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Just the other night I looked down and noticed my 1.2 karat diamond was missing out of the setting on my ring. I didn’t have it listed on our home owners. I can’t find the receipt either from when my husband purchased it. Can I claim it? Or is my husband and I just out 5,000?

Answer:

If you didnt’ purchase an extra floater policy on your HO policy, than they probably wont give you more than 00. Plus there’s usually still a deductible.

In other words– not worth it. YOu need to have them notified of any valuables over a certain dollar amount.

It fell out of my boyfriends pocket in a taxi and have tried to call today, but it is switched off. Was wondering if insurance would pay for it?
Have never made an insurance claim. What is the deductable?

Answer:

Call the taxi company and find out if the phone was turned in by the driver. The taxi company should be able to determine what car you were in.

As far as homeowners insurance goes….unless the phone is scheduled on the policy (and it’s probably not) there is no coverage for a lost phone.

If you claim it stolen….you have to file a police report.

Your deductible will apply. Usually a deductible is 500 or 1000. (using 500 as an example) the deductible means that your boyfriend agrees to pay the first 500 of damage if the insurance company pays after that.

So….if the phone is 0 and the deductible is 0 – the insurance company will not pay out anything…..the loss does not exceed the deductible.

If the phone is 0 and the deductible is 0 – then the insurance company will only pay 0.

Odds are, the value of the phone is less than the deductible.

my house was broken into (we’re in the middle of remodeling it) and my list of items was “over” the amount small claims handles. So they’re refering me to the local agent.

Answer:

Are they sending an agent or an adjuster? An adjuster is a professional who determines the amount of damages that you suffered and how much your insurance will cover. The agent is the person who sells insurance. The license to be an agent is different from a license to be an adjuster. It would seem possible that a person could have both but not too likely. (A good adjuster is so in demand, that he wouldn’t have the time to be an agent too. In addition, sending your agent to look at your claim might be somewhat of a conflict of interest.)

Whenever a claim is over a certain amount, they want to have an adjuster come look at the situation to determine a fair and reasonable settlement. You do not have to accept the first offer they make if you feel that they are setting too low of a price. You can negotiate for a higher settlement, but you often won’t get as much as you think you should. Claims adjusters have training to make determinations as well as reference materials to check the costs related to the claim. (In the case of storm damage to a house, he has to know not only the cost of the materials needed to do the work, but also how much labor on such a job costs in that area.) Most adjusters try to be fair.

Sometimes they have to handle claims differently than usual. One time, we lost a lot of shingles from our roof in a bad windstorm. (The whole west side of the house.) Usually, in a claim of that size, they would send an adjuster to determine the loss. However, since there were so many claims in the area due to the storm, they realized that most claims like ours would be real and that there were too many to send adjusters out on all of them. They had us take photographs of our roof and mail them the photographs. The adjusters could look at the photos and make a preliminary adjustment from their desk in the office. Since we live in the same city as the home office of the company, after making the prelim adjustment, an adjuster from the home office could plan a route around the city. He would drive from location to location and determine if the photo sent in matched what he saw. He could also determine if there were some places that needed more follow up in case he saw something looked like it might need more work than the home owner had thought it would. It saved them a lot of time in taking care of a lot of storm damage fast. For anyone who was claiming a lot of damage (more than just roofing) from the storm, they had to go to the site to make a thorough examination to make a repair estimate. (And the adjuster could look for hidden damage that the home owner didn’t even know existed. He might end up with more than he expected in some cases.)

In your case, you didn’t have a natural cause like a storm that was reported all over the news. You had a break in. The police have to examine the scene for evidence. The insurer also wants to see for itself just what happened. Therefore, the insurer will send the adjuster out. They want to be fair to you and they want to be fair to everyone else An adjuster would be aware of some to look for that might have been damaged that you aren’t even aware of. Just because most people are honest and you most likely are part of the most people, they want to know that you are. If they just paid on every claim submitted by everyone without checking the claim out, there would be criminals out there making money off of insurance by making false claims. They are protecting themselves and everyone who has insurance with them from the possibility of fraud.

This is just standard in cases where the claim is more than a certain amount. The way they did our roof a few years ago was a short cut that was reasonable in that case. There is no short cut in theft. If it exceeded their set limit for being a small claim, they have to go strictly by the book.

In addition, when settling your claim, you need to understand if you got your insurance on an actual cash value basis (ACV) or on a replacement cost basis. You also need to know what your deductible is. Here is a made up example of how ACV and replacement cost work.

The price you paid new for items x, y and z that were lost was ,500. Your deductible is 0.

Case #1 You have ACV basis coverage. If you had sold x, y and z in working order used at the time you had lost them, you would have gotten ,587. In that case, you would receive ,087 on your claim. The actual cash value (value as used merchandise) of the items less the deductible. If your refrigerator was just purchased new recently, it would be valued basically with its full price, but a 20 year old refrigerator will be depreciated a great deal.

Case #2 You have replacement cost basis coverage. The current cost to replace x, y and z with new merchandise that is the most like what x, y and z were is ,521. You will receive ,021. If you have replacement cost, you will get brand new merchandise that may have better features than the old. If a refrigera

Even if you work with full-commission (3%) agents, they just work with their favorite title insurance companies. They don’t comparison shop the best deal for you.

How do you find out the quality of service of a title insurance company? How do you find out all the fees that the title insurance will cost you?

Title insurance is to ensure that your home has a free and clear title and no one has a lien or a claim on it. It’s critical and requires professional expertise. You don’t want to do it yourself, and cannot afford to be self-insured. You don’t want to find out by surprise that your home isn’t yours after you’ve paid your down payment and all the closing costs. Title insurance ensures that this never happens, assuming that the insurance company does its job.
Is anyone familiar with the California laws? Is it always the seller’s agent who chooses the title insurance company? Do the laws require that all title insurance companies do pretty much the same things to check the title?

Answer:

title insurance is cut and dry so to speak,

im going thru a large claim on mine right now,
they are really terrible to deal with.
they all have to provide the same coverage, and service as required by the state,
the fees they charge are usually state regulated also, they all charge the state regulated amount, ( like Gap insurance for a car ) its always the same for everyone.
a trip to the register of deeds will save you the money, ( I wish I would have )
if its not on the record the title insurance wont cover it anyway.

I had an easement the title insurance didnt find, and now the easement holder came in and is doing as he wishes all over our property, tearing down trees, removing a building,

It was on record at the court house, and the title insurance still dosen’t want to pay.

Answer:

It takes about five minutes to make the claim report.

The actual claims adjustment, depends on what happens – theft claims typically take at least three to four weeks, because the adjuster needs a copy of the police report.

my mother filed a claim recently, shes done all the insurance company asked of her. In new york state does an insurance provider have a legal time limit requirement to settle and or pay claim…thanx

Answer:

Hi, I found a couple of termites in my house and can I just let them destroy the house so that I could claim the insurance or is that not allowed?

Answer:

Nope, you would be out of a house. Why would you want to live in a place that is infested by bugs?

We had a hail storm and it put holes in my vinyl gutters and I think it probably did damage to my roof , I could use some new siding but don’t know if they will cover it. I’m wondering what happens when I place a claim ,thanks

Answer:

you need to get an estimate on repairs and then call your agent to find out what your deductible is if you don’t know. if your damage is less than or just above your deductible amount then you will need to pay it yourself. if its more and you need to file the claim, then call your agent or companies direct claim line to report it. they will send an adjuster out to look at the damages and then he will figure what will be paid and how much. you will then get a check for repairs minus your deductible.

We filed a claim When we had a bad storm and lighting hit our storage building, it burned to the ground. It was a total lost. About a month later we received a letter from our agent stating that the company would not write the policy and gave us no reason as to WHY? They did pay half on the building and half on the contents of what it cost us to build back. This was due to an act of God. Can they cancel on us???

Answer:

Well, ask the people in San Diego who lost their homes due to on of the two raging wildfires that burned through here or those in the gulf who were hit by tornadoes, storms but not the actual hurricanes and you will find the answer is yes. They can cancel or not renew the policy for even smaller claims than those. BTW, my policies all exclude acts of God, war, disaster or nature. This is why many State Attorney’s have filed suit against the insurance companies…

For broken tiled floor?
I opened the fridge the other day and a bottle fell onto the floor and smashed up my kitchen tiles. They are cemented down so cant just replace the one tile.
I wondered whether i could claim for a new floor through home insurance?
Thank you
Stacey x

Answer:

That’s really not the sort of thing that you should use your homeowners insurance for. It’s a small dollar value, so it probably wouldn’t meet your deductible anyhow, meaning you would pay for it out of pocket anyway.

A claims adjustor who saw the damage would just have the damaged portion repaired, most likely a good handyman would be able to chisel out the broken area and replace it.

Making a lot of smallish claims is a good way to get your premium raised and is also a factor when companies weed out policies they don’t want, they could non-renew you for an accumulation of claims.