If you have frozen, busted pipes and damage in your home you will be dealing with your insurance company. Amy Davis says how you handle that claim right from the very start matters.
Attorney Eric Dick joined Amy for an episode of Ask Amy to go talk about storm damage and your insurance claims.
Don’t guess or speculate when asked questions about home damage
Dick says when an insurance agent first comes to your home to check out the damage be honest but don’t speculate or try to answer questions that you don’t actually know.
“That always happens,” said Dick. “There’ll be stuff that is damaged, that looks like fresh damage, and the person just doesn’t know. And they feel pressure to say, ‘Oh that’s old’ or ‘Oh, I don’t know if it happened.’”
Dick says one of the big things he saw with the winter freeze is insurance companies asking if the person had any personal property messed up. Homeowners were not sure. Often the people didn’t realize that they had a ton of personal property messed up.
“Personal property like you have whenever you had the pipes burst, all this insulation fall in your bedding. Can you get all the fiberglass out? What is in that water? Can you properly wash it?”
Often homeowners don’t know what to look for when it comes to property damage.
Question: How long does an insurance company have to respond to your claim?
“Basically they have 60 days from the date they receive all documents,” said Dick.
But, insurance companies often need more information which will extend deadlines.
“They like to send letters and saying we need this, we need this, we need this,” said Dick. “I’ve had claims take many years to get fully resolved. Now you have remedies, you can fight with them and you can get do you have some remedies? But it’s usually heavily cited towards the insurance company. So even though it’s technically 60 days, it’s it’s there’s other deadlines that are smaller. One of the things they really love to do is ask for an examination under oath. And that scares a whole bunch of people. And it’s kind of a scare tactic.”
The full Ask Amy episode with Eric Dick airs Tuesday at 11 a.m. on KPRC 2 +.
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