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.
Best reply by sassy2:
The adjuster will visit your home and take a look and a list of your claim items. You will be asked for receipts or proofs of purchase.
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why would my home owners insurance send me to the local agent for my claim?
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 $2,500. Your deductible is $500.
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 $1,587. In that case, you would receive $1,087 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 $4,521. You will receive $4,021. If you have replacement cost, you will get brand new merchandise that may have better features than the old. If a refrigera
Because they have adjusters that handle small claims and the amount you have claimed exceeds that adjusters authority. Therefore, the claim has been referred to an adjuster that handles claims like yours.
It’s normal procedure
You would only have something to worry about if your claim is fraudulent or you have inflated the value of your claim. Because insurance fraud is a crime and it is taken very seriously.
They should be sending you to a local ADJUSTER, not a local agent. The adjuster will have a higher limit of authority, to write the check.