https://blog.plover.com/brain/insurance.html The Universe of Discourse Mark Dominus (Tao Min Fri, 31 Dec 2021 Xiu ) mjd@pobox.com Horrible insurance kerfuffle gone good [TOP] I doubt this story will be of interest to anyone but me, but it's the best thing that happened to About me me this month. RSS Atom Back in October I bought a new house and arranged a homeowners' insurance policy for it. The main 12 recent entries purpose of such a policy is that if your house is destroyed by fire or some other calamity, the Horrible insurance homeowners' insurance people will arrange to kerfuffle gone good build you a new house in the same place. If you A little more about have a mortgage, the lienholder will require a the pedagogy of policy as a condition of the mortgage, but it's a what it means to be good idea to have one even if you aren't required transcendental to. Usually the rebuild-the-house coverage is Consecutive bundled with theft insurance, in case your house squareful numbers is robbed, and personal injury insurance, in case In simple English, someone slips on your sidewalk. what does it mean to be I called the company that had brokered the policy transcendental? for my previous house, and they assigned me to What is not Brenda Wyman. Brenda presented me with one portable option: Company S. I said I was surprised at how I said it was high Company S's premium was. Brenda told me that obvious but it was Company S had by far the lowest premium. I asked false if she had called the company that provided the Stack Exchange is a insurance for my previous house. She said she good place to had. I asked how much their quote was for. She explain initial and told me, and the number was indeed larger than terminal objects in the quote from Company S. At this point I was the category of tired of trying to extract information from sets Brenda and let it drop. Annoying Kuratowski pair projection The insurance coverage is contingent on the formula insurer doing an inspection of the house to make Not the expected sure it is not a hazard and is not about to fall examples of down. Company S did their inspection in nonbinary mid-November, but didn't notify me of the results characters in until December. On December 6, they sent Brenda a fiction letter: they had found seven things wrong with History of Science the house. I had until January 7 to fix them or Shitcommenting they would cancel my insurance. One way in which Wiener pairs are I was upset by this. Some of the seven things simpler than were minor, but two were not. The company wanted Kuratowski pairs major roof work done. I was already in Let the computer do negotiations with roofers, but it might take me the work more than 31 days to select the roofer, sign the contract, and schedule and complete the work. Archive: There were major holidays coming up: roofers wouldn't work on Christmas. Roofing work is 2021: JFMAMJ contingent on dry weather and I don't control the JASOND weather. Company S also demanded that I tear up 2020: JFMAMJ and repour the cement in the alley that adjoins JASOND the house. 2019: JFMAMJ JASOND I could think of three ways to proceed: 2018: JFMAMJ JASOND 1. Attempt to schedule the work and get it all 2017: JFMAMJ done by January 7 JASOND 2. Attempt to negotiate with Company S to get an 2016: JFMAMJ extension, should it be impossible to JASOND complete all the work by January 7 2015: JFMAMJ 3. Arrange a new insurance policy with a JASOND different company 2014: JFMAMJ JASOND I started work on (1) and (2) and made a to-do 2013: JFMAMJ item to proceed with (3) in a week depending on JASOND how things looked. 2012: JFMAMJ JASOND For (2) I immediately wrote back to Brenda to 2011: JFMAMJ point out that the demands were unreasonable and JASOND might be impossible to satisfy. Was there any 2010: JFMAMJ flexibility in the date? I also asked if there JASOND was a way to contact Company S directly. 2009: JFMAMJ JASOND Brenda's reply was reassuring. She claimed that 2008: JFMAMJ Company S wouldn't require that all work be JASOND completed by January 7. It was enough for them, 2007: JFMAMJ she said, that forward progress was being made, JASOND and if I had signed contracts by January 7 that 2006: JFMAMJ would satisfy them. JASOND 2005: OND Nevertheless I contacted Company S's customer service number, hoping to get something in writing. The customer service guy was brief and ------------------- to the point: they didn't care that the holidays Subtopics: were coming up. They didn't care that I had only been given a few weeks to fix major items. They Mathematics 203 wouldn't give me an extension. But I could write Programming 80 to the inspections department and see if they Language 72 said anything different. Misc 52 Book 45 I emailed the inspections department to see what Tech 37 they said, laying out the situation in detail: I Oops 28 had already addressed two of the seven items; I Cosmic Call 25 had verbal agreements to get three more finished Unix 23 by January 7, and I was working on the two major Haskell 22 items. But I couldn't be certain the work would Physics 21 be complete by January 7 and if they insisted, I Etymology 20 would have to obtain coverage elsewhere. The Law 16 inspections department had promised to reply in Perl 16 24 to 48 business hours. [mjd-univer] Meanwhile I continued to talk to contractors Higher-Order Perl about the major plumbing, cement, and roofing Blosxom work that Company S had demanded. Comments disabled I had emailed the inspections department midday Wednesday December 8 and been expecting a reply later that week. I didn't hear back from them until late Tuesday the 14th. At first I was only somewhat irritated, but then I realized: they had only promised a response in 24 to 48 business hours. There are only 40 business hours in a week, and they had replied 36 business hours after receiving my message, well before their promised deadline. That was even more irritating than when I thought they had replied late. But at least their reply was brief, clear and direct: We are unable to offer an extension. Please place the insured home with another carrier by 1/07/22. I reported to Brenda: I talked to Company S about this, to see if there was any leeway on the deadline. They told me there wasn't and suggested I should get different insurance. Please hook me up with someone else. Brenda continued to insist that Company S would give me an extension: When I discussed with Company S, they advised me that as long as you are making progress with this and show contracts they could extend it. I would need this information to contact them with it. I was not going to trust Brenda's say-so when I had it from the horse's mouth that the situation was the exact opposite. What if I proceeded with Brenda's plan, provided the documentation she suggested, and then on January 7, Company S refused to give me the hoped-for extension that they had already told me they would refuse to give me? Even Brenda had only said "they could extend it", not "they would extend it". I said: That's the opposite of what they told me. I got email yesterday from Company S that says: We are unable to offer an extension. Please place the insured home with another carrier by 1/07/22. If it's sufficient for me to be making progress and show contracts, I want it in writing from them this week. Brenda did not seem to appreciate the situation, that on one hand I had a vague, secondhand suggestion that I could maybe get an extension, and on the other hand I had a clear commitment directly from Company S to cancel my policy on January 7. Brenda talked to Company S again but did not get any actual commitments. Her contact said: Hello Brenda, you can have the insured call customer service to discuss the issues. The best way to resolve this is to email photos of any corrections made to the inspections inbox for review... I reminded Brenda that I had already spoken to customer service and they had told me they would not negotiate, and that I similarly had a written reply from their inspections group saying the same thing. I also pointed out: I emailed them at 1PM on Wednesday Dec 8th and didn't hear back until the following Monday. That is not an effective way to communicate when the situation is changing day-to-day as it is here. Brenda and I were also having some difficulty communicating, it seemed: You can send me the things you have right now and I can contact them and see what can be done. I understand your frustration with this, but when it comes to what they are wanting I am also stuck trying to resolve it for you but I do have to present the proof of repairs for them to even consider. I made one more attempt to communicate with Brenda. I summarized the progress I had made and when work was scheduled. I told them all this in the email I sent their inspections department last week, and their reply was "we are unable to offer an extension. Please place the insured home with another carrier by 1/07/22." So that is what I am asking you to do. To me that seems clear, direct, and unambiguous. But not to Brenda, who said: If you can change those verbal agreements to actually written up agreement on their letterhead that would show you are doing it but can't be done til after 1/7. Especially since you put a deposit down with the cement person. Definitely send me the pictures of the trees trimmed and vines removed. Brenda wanted me to contact the barely-literate cement guy and have him write up the agreement on "letterhead" (that he surely didn't have), and for what? To send to Company S, which had already told me twice that they didn't want it. That seemed to be the end of that road. I hate repeating myself and I wasn't going to ask Brenda a third time. If Brenda wouldn't find me another insurer, I would find one without her. My first couple of tries didn't bear fruit but the third one did. The new agent (not Brenda or anyone who works for Brenda's company) told me: 1. Brenda had arranged too much insurance for me; I was paying to have the Company S agree to spend up to $X to rebuild my house, but rebuilding the house couldn't possibly cost more than $ 2/3 X. 2. Most homeowners' insurance companies would have given me a six-month grace period to make the necessary repairs. Company S was notoriously inflexible. The new guy was able to arrange new coverage for me with an insurance premium 15% lower than the one Brenda had gotten me. I notified Company S the next day that I was ending my coverage and wanted a refund. (To their credit, this was completely painless, and the refund check arrived timely.) I didn't bother to inform Brenda. Maybe I'll hear from her again, maybe I won't. She has all the information she needs to figure out what happened, if she cares to. Okay, why have I written down this long story? Because it made me really happy. It is a distillation of my growth as an adult. Faced with a difficult and complicated situation, I was able to deal with it constructively and timely. I didn't crawl under the covers. I didn't procrastinate. I didn't take the superficially easy way out, of crossing my fingers, hoping that Brenda was right and that I wouldn't get screwed on January 7. I pursued a three-prong approach. I'm bad at long-term planning, good at short-term improvising, and the key to being a successful improviser is to leave as many options open for as long as you can. I did that this time. When Brenda wouldn't help me find new insurance, I found it myself. But if I hadn't found new insurance, maybe it would have turned out Brenda was right and I could get an extension. Or even if Brenda had been wrong, maybe I could have completed the repairs by January 7. There were a lot of ways this could have gone, a lot of ways it could have turned out okay, and I pushed everything forward in parallel until I found a way through. I executed my plans timely. The whole business was over in less than two weeks: I got the inspection warning from Company S on December 6, and canceled their policy effective the 17th. There's a decent chance that, even had I not been able to get a new insurance policy, I would have been able to complete the repairs before the deadline; two of the seven items had been taken care of and four more scheduled on or before January 7. The cement guy demolished the old alley on December 21 and poured the new one on the 23rd. (The roof stuff is going to be more complicated and once I got my new insurance with the six-month grace period I stopped worrying about it.) And I didn't lose my temper. I didn't insult Brenda or the innocent Company S customer service rep. I wasn't sarcastic. I didn't whine. I solved an adult problem like an adult! I was grinning about this for several days around December 17-20. This is the sort of thing that only a middle-aged person can get excited about, but I like middle age, which has been really good for me in so many ways. I wonder, what would my 22-year old self have thought about this story? Would he have been surprised? Amazed? Astounded? (Horrified?) I don't think he would have forseen this degree of competence. Happy new year, readers. May the coming twelve months be better for you than the previous. [ Addendum: The insurance agent's name is not actually 'Brenda Wyman'. Absolutely nothing in this post has any connection with any real person with that name. ] [Other articles in category /brain] permanent link