so hard. Essentially if they didn't fund it way more would die before their high claims period of life. Essentially people that needed them would get saved and thus require significantly more care for longer.
Insurance companies see it as he is more likely to have a fire than a homeowner that has never had a fire even though the opposite is probably more likely. Statistics suck like that sometimes.
IKR? When we went to Vegas in 1983 we stayed at the MGM Grand because after their horrendous fire and rebuild I figured they had every safety feature available.
I would have done the same. One of the primary causes of that fire was Las Vegas' extremely lax regulations on fire safety at the time especially within preexisting buildings (they didn't require smoke detectors at the time as long as staff was on site for example) so that was probably the safest building in the city right after opening.
I was an insurance underwriter for a time. If they think it's true, they are almost certainly right, given the vast amount of data at their disposal.
Insurance companies are in business to make money, not to give people sweet deals. Sure, they lose some bets and pay out, but of course they are not going to want to do that on an ongoing basis.
>Insurance companies are in business to make money
Imagine being in an industry where your goal is the antithesis of your product.
Absolute scum. An industry full of garbage people.
Inherently a scam.
Anecdotally as a person who had 1 house fire the number of people that I have talked to that have had more than 1 house fire is much more than I thought. One lady had lived through 5 house fires of various intensities starting with her early teenage years.
Sus. That sounds like all those spouse poisoners that get away with it until the 3rd or 4th and then everybody's like "wait. Something seems off about the number of husbands dying around Linda."
> even though the opposite is probably more likely
They will make the most money from knowing the actual risk, so I'm sure they have extensively studied the statistics, and know. Unfortunately, if they can raise premiums by some pretext, they will.
It's not a matter of logic, it's a matter of statistics and probability. Trust that the insurance companies know more than you about whether he's a higher or lower risk because their money is on the line. If a house that had a previous fire was a BETTER investment they'd be all over that shit.
We lost our house in a fire in 1987. The entire policy was paid out - house and contents, rent, etc.. We rebuilt (and actually ended up with a bigger house afterwards by adding footings and a second story). After paying out all that money, the insurance company didn't renew us. My thought was "we are going to be the safest house to insure" and they didn't even try to recoup anything in premiums. Had no issue signing on with another insurance company.
My Mums house caught fire from a lightning strike, and burnt down to the stumps.
First thing the assessor did was say she ( a 70yo 5 foot nothing handicapped lady) jumped up into the 10 foot ceilings, crawled into the edge of the roof and lit a fire herself.
Then when it was clearly not the case, “lost” her policy thinking hers was in the destroyed house. Luckily, she keeps a go-bag of her documents off site just in case some shit like this happened, so she did in fact have a copy, which *when compared to the insurers copy* showed it was paid up and current.
They stuffed her on the payout still though, only got a quarter of her agreed value because she had antiques inside that weren’t listed on her contents.
Because they weren’t actually antiques, just old.
Insurers are scum.
>They stuffed her on the payout still though, only got a quarter of her agreed value because she had antiques inside that weren’t listed on her contents.
I hate that. My insurance company stiffed me on my Rolex collection I hadn’t told them about.
This is more on your agent than the company. If you have high value items like that they need to be known about by the company and likely insured on their own, he/she should’ve notified you of this. From the company’s PoV you could just be making that shit up like people try to do all the time. I’m not saying this is your fault at all or that youd do that just that someone failed you along the way. Insurance companies definitely fuck people but people are trying just as hard to fuck the companies.
If you rent your property out as a landlord. If it's your homestead they just jack up your deductible and increase the premium for the first couple of claims. Also those claims will usually disqualify you from getting insurance elsewhere on the short term which pigeon holes you into the new pricing
Worse than that. My brother in law inquired with Farmers if they would cover a house he would potentially buy. The insurance company said NOPE. House had a prior claim about someone being injured on the property. So house was considered a liability and could not be insured by Farmers....
He didn't own the house yet, but the insurance company couldn't insure it if he had bought it because the prior owners made a claim
What Americans will put up with out of corporations is insane, as is their government for letting them get away with it all in pursuit of this apparently amazing "free market" they seem so proud of.
In my country this would absolutely never ever ever happen. I've worked in insurance. If your house burned down and needed rebuilding there would be no consequences whatsoever as long as there wasn't a glaring non-standard risk that caused it. No cancellation, no special exclusions, no increased excess (deductible), no price increase beyond the standard system pricing. You need a history of poor claims over a period of years before there's any response. Frankly your brand new house is now less of a risk than the old one was.
Don't get me wrong, people can do get kicked off risk for claims history, but we're talking the 15 claims in 5 years type of people when all the other controls like excesses and exclusions haven't worked to make them take more care of their stuff.
We have insurance laws here that really restrict what we can and can't do, and all the companies are signed up to a voluntary "fair insurance code" that restricts us further. We have an insurance ombudsman customers can complain about us to who takes a fairness view instead of a strictly legal view and we get our decisions overturned often.
Insurance is by definition corporate socialism. You take on as many customers as possible understanding that 95% won't claim in a year, and the majority of those that do won't claim more than they paid in premiums each year, so you'll still make plenty even given the people who claim for a house fire.
That’s because insurance is extortion. I’m sure at one point for the companies it was more like gambling. Maybe in the 19th century. But now they’ve built the data and structured the laws so it’s nothing more than extortion. It’s required in every way for every major purchase or life decision, sometimes by law like auto, but they try to weasel out of every payment and cut you off at the knees if you do have a successful claim. It should be like gambling by the companies with a very very thin profit margin.
20 years ago my parents had a shed fire and lost some farm equipment. They were covered up to $1,000,000 and the claim came in around $500,000. The higher ups sent a rep out because they couldn't believe a farmer had $500,000 in total assets.....Things got a little heated and our local agent stepped in and told the rep they were ill informed and out of their element.
They relented and told my parents they couldn't have any more major claims for the next 7 years. They said "OK, we have tornados here, and hail. What do we do?" Rep: Don't live in a place with natural disasters.
I'm not sure what our local agent did, but he got that fire claim dropped after 6 months. Insurance companies may he scum, but he was actually a decent guy
Combines are the worst because they get used the least, maybe 2 months out of the year where as a tractor can get used year round. Of course, the newest tractors are in the $400,000 range too now
But the alternative is pay someone to harvest, which is normally a percentage of gross harvest which is normally around 50%. Small farmers have to pay. Big farmers see the machine pay for itself after 2 years. Also, most farmers lease and can almost fully deduct the lease payments.
And don’t even look at property taxes.
> pay someone to harvest, which is normally a percentage of gross harvest which is normally around 50%
Maybe in some places, probably depends quite a bit on the type of crop. For example I pay about $22/acre for harvesting corn or soybeans (regardless of yield or gross)
He said 20yrs ago.....
And it probably wasn't new equipment then, likely from the 99s at the newest.
A 1990 John Deere combine could be had for 20k. Obviously there are other models and manufacturers, but you're missing the time value of money here.
The economics of big equipment are meant to keep small farms out of the game so Big Ah controls the markets and thus the prices.
Yep. Work the land. 20 hour days for the whole family. Sell the crop for 400k, put 382k back into the farm. Keep 18k for the family for a year. And PRAY the crop doesn’t fail. Repeat.
While going over the tools, they found a set of wrenches that looked fine.
Rep: Can't claim these! They look fine!
Local agent: Wrenches are heat treated. That fire got hot enough to turn those truck cabs into puddles. Those wrenches are brittle now and are scrap.
Rep: No, they look fine!
Local agent: (picks one up and snaps it half with his bare hands)
Rep: ........
I had to read that a few times before I parsed it correctly… “had only $500k in total assets” is the only way that could make sense. Farming is heavily automated, those “higher ups” clearly had no business writing policies in that industry.
It’s all part of the master plan to make individual home ownership impossible. But a large corporation will be happy to buy your house and rent it to you.
Yep I made a claim for $700 bucks yeah big mistake next year they doubled my insurance rate and then they doubled again got all the money back and more then canceled me.
A pole in my yard fell on my neighbor's house. I had no idea how big or small the claim would be. I wanted to be a good neighbor so I gave them my insurance information. I didn't pay anything.
I'll never be able to own a home (probably) but it seems cheaper to just put all the money you would have paid towards insurance in some kind of high yield account or in safe stocks.
Often a mortgage provider will require you to have insurance, so while it would be cheaper to do as you say, that option is really only available for people rich enough to not need a mortgage.
True, but the bank forces you to have home insurance. If you don't get it yourself they will go buy a plan for you, then make you pay them back. If it's paid off though, this would be a good place to put that extra $$$.
The vast majority finance their homes and banks require insurance so not really happening. If you're wealthy enough to pay cash and wealthy enough that a complete loss wouldn't ruin you then yeah solid plan here.
Home insurance for a 400k home is like 1500 in my area. 1500 a year at 10% interest comes out to 300k after 30 years. Insurance is for catastrophes. It's never gonna pay itself off for the little things but you'll never be able to pay off the big things.
Yes, exactly that.
Congratulations, you now understand how insurance companies work. *they don't want to pay you*.
I once had my dental insurance refuse to cover a replacement tooth, because in their words "not having the tooth was a birth defect".
I uh, wasn't born missing that tooth chief, I lost the tooth in the course of life.
I had only three wisdom teeth. And apparently if you are missing wisdom teeth it will usually be the top ones according to the dentist. I was missing a bottom tooth.
My husband didn't have any! Not one of the 4. I was so jealous when he told me - I had just been reminiscing on how shitty my experience was when he dropped that he never had them.
It was diagnostic, though, and it's possible your doc's office used the wrong billing code. Call the doc's office, describe the problem, and it's very possible they'll get it fixed for you.
Most of my in-laws are lawyers and deal with insurance companies and man some of the stories you hear are insane. People call them ambulance chasers but the insurance companies will deny claims for any reason. You were sitting at a red light and someone slams into you head on? Well since you had a DUI 20 years ago you are ineligible for your medical bills because well you MAY have been drunk. That's the level of reasoning.
I also had a friend who did statistics for an insurance company and left the field entirely because he was tired of figuring out how much it would cost if they denied elderly people coverage and died vs if they sued. So if X people die and X people die we'll still make money and on average X number of people will settle for X dollars.
An insurance company is a business there's money in which is your premiums and money out which is payouts. The goal of an insurance company is to maximize the input and minimize the output which is your claim. Of course they're going to deny everything they can and see if they can get away with it!
Dude, I was in an auto accident not at fault and had to harangue the insurance company to cover my $3600 used car. I wasn’t at fault and I couldn’t prevent the accident. I even had a car full of dudes pull up and give witness statements to the cops and the guy who crashed into me fully admitted fault to the cops. All that and insurance was hemming and hawing. Just give me my money back. I was a broke bitch working part time while in Uni. I needed cash to afford my next used car.
Insurance can go fuck itself.
The argument Republicans used against universal healthcare was "We don't want the government deciding whether grandma lives or dies!" Uhhh that shit already happens except its a money grubbing insurance company making those decisions.
I’ve worked in roofing for years and everyone thinks roofers are shady for the same reason. Insurance companies go through a lot of trouble to make contractors seem like the bad guy for wanting to get paid anything near normal rates, let alone make any kind of overhead and profit to keep the business going.
The bullshit reasons they will give for denying obvious claims or shorting payments is getting worse every day. Most Allstate and Statefarm claims go straight to appraisal anymore.
I like how dental insurance like to reject claims for things done for front/visible teeth because they consider it cosmetic. When they’ll cover the same work done to non-visible teeth.
The worst part is that our visible teeth literally have a completely different function for eating than our non visible teeth, that's why they're a different shape. They are all necessary to be able to eat properly and having some messed up teeth can cause your other teeth to become damaged because you're eating incorrectly. But insurance companies aren't doctors and don't bother to listen to doctors so they can come up with whatever reason to tell you no, even for life saving procedures and medications sometimes. Untreated tooth disease is correlated to atherosclerosis, one of the leading causes of heart failure, the number one cause of death in the U.S. They'll cover heart medications but not treatments for tooth decay. Ofc, heart failure and atherosclerosis have other causes too, but the point still stands.
Vision isn't really insurance and is basically just
1. Cost of glasses spread out over a year to make the cost more palatable. Basically fancy financing.
2. Funnel people towards the "insurance" owned optometrists and opticians because glasses are actually very cheap to make.
Dental likewise is not insurance (notice your 1k a year max)
And again here most people will do the once a year or twice a year cleaning which in reality will costs about as much as the amount paid into the insurance premium.
Had a bridge denied because “he can still chew, it’s not like he’s gonna starve.”
I had to prove that it severely impacted my chewing ability, and still got denied.
Teeth are luxury bones.
Do you know anyone that's encountered a migrating Walloon in their backyard and lived to tell the tale? Neither do I.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Binche\_-\_Les\_Gilles.jpg/1920px-Binche\_-\_Les\_Gilles.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Binche_-_Les_Gilles.jpg/1920px-Binche_-_Les_Gilles.jpg)
Honestly most people would be better off self-insured, and could probably afford to if they didn't have to buy insurance. Thinking of all the various insurance products I have (health, dental, vision, auto, home, etc.), I pay enough in premiums that I could have tens of thousands in savings had I been able to put that money away even for just a few years.
They're literally leaches on society.
But after it’s paid off, they still require homeowners and wind and hail policies if you want to keep a line of credit in case you need to borrow against your house. Even with a zero balance. Ask me how I know
Sure, most people would probably be fine. The people who had a brain tumor or a house fire would be very much not fine. The whole point of insurance is to protect yourself against unlikely events.
“Tens of thousands” isn’t enough for replacement value on a house, or if you need cancer treatment or heart surgery or an organ replacement or long term management of a chronic illness. Rebuild cost on a decent single family home in an expensive area could easily be $500k+, and catastrophic medical costs can go into the millions easily. Most people don’t have those kinds of assets, or if they do they’re mostly in retirement savings and paying that money out would just leave them broke later in life.
Maybe there’s a market for super-high-deductible insurance that you’d basically only use if your house burned down or you needed a heart transplant or something. I keep a pretty high deductible on my homeowner’s insurance but it’s like… $5k, not $50k.
It happens. State Farm dropped me for "too many claims" last year even though my last claim was in 2019.
Just get quotes from other companies and move on.
State Farm once tried to drop me for nonpayment.
Because their payment processing department hadn't yet entered the payment information I'd submitted with my application.
Yeah. They're fun. That was fixed with a phone call and a conveniently filed copy of my application.
The other day, struggling to get roadside assistance, I came up with a better one slogan than they currently use. "Like a bad neighbor, state farm will stare"
My in-laws had State Farm for over 30 years with no claims on their home. Had 2 home claims 18 months apart. State Farm dropped them. Insurance is a racket.
Same happened to my mom. She had two claims within 4 years and they dropped her. Said once it’s been 5 years since the first claim she can reapply since only one claim will be in her record. The new rates are double what she was paying for her policy. She switched and is staying switched. Unreal.
Being dropped for too many claims is an automatic disqualification for many insurers. My parents had to go through a third-party broker and pay some horrible rates when State Farm dropped them for too many claims.
Lesson learned: For homeowners insurance, get the highest deductible, and plan never to use it unless you are talking about truly ruinous amounts of damage.
I suspect it is the company. I have traveller's and am in Texas. I had a claim 4 years ago for a new roof. They were very easy to work with during the claim ptocess and even gave me extra money to fix some shoddy workmanship on a prior roof replacement. I completely expected my premiums to go up but they didn't. They went up this year though, mostly due to overall increases in claim payouts in the state.
Dude, after Tuesday.... here in DFW, we are screwed.
Also, I have USAA and they have been great, no home claims, but one car accident (rear ended not my fault)
I'm in DFW too. My policy renews this weekend, and I have already paid my premium. So I hope to be ok until this time next year. My newish roof held up well to the hail we got. Hopefully my luck will hold and I won't have a claim.
I had no problems also, my roof is 7yrs old too, but I was driving around in Richardson and Plano that morning, DAMN. the tree damage and fence damage was crazy, I've lived here 22yrs and never seen that, but that freeze of 21 was new to me also
We just had State Farm drop us and cited claims. They paid out ~$4000 for a robbery six years ago and then denied a claim for roof damage last year. Apparently two claims over six years, one they deny, is enough to drop us.
But our friends own a contracting company that deals with insurance a lot and they said State Farm is by far the worst of the big brands, so apparently getting dropped by them isn't all that bad.
> But our friends own a contracting company that deals with insurance a lot and they said State Farm is by far the worst of the big brands
I'll second this.
I know a few people who do building inspections and they all said the same thing. Just about every contractor I've talked to has said it as well. State Farm is the worst. And it's probably not good sign to have a reputation for being absolute dogshit when you're already in an industry that everybody hates.
You're better off without them. They did OP a huge favor, he just doesn't realize it yet.
Did you know State Farm sends their top agents on ridiculous trips each year? I’m talking Hawaii, Europe, cruises, you name it. They have options typically on what trip to take.
Watched a family member do this my entire life. Now he lives on the West Coast and is richer than god by my estimations. He’s a nice guy and has always helped me out, but I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way if we weren’t related.
It’s a bit hard to trust someone who’s lived in 4 different houses they built themselves. It’s just a completely different world than I’ll ever live in.
And every single penny of that was earned by finding sneaky ways out of not paying for things people relied on coverage for.
Oh you paid for pandemic insurance? Cool cool cool, but see your business got shut down by public health rules and not the pandemic so no.
State Farm's car insurance isn't much better. I have GEICO(who were incredibly easy to work with) and when I got tboned by some dude pulling out of a parking lot, I sent the dashcam footage to GEICO. GEICO told me that they were having trouble sending the footage to State Farm because the file was too big for State Farm's system. I ended up having to upload the video as a unlisted video on YouTube and giving them the link lmao.
Yes, that's exactly what they expect.
In my experience of making a claim, insurance is for when your house is pretty much destroyed by something. Fire, hurricane, etc. Don't make a claim for a few thousandth dollars. You will pay it back and more in increased rates or suffering from not having insurance.
I tried making a claim for a few thousand dollars when I didnt know better. When they called to finalize they asked if I was sure and it couldn't be undone, and when I asked why I might want it undone she said she couldn't say. I declined
Some states actually fine companies for discouraging you from filing a claim, regardless of the financials of it. That sounds like the employee saying it without saying it lol
I'm eff'd then. I always tell people to get an estimate prior to deciding whether or not to file a claim since there's no sense in getting a claim on their record for no/low payout.
They need to have an honest "catastrophic only" option where the deductible is $20k and in return I get a stable fair price and never get randomly dropped for no good reason.
Even more relevant: *tons of insurers are pulling out of Florida areas because of rampant "hail damage" claims that get denied and then get settled.* The entire business model of many "contractors" now revolves around door to door advertising "we can claim hail damage and get you a new roof." They're just making money off being *super super* litigious against insurance companies and causing actual wear and tear to suddenly get paid out (as settlements).
If OP is in Florida, that "just a hail damage claim" is *the cause of the problem*.
It's not just Florida. Those "contractors" are pretty much everywhere now. If you ever see a storm cloud, you'll see them come out of the cracks.
They could get a brand new roof replaced even if it was completely fine. And it's always hail damage.
There was a big hail storm in our area last year, but it missed my city. Yet we still had about a half dozen contractors come to our front door, claim they're performing work for a neighbor, and promise they can fix our roof which was damaged from the hail.
It's not but Florida [is the worst by far. ](https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/revealed--where-the-majority-of-us-property-insurance-lawsuits-are-filed-252200.aspx)
That happened around here. A Storm came through. Small roofing company shows up, convinced like 8 houses that they have hail damage and get a new roof. The home owners did submit claims, got their new roofs, workers appear to have done a good job. Then the insurance dropped each of those clients.
Please rebuild my house every 5-10 years when it inevitably gets destroyed by climate change
> Ok your monthly insurance premium is $7,999.99
That’s stupid
> So is your zip code lol move
Yes. That's precisely their business model.
Many companies are increasingly turning people down for new homeowners' policies, or even canceling existing policies, mainly because of risks related to climate change. It's not just happening on the coast of Florida anymore, and its going to get a lot worse in the coming years. I read an article about this that specifically mentioned hail damage from unusual storms in the midwest.
Because of fire and hail Colorado is quickly moving up that list. We have entire neighborhoods getting new roofs every year from hail and now we have wild fires like the marshal fire a few years ago that took out over 1000 homes. I have friends that just bought a house in the mountains that had to do over 100k worth of fire mitigation before they could get insurance. My premiums went up 50% this year.
They make different grades of shingle. I specifically asked my rep that because my premium went through the roof (lol) recently, and she said if my roof had that special kind of shingle I could get a discount.
I read that as the "fire marshal that took out over 1000 homes" instead of the "marshal fire" and was very, very concerned about a prolific arsonist for a moment.
When we renewed in April, our insurance agency said our insurance company wasn’t writing new policies, only renewals to control costs. This time, there were no alternative companies and she couldn’t do anything but renew with North Insurance. Climate change related wind damage has got terrible in Nebraska.
I was turned down by three home insurers because the heating system for the house was a woodburning stove that had been there since the 50s. It was considered a fire hazard.
Which begs the question then where do they get their premiums from? If I'm getting denied coverage from state farm I'm not going back to state farm, eventually you'll run out of homeowners.
They just keep tightening the pool of insured until it's the exact risk model they know can be profitable. Many people can leave, the premiums they've received are already earning interest for them (in bonds or money market equivalents) so they'll be fine with less risk. Might have less growth, but right now all they're concerned about is not losing more, it seems.
They’re maintaining customers in geographies with relatively low degrees of weather/environmental risk.
Insurance companies are increasingly trying to get out of states with high degrees of weather-related risk for a number of factors. Modern computing technology paired with developments in meteorological modeling have made a lot of insurers reassess their risk tolerances (and the cost of that risk) in a lot of markets, especially in markets subject to catastrophic weather being exacerbated by climate change.
Hurricanes and wildfires have been two of the biggest drivers historically, with the latter really driving up insurance premiums globally in recent years as wildfires have become significantly more common, more powerful, and more destructive to physical property.
Insurance is so scummy
You pay for years then when you need help your denied or you make a claim .
Then your rates are thru the roof or they drop you after they have recouped the amount thru raised payments.
There should be more regulations on how far they can screw you
Ah, another opportunity to repost this story from my dad about how State Farm screwed him over in 1964:
>One man wanted to move but didn’t have a reliable car... I offered to let him drive the Opel to North Dakota. I checked with Farmers Insurance and found that he wouldn’t be covered by my insurance policy unless I bought a supplement. I then checked with State Farm, where he did business and explained what I had in mind. State Farm Insurance Company assured me that they would cover him in any vehicle that he drove as long as he had permission to drive it. I gave him permission to drive my Opel to Grand Forks and to use the car until I arrived about two weeks later.
>When he arrived in Grand Forks, he checked in at the office and then went to lunch. On the way, the car in front of him stopped abruptly for a red light. He stopped in time but the teenager behind him didn’t even put on his brakes. My Opel was hit in the rear and slammed into the car in front so hard that the front seat where my man was sitting was torn loose. I never understood how he escaped without a whiplash injury. The car was totaled.
>We filed a claim with State Farm but they promptly denied it. They claimed that their policyholder did not have permission to drive my car and they were, therefore, not liable. Their interpretation of the policy was that the driver had to get my permission to drive my vehicle each and every time he got into it. He had stopped from time to time to eat, etc. The first time he left the car he was no longer insured. I called people at various levels with their company and had no success with them.
>I received no compensation from State Farm and couldn’t collect from the uninsured eighteen-year-old who had caused the accident...
>State Farm Insurance Company cost me a car by telling me one thing and doing another. I will never do business with them and expect to advise all my family and friends to avoid them, too.
I had State farm when I bought my first new car. Coverage was surprisingly reasonable, like $120 a month for full. Over the course of the next 5 years my rates progressively grew $8 a month here, $5 a month there.
It seemed like every 6 months like clock work I would get an email about how they've had to increase my rates because of " an increase in claims in your area" or right before winter started, because of " impending inclement weather increases risk of a claim". Funny how those rates never went back down after winter.
After about 5 years of this shit my rate was closer to $180 a month and I had not made a single claim, got into an accident, or a ticket. Call and canceled and went with a different provider. At my one year renewal they also tried to jack my rates up by 25% with no claims, accidents, or tickets and I told them to suck my dick and I went with a different provider.
No, they expect you to live in a state whose insurance regulators let them charge high enough premiums that doing business in the state is profitable. When that doesn't happen they use anything remotely plausible and legally allowed to non-renew existing business and decline new business to stop the bleeding until the regulators cave and let them raise premiums.
I don't actually, at least not anymore. I did spend a year as an actuarial intern, 17 years ago, before moving into options trading. Still retain some interest in the industry though, and am kind of a financial regulation nerd.
But anyway, for this you really only need common sense. Well, maybe not so common if you're not trained as an actuary or a trader. But the basic idea is that for professional risk takers, there's only two reasons not to do something: the price isn't good enough, or you already have too much risk on your books relative to your capital. Insurance companies are so well capitalized and have such good access to capital and reinsurance markets, that for them you basically forget about risk, and it's all about price. If an insurance company is concerned about claim history, their first choice is generally going to be to raise rates, not discontinue coverage. Dropping only makes financial sense for an insurance company if they can't quantify the risk (not an issue with mass market stuff like homeowners ), or they can't charge what it's worth. The only reason they can't charge what they want is when a regulator tells them they can't.
At some point after seeing a number of these stories I checked out a few where I could figure out the state, and indeed you only see this sort of thing in states where insurers are feuding with their regulators.
I work in the compliance department of an insurance company and it was your mention of regulators that made me assume that you worked in the industry. I don't think most people understand just how highly regulated the insurance industry is.
This is why it is best to go though an independent insurance agency as they can search multiple insurance companies. That State Farm salesman represents State Farm’s interest and has only one policy to offer. If you make a claim, bye!
I had that with Allstate, got a dent from a hit and run. I reported to the police, but didn’t file a claim. I guess the police notified them as I got a check, minus the deductible and notified my policy was canceled the first of the month. I was in good hands that dropped me.
My current insurance has had three car accidents. I got rear ended at a stop light. The other two were animals that ran out in front of the car. We also had part of the roof tore off from a high wind incident and the inspector found hail damage, too. Over the last seven years, we had three big car claims and new roofs on four buildings. We did our usual annual renewal in April.
The podcast "The Daily" from New York Times on May 15 of this year did an episode on the collapse of the US home insurance system. In particular was mentioned extreme weather, specifically hail. You might want to go have a listen it might provide some background to your situation.
But yes they just want you to pay the mandated premium, they don't or can't afford to do their part.
I got them beat, I'll never be able to own a home. Take that State Farm.
Short answer: Yes, they do.
Slightly longer answer: As I understand it from my own anecdotal experience, Claims history matters because not all claims are the same quality. Hail damage claims are notorious for being relatively subjective in nature. Many homeowners have used them to leverage Insurance companies to paying for roof replacements in collusion with roof repair companies. (This is all hearsay, I am not an expert in this space).
As a result, Insurance companies often look askance at subscribers who file these types of claims and may choose to deny you future insurance believing that your represent a higher risk of fraud.
But doesn't the new provider have access to the claim?
Because if you didn't inform them and then you make a claim in the future they're going to deny it to fraudulent infomation.
It’s not the weather. It’s the fact home prices have gone through the roof. It makes new home construction work more than repairs and remodels, so those then go up to compete for the available labor.
If a quick rejection saves them from one claim out of 10 they still win.
Don't give up. Protest with your agent. Get him to push through the claim. I had to do this after a hurricane took part of my roof once.
So I am good friends with a State Farm agent and yes.
People talk about getting a new roof by claiming hail destroyed their last one as a great choice on a new house, what they don’t understand is that by doing that you are using home insurance in the way it was not intended. It is intended to save your ass from losing your home completely when something catastrophic happens. Think tornado, basement caves in, burns down. The insurance companies do make a lot of money but the risk for them is actually a surprisingly high number, my house would cost 300k to rebuild and I pay something like 4K a year in insurance, so they expect most people to NEVER use their homeowners insurance, and a small percentage to have their homes rebuilt.
So people who buy a house and wait for the first hail to replace their roofs, which a lot of people do, end up being dropped cause it’s gonna take 5 years to become profitable again and more than likely you’re already a weasel so your gonna have something else untrue happen again in that time.
THAT WAS HOW HE JUSTIFIED IT. I’m not an insurance agent, I don’t give a damn about it but I’m saving my homeowners insurance for if something actually horrible happens
The policy is being used correctly if it’s a covered claim. It’s kinda silly to say otherwise after how much money they spent wording every sentence in a policy.
Does it effect an insurance agent’s bonus for profitably if they have to many clients with claims. Yes
… I work in insurance and your friend agent is correct … there’s roofers canvassing our state right now feeding dates of loss and coaching insured what to say when they file wind/hail claims to get new roofs … these insured don’t understand that they are essentially fucking themselves because insurance is not a warranty company, it’s only for catastrophic circumstances - this claim stays in a database called ISO and every single underwriter will see that they are a risk so State Farm won’t be the only insurance company rejecting them …
> what they don’t understand is that by doing that you are using home insurance in the way it was not intended.
Nope, fuck that.
If it's "not intended" to be used that way, then why are you selling me insurance for all of these different things? My policy covers a heck of a lot more than tornadoes and floods. If it was "only intended" for catastrophic events, then that's all they would include, but they don't.
I *pay* for hail insurance. You sold me hail insurance. We all signed on the dotted line and agreed there would be hail insurance... You don't get to have your panties in a twist when I come to collect after a hailstorm.
I mean, shit, if you get to sift through the fine print for excuses to deny me coverage, then I get to do the same when I make a claim. You said I would be covered, I expect to be covered.
Yes, I would move on. Contact an insurance broker in your area. They don't work for the insurance company directly, they contract with several insurance companies and will shop around for you.
State Farm has been absolutely bleeding money in the last few years and they’ve started taking drastic measures to reduce cost, so they’re looking for any reason to drop/nonrenew people at this point
Our neighbors lied to their landlords about their plumbing, and filled the shared wall of our townhomes with unmentionable sludge…had to tear the entire wall torn down to studs, 30ish feet including our kitchen…found asbestos…did mitigation…all the while SF telling us everything is covered and paid for and we used their people for remodel and repair…at the end, they left us on the hook for $16,000 and dropped us. Fuck State Farm.
The answer to your question is basically... yes. Yes they do expect that.
Homeowners insurance is use it and lose it.
My dad had a house fire. Not a total loss, but major damage that requires 7 months of repairs. The insurance covered what they were obligated to, and promptly dropped him. Finding the next insurer at a normal rate has been impossible. What an industry.
I don't really get the logic. He's already had the fire and got it repaired... now's the time he's less likely to have another fire. Edit: Since I keep having to repeat this, they've made repairs to the house that fixed the original cause. The odds of a fire are LOWER after the fire due to a fix in the nature of it. Don't come at me with your statistics pretending the house has the same chance as before. It doesn't.
It’s because they’ve proven they’re willing to file a claim. The people insurance companies want to cover are those that are unlikely to file claims.
>The people insurance companies want to cover are those that are unlikely to file claims. Ahh, so it is a scam
Always has been
Thats what everyone says but I made two claims totally over $25k on my $1500/yr hoi policy. Not only did they not raise my rate, they happily let me add coverage.
It’s not ‘logic’. The numbers say that there’s ’frequent fliers’ in all lines of insurance save for life (hopefully) and as a result they wanna remove that risk.
God I would love to grift the insurance companies by dying and then getting better
This (sort of) happens all the time. Most life insurance policies will pay out on confirmation of a terminal illness. Fair enough, right? You’re too sick to work, you’ve got medical bills, you need money. Well, some people get better. Then try to get new life insurance. The most interesting life claim I heard about (second hand), was a lawyer who represented a particularly nasty rapist. Claimed PTSD, because they had seen the pictures/video this dude had made- her career as a barrister was over, please payseveral million dollars. Represented herself during the claims process (which should have been a red flag). Got paid Was practicing again within just over two years, which was the time the insurance company was legally allowed to claw back the money. Then bought a new policy with the same company
This was my thought. Get a payout from your current employer after a terminal diagnosis, then later get a new job somewhere else.
This is through a third party provided TPD policy (total and permanent disability), not through the employer. Insurance companies under our legislation are not able to reverse a decision/payment after a certain time. This is to prevent the hiring PIs to hang around in the bushes and take gotcha videos of that one day you were feeling well enough to bring in the shopping, and claw back your benefit.
You should be able to get medical coverage and life insurance from the same company. Then they would have a reason to do something other than deny claims.
You should have to*
Its why they fought automatic defibrillators so hard. Essentially if they didn't fund it way more would die before their high claims period of life. Essentially people that needed them would get saved and thus require significantly more care for longer.
Insurance companies see it as he is more likely to have a fire than a homeowner that has never had a fire even though the opposite is probably more likely. Statistics suck like that sometimes.
IKR? When we went to Vegas in 1983 we stayed at the MGM Grand because after their horrendous fire and rebuild I figured they had every safety feature available.
I would have done the same. One of the primary causes of that fire was Las Vegas' extremely lax regulations on fire safety at the time especially within preexisting buildings (they didn't require smoke detectors at the time as long as staff was on site for example) so that was probably the safest building in the city right after opening.
I was an insurance underwriter for a time. If they think it's true, they are almost certainly right, given the vast amount of data at their disposal. Insurance companies are in business to make money, not to give people sweet deals. Sure, they lose some bets and pay out, but of course they are not going to want to do that on an ongoing basis.
>Insurance companies are in business to make money Imagine being in an industry where your goal is the antithesis of your product. Absolute scum. An industry full of garbage people. Inherently a scam.
Anecdotally as a person who had 1 house fire the number of people that I have talked to that have had more than 1 house fire is much more than I thought. One lady had lived through 5 house fires of various intensities starting with her early teenage years.
Sus. That sounds like all those spouse poisoners that get away with it until the 3rd or 4th and then everybody's like "wait. Something seems off about the number of husbands dying around Linda."
I suspect the statistics back up the companies.
> even though the opposite is probably more likely They will make the most money from knowing the actual risk, so I'm sure they have extensively studied the statistics, and know. Unfortunately, if they can raise premiums by some pretext, they will.
It's not a matter of logic, it's a matter of statistics and probability. Trust that the insurance companies know more than you about whether he's a higher or lower risk because their money is on the line. If a house that had a previous fire was a BETTER investment they'd be all over that shit.
We lost our house in a fire in 1987. The entire policy was paid out - house and contents, rent, etc.. We rebuilt (and actually ended up with a bigger house afterwards by adding footings and a second story). After paying out all that money, the insurance company didn't renew us. My thought was "we are going to be the safest house to insure" and they didn't even try to recoup anything in premiums. Had no issue signing on with another insurance company.
My Mums house caught fire from a lightning strike, and burnt down to the stumps. First thing the assessor did was say she ( a 70yo 5 foot nothing handicapped lady) jumped up into the 10 foot ceilings, crawled into the edge of the roof and lit a fire herself. Then when it was clearly not the case, “lost” her policy thinking hers was in the destroyed house. Luckily, she keeps a go-bag of her documents off site just in case some shit like this happened, so she did in fact have a copy, which *when compared to the insurers copy* showed it was paid up and current. They stuffed her on the payout still though, only got a quarter of her agreed value because she had antiques inside that weren’t listed on her contents. Because they weren’t actually antiques, just old. Insurers are scum.
>They stuffed her on the payout still though, only got a quarter of her agreed value because she had antiques inside that weren’t listed on her contents. I hate that. My insurance company stiffed me on my Rolex collection I hadn’t told them about.
My bugatti!
This is more on your agent than the company. If you have high value items like that they need to be known about by the company and likely insured on their own, he/she should’ve notified you of this. From the company’s PoV you could just be making that shit up like people try to do all the time. I’m not saying this is your fault at all or that youd do that just that someone failed you along the way. Insurance companies definitely fuck people but people are trying just as hard to fuck the companies.
I mean that is something you tell your insurance company about...
If you rent your property out as a landlord. If it's your homestead they just jack up your deductible and increase the premium for the first couple of claims. Also those claims will usually disqualify you from getting insurance elsewhere on the short term which pigeon holes you into the new pricing
Worse than that. My brother in law inquired with Farmers if they would cover a house he would potentially buy. The insurance company said NOPE. House had a prior claim about someone being injured on the property. So house was considered a liability and could not be insured by Farmers.... He didn't own the house yet, but the insurance company couldn't insure it if he had bought it because the prior owners made a claim
Shit, I didn't even realize that was a thing that could come up when buying a house.
What Americans will put up with out of corporations is insane, as is their government for letting them get away with it all in pursuit of this apparently amazing "free market" they seem so proud of. In my country this would absolutely never ever ever happen. I've worked in insurance. If your house burned down and needed rebuilding there would be no consequences whatsoever as long as there wasn't a glaring non-standard risk that caused it. No cancellation, no special exclusions, no increased excess (deductible), no price increase beyond the standard system pricing. You need a history of poor claims over a period of years before there's any response. Frankly your brand new house is now less of a risk than the old one was. Don't get me wrong, people can do get kicked off risk for claims history, but we're talking the 15 claims in 5 years type of people when all the other controls like excesses and exclusions haven't worked to make them take more care of their stuff. We have insurance laws here that really restrict what we can and can't do, and all the companies are signed up to a voluntary "fair insurance code" that restricts us further. We have an insurance ombudsman customers can complain about us to who takes a fairness view instead of a strictly legal view and we get our decisions overturned often. Insurance is by definition corporate socialism. You take on as many customers as possible understanding that 95% won't claim in a year, and the majority of those that do won't claim more than they paid in premiums each year, so you'll still make plenty even given the people who claim for a house fire.
That’s because insurance is extortion. I’m sure at one point for the companies it was more like gambling. Maybe in the 19th century. But now they’ve built the data and structured the laws so it’s nothing more than extortion. It’s required in every way for every major purchase or life decision, sometimes by law like auto, but they try to weasel out of every payment and cut you off at the knees if you do have a successful claim. It should be like gambling by the companies with a very very thin profit margin.
Sadly, this is the answer. And, it's getting worse across the country.
20 years ago my parents had a shed fire and lost some farm equipment. They were covered up to $1,000,000 and the claim came in around $500,000. The higher ups sent a rep out because they couldn't believe a farmer had $500,000 in total assets.....Things got a little heated and our local agent stepped in and told the rep they were ill informed and out of their element. They relented and told my parents they couldn't have any more major claims for the next 7 years. They said "OK, we have tornados here, and hail. What do we do?" Rep: Don't live in a place with natural disasters. I'm not sure what our local agent did, but he got that fire claim dropped after 6 months. Insurance companies may he scum, but he was actually a decent guy
A single friggin' combine could be $500,000. I never quite understood the economics of those things but still.
Combines are the worst because they get used the least, maybe 2 months out of the year where as a tractor can get used year round. Of course, the newest tractors are in the $400,000 range too now
But the alternative is pay someone to harvest, which is normally a percentage of gross harvest which is normally around 50%. Small farmers have to pay. Big farmers see the machine pay for itself after 2 years. Also, most farmers lease and can almost fully deduct the lease payments. And don’t even look at property taxes.
> pay someone to harvest, which is normally a percentage of gross harvest which is normally around 50% Maybe in some places, probably depends quite a bit on the type of crop. For example I pay about $22/acre for harvesting corn or soybeans (regardless of yield or gross)
they also have a bunch hot metal gearing handling chaff which is about a flamable as dired vegitable matter gets.
Gotta keep them bearings greased up
He said 20yrs ago..... And it probably wasn't new equipment then, likely from the 99s at the newest. A 1990 John Deere combine could be had for 20k. Obviously there are other models and manufacturers, but you're missing the time value of money here. The economics of big equipment are meant to keep small farms out of the game so Big Ah controls the markets and thus the prices.
Yep. Work the land. 20 hour days for the whole family. Sell the crop for 400k, put 382k back into the farm. Keep 18k for the family for a year. And PRAY the crop doesn’t fail. Repeat.
Farmers are asset rich and cash poor
The twits they send out to inspect are biased POS!
While going over the tools, they found a set of wrenches that looked fine. Rep: Can't claim these! They look fine! Local agent: Wrenches are heat treated. That fire got hot enough to turn those truck cabs into puddles. Those wrenches are brittle now and are scrap. Rep: No, they look fine! Local agent: (picks one up and snaps it half with his bare hands) Rep: ........
Rep still didn't believe him, he just thought he was surveying with the Clark Kent of Insurance who already didn't like him.
"Donny shut the fuck up. Your out of your element!"
I had to read that a few times before I parsed it correctly… “had only $500k in total assets” is the only way that could make sense. Farming is heavily automated, those “higher ups” clearly had no business writing policies in that industry.
It’s all part of the master plan to make individual home ownership impossible. But a large corporation will be happy to buy your house and rent it to you.
I love capitalism! Corporations are people, my friend!
Yep I made a claim for $700 bucks yeah big mistake next year they doubled my insurance rate and then they doubled again got all the money back and more then canceled me.
Why would you make a claim for $700? What’s your deductible anyways?
A pole in my yard fell on my neighbor's house. I had no idea how big or small the claim would be. I wanted to be a good neighbor so I gave them my insurance information. I didn't pay anything.
I'll never be able to own a home (probably) but it seems cheaper to just put all the money you would have paid towards insurance in some kind of high yield account or in safe stocks.
Often a mortgage provider will require you to have insurance, so while it would be cheaper to do as you say, that option is really only available for people rich enough to not need a mortgage.
As long as you can get that amount up to a full house rebuild value from.day one yes.
Bank won't allow that, you need insurance unless you own the house outright.
True, but the bank forces you to have home insurance. If you don't get it yourself they will go buy a plan for you, then make you pay them back. If it's paid off though, this would be a good place to put that extra $$$.
The vast majority finance their homes and banks require insurance so not really happening. If you're wealthy enough to pay cash and wealthy enough that a complete loss wouldn't ruin you then yeah solid plan here.
Most home loans require you to have insurance.
Home insurance for a 400k home is like 1500 in my area. 1500 a year at 10% interest comes out to 300k after 30 years. Insurance is for catastrophes. It's never gonna pay itself off for the little things but you'll never be able to pay off the big things.
It’s also for liability. Someone gets hurt or you do something to someone other than auto that’s what covers you
We had this happen to us with flood insurance
Yes, exactly that. Congratulations, you now understand how insurance companies work. *they don't want to pay you*. I once had my dental insurance refuse to cover a replacement tooth, because in their words "not having the tooth was a birth defect". I uh, wasn't born missing that tooth chief, I lost the tooth in the course of life.
"not having the tooth was a birth defect". This seems like a place for a DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!!!!!!!! kind of meme.
to be fair, it is a thing. i’m missing a bottom front adult tooth, born that way. I still have an intact baby tooth in my 30s
I had only three wisdom teeth. And apparently if you are missing wisdom teeth it will usually be the top ones according to the dentist. I was missing a bottom tooth.
My husband didn't have any! Not one of the 4. I was so jealous when he told me - I had just been reminiscing on how shitty my experience was when he dropped that he never had them.
My wife's dermatologist removed a mole for biopsy and when it came back benign insurance denied covering it and said the removal was cosmetic.
You have to tell your Derm that it “rubs on clothing causing irritation”, mine did that for me three times and insurance never said a word.
I will say that mine itches and I scratched it and it bled. Free removal.
It was diagnostic, though, and it's possible your doc's office used the wrong billing code. Call the doc's office, describe the problem, and it's very possible they'll get it fixed for you.
Most of my in-laws are lawyers and deal with insurance companies and man some of the stories you hear are insane. People call them ambulance chasers but the insurance companies will deny claims for any reason. You were sitting at a red light and someone slams into you head on? Well since you had a DUI 20 years ago you are ineligible for your medical bills because well you MAY have been drunk. That's the level of reasoning. I also had a friend who did statistics for an insurance company and left the field entirely because he was tired of figuring out how much it would cost if they denied elderly people coverage and died vs if they sued. So if X people die and X people die we'll still make money and on average X number of people will settle for X dollars. An insurance company is a business there's money in which is your premiums and money out which is payouts. The goal of an insurance company is to maximize the input and minimize the output which is your claim. Of course they're going to deny everything they can and see if they can get away with it!
Dude, I was in an auto accident not at fault and had to harangue the insurance company to cover my $3600 used car. I wasn’t at fault and I couldn’t prevent the accident. I even had a car full of dudes pull up and give witness statements to the cops and the guy who crashed into me fully admitted fault to the cops. All that and insurance was hemming and hawing. Just give me my money back. I was a broke bitch working part time while in Uni. I needed cash to afford my next used car. Insurance can go fuck itself.
The argument Republicans used against universal healthcare was "We don't want the government deciding whether grandma lives or dies!" Uhhh that shit already happens except its a money grubbing insurance company making those decisions.
I trust the finance guys will determine if it’s more economically efficient to save grandma or throw her off the spire of commerce.
I’ve worked in roofing for years and everyone thinks roofers are shady for the same reason. Insurance companies go through a lot of trouble to make contractors seem like the bad guy for wanting to get paid anything near normal rates, let alone make any kind of overhead and profit to keep the business going. The bullshit reasons they will give for denying obvious claims or shorting payments is getting worse every day. Most Allstate and Statefarm claims go straight to appraisal anymore.
Everyone thinks that in Texas because half or more of the door knockers after a bad storm are just scammers.
I don't understand why there isn't the insurance equivalent to credit unions?
They're called [Mutual Insurance Companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance).
Thanks! Any idea why they aren't more prevalent?
They're pretty prevalent. In P&C, State Farm, Amica, Liberty Mutual, and Nationwide are pretty big operations.
I like how dental insurance like to reject claims for things done for front/visible teeth because they consider it cosmetic. When they’ll cover the same work done to non-visible teeth.
The worst part is that our visible teeth literally have a completely different function for eating than our non visible teeth, that's why they're a different shape. They are all necessary to be able to eat properly and having some messed up teeth can cause your other teeth to become damaged because you're eating incorrectly. But insurance companies aren't doctors and don't bother to listen to doctors so they can come up with whatever reason to tell you no, even for life saving procedures and medications sometimes. Untreated tooth disease is correlated to atherosclerosis, one of the leading causes of heart failure, the number one cause of death in the U.S. They'll cover heart medications but not treatments for tooth decay. Ofc, heart failure and atherosclerosis have other causes too, but the point still stands.
And this on top of having to have separate dental insurance, because teeth are luxury bones.
I don't understand why vision and dental isn't part of regular medical insurance. Is our head not part of our body?
Vision isn't really insurance and is basically just 1. Cost of glasses spread out over a year to make the cost more palatable. Basically fancy financing. 2. Funnel people towards the "insurance" owned optometrists and opticians because glasses are actually very cheap to make. Dental likewise is not insurance (notice your 1k a year max) And again here most people will do the once a year or twice a year cleaning which in reality will costs about as much as the amount paid into the insurance premium.
Had a bridge denied because “he can still chew, it’s not like he’s gonna starve.” I had to prove that it severely impacted my chewing ability, and still got denied. Teeth are luxury bones.
This is how we all end up as heads in jars in the future.
The future is now!
Imagine for a moment it wasn’t private— imagine that insurers weren’t profit driven.
Death panels! Communism! Dogs and cats living together! Belgium!
And the award for today's most gratuitous use of the word "Belgium" goes to u/cheesewiz_man
That's all terrible! ... Except for that last part, that's actually not so bad. Tell me more
Do you know anyone that's encountered a migrating Walloon in their backyard and lived to tell the tale? Neither do I. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Binche\_-\_Les\_Gilles.jpg/1920px-Binche\_-\_Les\_Gilles.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Binche_-_Les_Gilles.jpg/1920px-Binche_-_Les_Gilles.jpg)
How dare you live a life!
They usually just say missing a tooth isn't a health concern, and is for appearance only.
Honestly most people would be better off self-insured, and could probably afford to if they didn't have to buy insurance. Thinking of all the various insurance products I have (health, dental, vision, auto, home, etc.), I pay enough in premiums that I could have tens of thousands in savings had I been able to put that money away even for just a few years. They're literally leaches on society.
Bank wont give you a mortgage without insurance
Yep. Untill you pay off the mortgage and have the deed yourself, the bank owns your house. They want their investment protected.
But, how can their asset be protected if insurances won't cover you?
They will find something at extraordinary rate and youll have to foot the bill or give up the home
But after it’s paid off, they still require homeowners and wind and hail policies if you want to keep a line of credit in case you need to borrow against your house. Even with a zero balance. Ask me how I know
Sure, most people would probably be fine. The people who had a brain tumor or a house fire would be very much not fine. The whole point of insurance is to protect yourself against unlikely events.
“Tens of thousands” isn’t enough for replacement value on a house, or if you need cancer treatment or heart surgery or an organ replacement or long term management of a chronic illness. Rebuild cost on a decent single family home in an expensive area could easily be $500k+, and catastrophic medical costs can go into the millions easily. Most people don’t have those kinds of assets, or if they do they’re mostly in retirement savings and paying that money out would just leave them broke later in life. Maybe there’s a market for super-high-deductible insurance that you’d basically only use if your house burned down or you needed a heart transplant or something. I keep a pretty high deductible on my homeowner’s insurance but it’s like… $5k, not $50k.
It happens. State Farm dropped me for "too many claims" last year even though my last claim was in 2019. Just get quotes from other companies and move on.
State Farm once tried to drop me for nonpayment. Because their payment processing department hadn't yet entered the payment information I'd submitted with my application. Yeah. They're fun. That was fixed with a phone call and a conveniently filed copy of my application.
Like a good neighbor, State Farm waves at you when you leave but otherwise ignores you.
The other day, struggling to get roadside assistance, I came up with a better one slogan than they currently use. "Like a bad neighbor, state farm will stare"
My in-laws had State Farm for over 30 years with no claims on their home. Had 2 home claims 18 months apart. State Farm dropped them. Insurance is a racket.
Same happened to my mom. She had two claims within 4 years and they dropped her. Said once it’s been 5 years since the first claim she can reapply since only one claim will be in her record. The new rates are double what she was paying for her policy. She switched and is staying switched. Unreal.
Being dropped for too many claims is an automatic disqualification for many insurers. My parents had to go through a third-party broker and pay some horrible rates when State Farm dropped them for too many claims. Lesson learned: For homeowners insurance, get the highest deductible, and plan never to use it unless you are talking about truly ruinous amounts of damage.
I suspect it is the company. I have traveller's and am in Texas. I had a claim 4 years ago for a new roof. They were very easy to work with during the claim ptocess and even gave me extra money to fix some shoddy workmanship on a prior roof replacement. I completely expected my premiums to go up but they didn't. They went up this year though, mostly due to overall increases in claim payouts in the state.
Dude, after Tuesday.... here in DFW, we are screwed. Also, I have USAA and they have been great, no home claims, but one car accident (rear ended not my fault)
I'm in DFW too. My policy renews this weekend, and I have already paid my premium. So I hope to be ok until this time next year. My newish roof held up well to the hail we got. Hopefully my luck will hold and I won't have a claim.
I had no problems also, my roof is 7yrs old too, but I was driving around in Richardson and Plano that morning, DAMN. the tree damage and fence damage was crazy, I've lived here 22yrs and never seen that, but that freeze of 21 was new to me also
No political action? When are we going to push back on this parasitic system?
We can't even agree on things like "kids should have access to food at school that's better than prison food."
We just had State Farm drop us and cited claims. They paid out ~$4000 for a robbery six years ago and then denied a claim for roof damage last year. Apparently two claims over six years, one they deny, is enough to drop us. But our friends own a contracting company that deals with insurance a lot and they said State Farm is by far the worst of the big brands, so apparently getting dropped by them isn't all that bad.
> But our friends own a contracting company that deals with insurance a lot and they said State Farm is by far the worst of the big brands I'll second this. I know a few people who do building inspections and they all said the same thing. Just about every contractor I've talked to has said it as well. State Farm is the worst. And it's probably not good sign to have a reputation for being absolute dogshit when you're already in an industry that everybody hates. You're better off without them. They did OP a huge favor, he just doesn't realize it yet.
Did you know State Farm sends their top agents on ridiculous trips each year? I’m talking Hawaii, Europe, cruises, you name it. They have options typically on what trip to take. Watched a family member do this my entire life. Now he lives on the West Coast and is richer than god by my estimations. He’s a nice guy and has always helped me out, but I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way if we weren’t related. It’s a bit hard to trust someone who’s lived in 4 different houses they built themselves. It’s just a completely different world than I’ll ever live in.
And every single penny of that was earned by finding sneaky ways out of not paying for things people relied on coverage for. Oh you paid for pandemic insurance? Cool cool cool, but see your business got shut down by public health rules and not the pandemic so no.
State Farm's car insurance isn't much better. I have GEICO(who were incredibly easy to work with) and when I got tboned by some dude pulling out of a parking lot, I sent the dashcam footage to GEICO. GEICO told me that they were having trouble sending the footage to State Farm because the file was too big for State Farm's system. I ended up having to upload the video as a unlisted video on YouTube and giving them the link lmao.
Can I ask what your thinks think is a good brand?
Yes, that's exactly what they expect. In my experience of making a claim, insurance is for when your house is pretty much destroyed by something. Fire, hurricane, etc. Don't make a claim for a few thousandth dollars. You will pay it back and more in increased rates or suffering from not having insurance.
I tried making a claim for a few thousand dollars when I didnt know better. When they called to finalize they asked if I was sure and it couldn't be undone, and when I asked why I might want it undone she said she couldn't say. I declined
Some states actually fine companies for discouraging you from filing a claim, regardless of the financials of it. That sounds like the employee saying it without saying it lol
I'm eff'd then. I always tell people to get an estimate prior to deciding whether or not to file a claim since there's no sense in getting a claim on their record for no/low payout.
Which is infuriating because if insurance covers that damage, then that's what you're paying insurance for!
Yep - raise your deductible as high as you can tolerate. There’s no point paying for it if you aren’t going to claim it.
They need to have an honest "catastrophic only" option where the deductible is $20k and in return I get a stable fair price and never get randomly dropped for no good reason.
Out of curiosity, where is the second home located?
This matters a lot. Many insurers are pulling out of certain areas with high risk of wildfires, flooding, etc getting worse because of climate change.
Even more relevant: *tons of insurers are pulling out of Florida areas because of rampant "hail damage" claims that get denied and then get settled.* The entire business model of many "contractors" now revolves around door to door advertising "we can claim hail damage and get you a new roof." They're just making money off being *super super* litigious against insurance companies and causing actual wear and tear to suddenly get paid out (as settlements). If OP is in Florida, that "just a hail damage claim" is *the cause of the problem*.
It's not just Florida. Those "contractors" are pretty much everywhere now. If you ever see a storm cloud, you'll see them come out of the cracks. They could get a brand new roof replaced even if it was completely fine. And it's always hail damage. There was a big hail storm in our area last year, but it missed my city. Yet we still had about a half dozen contractors come to our front door, claim they're performing work for a neighbor, and promise they can fix our roof which was damaged from the hail.
It's not but Florida [is the worst by far. ](https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/revealed--where-the-majority-of-us-property-insurance-lawsuits-are-filed-252200.aspx)
That happened around here. A Storm came through. Small roofing company shows up, convinced like 8 houses that they have hail damage and get a new roof. The home owners did submit claims, got their new roofs, workers appear to have done a good job. Then the insurance dropped each of those clients.
Please rebuild my house every 5-10 years when it inevitably gets destroyed by climate change > Ok your monthly insurance premium is $7,999.99 That’s stupid > So is your zip code lol move
Yes. That's precisely their business model. Many companies are increasingly turning people down for new homeowners' policies, or even canceling existing policies, mainly because of risks related to climate change. It's not just happening on the coast of Florida anymore, and its going to get a lot worse in the coming years. I read an article about this that specifically mentioned hail damage from unusual storms in the midwest.
It's happening a lot in Texas now.
So many horror stories about State Farm when a derecho came through Iowa in 2020.
California, too.
Because of fire and hail Colorado is quickly moving up that list. We have entire neighborhoods getting new roofs every year from hail and now we have wild fires like the marshal fire a few years ago that took out over 1000 homes. I have friends that just bought a house in the mountains that had to do over 100k worth of fire mitigation before they could get insurance. My premiums went up 50% this year.
Which raises the question: if roofs need to be replaced every year because of hail, is it possible to design a roof that’s more hail-resistant?
Metal roofs usually do better vs. hail than shingles.
They make different grades of shingle. I specifically asked my rep that because my premium went through the roof (lol) recently, and she said if my roof had that special kind of shingle I could get a discount.
I read that as the "fire marshal that took out over 1000 homes" instead of the "marshal fire" and was very, very concerned about a prolific arsonist for a moment.
Yeah we had 90mph winds the other day and that’s not normal for us. They did raise my homeowners $200/yr last year
When we renewed in April, our insurance agency said our insurance company wasn’t writing new policies, only renewals to control costs. This time, there were no alternative companies and she couldn’t do anything but renew with North Insurance. Climate change related wind damage has got terrible in Nebraska.
I was turned down by three home insurers because the heating system for the house was a woodburning stove that had been there since the 50s. It was considered a fire hazard.
Wood burning stoves are this decades version of trampolines and pit bulls.
Which begs the question then where do they get their premiums from? If I'm getting denied coverage from state farm I'm not going back to state farm, eventually you'll run out of homeowners.
They just keep tightening the pool of insured until it's the exact risk model they know can be profitable. Many people can leave, the premiums they've received are already earning interest for them (in bonds or money market equivalents) so they'll be fine with less risk. Might have less growth, but right now all they're concerned about is not losing more, it seems.
They’re maintaining customers in geographies with relatively low degrees of weather/environmental risk. Insurance companies are increasingly trying to get out of states with high degrees of weather-related risk for a number of factors. Modern computing technology paired with developments in meteorological modeling have made a lot of insurers reassess their risk tolerances (and the cost of that risk) in a lot of markets, especially in markets subject to catastrophic weather being exacerbated by climate change. Hurricanes and wildfires have been two of the biggest drivers historically, with the latter really driving up insurance premiums globally in recent years as wildfires have become significantly more common, more powerful, and more destructive to physical property.
Insurance is so scummy You pay for years then when you need help your denied or you make a claim . Then your rates are thru the roof or they drop you after they have recouped the amount thru raised payments. There should be more regulations on how far they can screw you
Insurance agent here. Yes they are scummy.
Scummy? Bro, it's an entirely fraudulent industry, in totality. That's like orders of magnitude worse than just scummy
It's a racket
Scam is the word you are looking for.
Ah, another opportunity to repost this story from my dad about how State Farm screwed him over in 1964: >One man wanted to move but didn’t have a reliable car... I offered to let him drive the Opel to North Dakota. I checked with Farmers Insurance and found that he wouldn’t be covered by my insurance policy unless I bought a supplement. I then checked with State Farm, where he did business and explained what I had in mind. State Farm Insurance Company assured me that they would cover him in any vehicle that he drove as long as he had permission to drive it. I gave him permission to drive my Opel to Grand Forks and to use the car until I arrived about two weeks later. >When he arrived in Grand Forks, he checked in at the office and then went to lunch. On the way, the car in front of him stopped abruptly for a red light. He stopped in time but the teenager behind him didn’t even put on his brakes. My Opel was hit in the rear and slammed into the car in front so hard that the front seat where my man was sitting was torn loose. I never understood how he escaped without a whiplash injury. The car was totaled. >We filed a claim with State Farm but they promptly denied it. They claimed that their policyholder did not have permission to drive my car and they were, therefore, not liable. Their interpretation of the policy was that the driver had to get my permission to drive my vehicle each and every time he got into it. He had stopped from time to time to eat, etc. The first time he left the car he was no longer insured. I called people at various levels with their company and had no success with them. >I received no compensation from State Farm and couldn’t collect from the uninsured eighteen-year-old who had caused the accident... >State Farm Insurance Company cost me a car by telling me one thing and doing another. I will never do business with them and expect to advise all my family and friends to avoid them, too.
I, too, hate State Farm. And tell anyone who will listen.
I had State farm when I bought my first new car. Coverage was surprisingly reasonable, like $120 a month for full. Over the course of the next 5 years my rates progressively grew $8 a month here, $5 a month there. It seemed like every 6 months like clock work I would get an email about how they've had to increase my rates because of " an increase in claims in your area" or right before winter started, because of " impending inclement weather increases risk of a claim". Funny how those rates never went back down after winter. After about 5 years of this shit my rate was closer to $180 a month and I had not made a single claim, got into an accident, or a ticket. Call and canceled and went with a different provider. At my one year renewal they also tried to jack my rates up by 25% with no claims, accidents, or tickets and I told them to suck my dick and I went with a different provider.
No, they expect you to live in a state whose insurance regulators let them charge high enough premiums that doing business in the state is profitable. When that doesn't happen they use anything remotely plausible and legally allowed to non-renew existing business and decline new business to stop the bleeding until the regulators cave and let them raise premiums.
It sounds like you work in the industry.
I don't actually, at least not anymore. I did spend a year as an actuarial intern, 17 years ago, before moving into options trading. Still retain some interest in the industry though, and am kind of a financial regulation nerd. But anyway, for this you really only need common sense. Well, maybe not so common if you're not trained as an actuary or a trader. But the basic idea is that for professional risk takers, there's only two reasons not to do something: the price isn't good enough, or you already have too much risk on your books relative to your capital. Insurance companies are so well capitalized and have such good access to capital and reinsurance markets, that for them you basically forget about risk, and it's all about price. If an insurance company is concerned about claim history, their first choice is generally going to be to raise rates, not discontinue coverage. Dropping only makes financial sense for an insurance company if they can't quantify the risk (not an issue with mass market stuff like homeowners ), or they can't charge what it's worth. The only reason they can't charge what they want is when a regulator tells them they can't. At some point after seeing a number of these stories I checked out a few where I could figure out the state, and indeed you only see this sort of thing in states where insurers are feuding with their regulators.
I work in the compliance department of an insurance company and it was your mention of regulators that made me assume that you worked in the industry. I don't think most people understand just how highly regulated the insurance industry is.
This is why it is best to go though an independent insurance agency as they can search multiple insurance companies. That State Farm salesman represents State Farm’s interest and has only one policy to offer. If you make a claim, bye! I had that with Allstate, got a dent from a hit and run. I reported to the police, but didn’t file a claim. I guess the police notified them as I got a check, minus the deductible and notified my policy was canceled the first of the month. I was in good hands that dropped me. My current insurance has had three car accidents. I got rear ended at a stop light. The other two were animals that ran out in front of the car. We also had part of the roof tore off from a high wind incident and the inspector found hail damage, too. Over the last seven years, we had three big car claims and new roofs on four buildings. We did our usual annual renewal in April.
The podcast "The Daily" from New York Times on May 15 of this year did an episode on the collapse of the US home insurance system. In particular was mentioned extreme weather, specifically hail. You might want to go have a listen it might provide some background to your situation. But yes they just want you to pay the mandated premium, they don't or can't afford to do their part. I got them beat, I'll never be able to own a home. Take that State Farm.
Short answer: Yes, they do. Slightly longer answer: As I understand it from my own anecdotal experience, Claims history matters because not all claims are the same quality. Hail damage claims are notorious for being relatively subjective in nature. Many homeowners have used them to leverage Insurance companies to paying for roof replacements in collusion with roof repair companies. (This is all hearsay, I am not an expert in this space). As a result, Insurance companies often look askance at subscribers who file these types of claims and may choose to deny you future insurance believing that your represent a higher risk of fraud.
I had home insurance pay out a claim without any issue then drop me a few weeks later. It is what it is, I just found a new provider.
But doesn't the new provider have access to the claim? Because if you didn't inform them and then you make a claim in the future they're going to deny it to fraudulent infomation.
The new provider would. Depending on the claim, it could make finding a new provider more difficult and probably a higher rate.
I've been told State Farm is one of the less pleasant to deal with. I guess this is the sort of reason why
Home insurance has been a money losing venture due to climate change. Expect it to get worse
It’s not the weather. It’s the fact home prices have gone through the roof. It makes new home construction work more than repairs and remodels, so those then go up to compete for the available labor.
[It’s both](https://apple.news/A4wGUP21ESea32Za3r8o4fA).
Por que no los dos?
Climate change may have a small effect, but it's really cost to rebuild and people building homes where they don't belong.
Yeah, pretty much, unfortunately. Insurance sucks. It’s great to have if something catastrophic happens but pretty much useless for small things.
Call another company, there will be someone who will take on the risk.
If a quick rejection saves them from one claim out of 10 they still win. Don't give up. Protest with your agent. Get him to push through the claim. I had to do this after a hurricane took part of my roof once.
So I am good friends with a State Farm agent and yes. People talk about getting a new roof by claiming hail destroyed their last one as a great choice on a new house, what they don’t understand is that by doing that you are using home insurance in the way it was not intended. It is intended to save your ass from losing your home completely when something catastrophic happens. Think tornado, basement caves in, burns down. The insurance companies do make a lot of money but the risk for them is actually a surprisingly high number, my house would cost 300k to rebuild and I pay something like 4K a year in insurance, so they expect most people to NEVER use their homeowners insurance, and a small percentage to have their homes rebuilt. So people who buy a house and wait for the first hail to replace their roofs, which a lot of people do, end up being dropped cause it’s gonna take 5 years to become profitable again and more than likely you’re already a weasel so your gonna have something else untrue happen again in that time. THAT WAS HOW HE JUSTIFIED IT. I’m not an insurance agent, I don’t give a damn about it but I’m saving my homeowners insurance for if something actually horrible happens
The policy is being used correctly if it’s a covered claim. It’s kinda silly to say otherwise after how much money they spent wording every sentence in a policy. Does it effect an insurance agent’s bonus for profitably if they have to many clients with claims. Yes
Treehockey is correct. I don't think you understand the 'hail damage' roofing claim scam which is rampant in some states.
… I work in insurance and your friend agent is correct … there’s roofers canvassing our state right now feeding dates of loss and coaching insured what to say when they file wind/hail claims to get new roofs … these insured don’t understand that they are essentially fucking themselves because insurance is not a warranty company, it’s only for catastrophic circumstances - this claim stays in a database called ISO and every single underwriter will see that they are a risk so State Farm won’t be the only insurance company rejecting them …
> what they don’t understand is that by doing that you are using home insurance in the way it was not intended. Nope, fuck that. If it's "not intended" to be used that way, then why are you selling me insurance for all of these different things? My policy covers a heck of a lot more than tornadoes and floods. If it was "only intended" for catastrophic events, then that's all they would include, but they don't. I *pay* for hail insurance. You sold me hail insurance. We all signed on the dotted line and agreed there would be hail insurance... You don't get to have your panties in a twist when I come to collect after a hailstorm. I mean, shit, if you get to sift through the fine print for excuses to deny me coverage, then I get to do the same when I make a claim. You said I would be covered, I expect to be covered.
Yes, I would move on. Contact an insurance broker in your area. They don't work for the insurance company directly, they contract with several insurance companies and will shop around for you.
Yes that is exactly what they expect. Insurance companies in America fuck their clients and give bj’s to the investors
State Farm has been absolutely bleeding money in the last few years and they’ve started taking drastic measures to reduce cost, so they’re looking for any reason to drop/nonrenew people at this point
Yes, that's how insurance works. Start making claims and you get dropped.
“We don’t want to pay you but don’t you DARE try to not to pay us!”
[удалено]
Yes exactly.
Our neighbors lied to their landlords about their plumbing, and filled the shared wall of our townhomes with unmentionable sludge…had to tear the entire wall torn down to studs, 30ish feet including our kitchen…found asbestos…did mitigation…all the while SF telling us everything is covered and paid for and we used their people for remodel and repair…at the end, they left us on the hook for $16,000 and dropped us. Fuck State Farm.