This seemed to be some good insurance knowledge.

[teal'c]

Especially in regards to a lot of the equipment and media many of us have in house.
I'm not going to post the link because i had to edit out some swearing, but it was a reply to a reddit post titled "Our family of 5 lost everything in a fire yesterday. Would appreciate advice for the rebuilding ahead."


Hey OP... I used to be the guy who worked for insurance companies, and determined the value of every little thing in your house. The guy who would go head-to-head with those fire-truck-chasing professional loss adjusters. I may be able to help you not get screwed when filing your claim.

Our goal was to use the information you provided, and give the lowest value we can possibly justify for your item.

For instance, if all you say was "toaster" -- we would come up with a cheap-as- $4.88 toaster from Walmart, meant to toast one side of one piece of bread at a time. And we would do that for every thing you have ever owned. We had private master lists of the most commonly used descriptions, and what the cheapest viable replacements were. We also had wholesale pricing on almost everything out there, so really scored cheap prices to quote. To further that example:

• If you said "toaster - $25" , we would have to be within -20% of that... so, we would find something that's pretty much dead-on $20.01.
  
• If you said "toaster- $200" , we'd kick it back and say NEED MORE INFO, because that's a ridiculous price for a toaster (with no other information given.)
  
• If you said "toaster, from Walmart" , you're getting that $4.88 one.
• If you said "toaster, from Macys" , you'd be more likely to get a $25-35 one.
• If you said "toaster", and all your other kitchen appliances were Jenn Air / Kitchenaid / etc., you would probably get a matching one.
• If you said "Proctor Silex 42888 2-Slice Toaster from Wamart, $9", you just got yourself $9.
  
• If you said "High-end Toaster, Stainless Steel, Blue glowing power button" ... you might get $35-50 instead. We had to match all features that were listed.

I'm not telling you to lie on your claim. Not at all. That would be illegal, and could cause much bigger issues (i.e., invalidating the entire claim). But on the flip side, it's not always advantageous to tell the whole truth every time. Pay attention to those last two examples.

I remember one specific customer... he had some old, piece of projector (from mid-late 90s) that could stream a equally piece of consumer camcorder. Worth like $5 at a scrap yard. It had some oddball resolution it could record at, though -- and the guy strongly insisted that we replace with "Like Kind And Quality" (trigger words). Ended up being a $65k replacement, because the only camera on the market happened to be a high-end professional video camera (as in, for shooting actual movies). $65- -thousand-dollars because he knew that loophole, and researched his .

Remember to list every -- even the most mundane you can think of. For example, if I was writing up the shower in my bathroom:

• Designer Shower Curtain - $35
• Matching Shower Curtain Liner for Designer Shower Curtain - $15
• Shower Curtain Rings x20 - $15
• Stainless Steel Soap Dispenser for Shower - $35
• Natural Sponge Loofah - from Whole Foods - $15
• Natural Sponge Loofah for Back - from Whole Foods - $19
• Holder for Loofahs - $20
• Bars of soap - from Lush - $12 each (qty: 4)
• Bath bomb - from Lush - $12
• High end shampoo - from salon - $40
• High end conditioner - from salon - $40
• Refining pore mask - from salon - $55

I could probably keep thinking, and bring it up to about $400 for the contents of my shower. Nothing there is "unreasonable" , nothing there is clearly out of place, nothing seems obviously fake. The prices are a little on the high-end, but the reality is, some people have expensive -- it won't actually get questioned. No claims adjuster is going to bother nitpicking over the cost of Lush bath bombs, when there is a 20,000 item file to go through. The adjuster has other to do, too.

Most people writing claims for a total loss wouldn't even bother with the shower (it's just some used soap and sponges..) -- and those people would be losing out on $400.

Some things require documentation & ages. If you say "tv - $2,000" -- you're getting a 32" LCD, unless you can provide it was from the last year or two w/ receipts. Hopefully you have a good paper trail from credit/debit card expenditure / product registrations / etc.

If you're missing paper trails for things that were legitimately expensive -- go through every photo you can find that was taken in your house. Any parties you may have thrown, and guests put pics up on Facebook. Maybe an Imgur photo of your cat, hiding under a coffee table you think you purchased from Restoration Hardware. Like... seriously... come up with any evidence you possibly can, for anything that could possibly be deemed expensive.

The fire-truck chasing loss adjusters are evil sons of , but, they actually do provide some value. You will definitely get more money, even if they take a cut. But all they're really doing, is just nitpicking the ever-living- out of everything you possibly owned, and writing them all up "creatively" for the insurance company to process.

Sometimes people would come back to us with "updated* claims. They tried it on their own, and listed stuff like "toaster", "microwave", "tv" .. and weren't happy with what they got back. So they hired a fire-truck chaser, and re-submitted with "more information." I have absolutely seen claims go from under $7k calculated, to over $100k calculated. (It's amazing what can happen when people suddenly "remember" their entire wardrobe came from Nordstrom.)

 

[www.records]

Good info

 

[peerson]

I agree! Thanks for posting this

 

[xero-D-hero]

BTDT....

Also many here should note that there are often limits on coverage for electronics gear.
As such a rider policy may be needed for full coverage of those sort of items.

Bret P.

 

[Wildcat]

I remember when my ex's dad's garage was broken into and all of his tools were stolen. As one example, he had a couple of socket sets. The insurance company didn't pay for a set...they paid out for each individual socket in the set. So in other words, they overpaid on the claim, since anything in a set was priced out individually. I am sure they plugged up loopholes like these. It was a nice windfall and he was able to replace everything (as the windfall made up for things he forgot about and didn't claim). But I doubt that would fly today.

I have insurance on our "stuff" but every day, I'm wondering if we have enough coverage even though I was very generous in my calculations. My biggest worry is about things that cannot be replaced, that may have little to no monetary value.

 

[gadget73]

My biggest worry is about things that cannot be replaced, that may have little to no monetary value.

thats the kind of stuff you can never really replace. Random example, I have my granddad's razor. Its nothing special and could be replaced for very little money, but it would never have that same value to me.

 

[Wildcat]

thats the kind of stuff you can never really replace. Random example, I have my granddad's razor. Its nothing special and could be replaced for very little money, but it would never have that same value to me.

Oh definitely. I have things my mother made over the years (she was an artist); none are replaceable since the artist hasn't been around for 25 years now. Photo I haven't scanned yet. Accomplishments from school. Recordings I haven't yet digitized and stored in the cloud. Some of the things my dad used to display on the bar in the basement. None of these have value to anyone but me.