Our Philosophy
The background for our philosophy : When you do file a claim, the insurer will dispatch an adjuster to your loss that is hired and paid by the insurer. While most insurance company adjusters operate in a reasonable fashion, the fact still remains that they are compensated by the insurer and therefore their primary accountability lies with their employer. Further, the adjuster that is dispatched from your insurer is usually armed with one of the many “pricing” programs that is purportedly a fair representation of the market rates for materials and labor in your area. This software program is how the insurer’s adjuster arrives at the estimate of your damages. The first great flaw with most of these pricing programs is that they rely on “reported” or “surveyed” rates to base their pricing structures. Unfortunately, many of the “reported” or “surveyed” prices come from reports or surveys that are collected only from the primary users of that particular program. Who are the primary users of these programs?– the insurance companies! An second flaw with many of the pricing programs, is that they set rates for items universally. For example a program may dictate a market price for sheetrock installed at 96 cents per square foot. The problem with this universal pricing is that along with everything else in life, including insurance premiums, unit pricing is based on volume consumed. You, the insured, will rarely pay the same price per square foot for 50 square feet of sheetrock as you pay for 1,000 square feet and usually the price rate used in these programs is the lowest available.
Our philosophy is simple. If you are a policyholder with a “replacement” cost policy, you entered into a contract with your insurer based on “a promise” to pay the acutal “replacement cost” when you suffer damage that is covered under your policy. Further, you as the insured have a right to expert assistance by someone who has your best interests in mind and is capable of leveling the playing field.
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