Whats So Special About My Claim?!!!

[patrick2121]

[FONT=&quot]On Thanksgiving holiday my home was broken into. I had already bought some Christmas gifts for my family (electronics) and that's what they took, didn't have time to take anything else because I walked in on one of the guys. Called the police right away and got a PR. I then filed a claim with my insurance company (homeowner's/Renters), today my agent called to let me know they got the information I sent (Receipts and Photos) but they had to send my claim to a specialty department??? What does that mean "specialty department"? I really want to get this completed so I can hopefully be able to get other gifts for my family.

BTW-It was over 10K in stolen items (Expensive Electronics and such) [/FONT]

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

I wouldn't get to hung up on the "specialty" reference. It could be a supervisor or simply a department that finalizes everything by matching up receipts etc...

Of course...you can always ask your agent what it means. He/she should know.

 

[WinoBlues]

Agreed ask the agent or better yet the claims dept.

I could be that they have a vendor that will replace the items. That is what happened after an office break in with us. It was Farmers. They just shipped us like and kind.

 

[Mark]

YOu have to stay on top of them. Keep bugging them!!

 

[djs]

Patrick - I don't know what state you are in nor do I know who your carrier is, so I'll generalize a bit....

$10K in electronics is a LOT of electronics, even for holiday gifts. It's enough that the carrier will do some due diligence to make sure the claim is legit. If you have had the policy for a while and don't have a history of breakins around Christmas time, there probably isn't much to worry about on this, but they need time to dot some i's and cross some t's. It's a normal thing when a claim exceeds a normal amount for an item. It's a hassle, but you wouldn't believe the number of claims that come in this time of year. 98% totally legit, 2% very questionable. They just want to make sure nothing strange is going on.

The other problem you have, depending on what type of electronics you bought, you could have limits on the policy where you have exceeded the coverage. This happens more often in jewelry, but it can happen here as well. For instance, even though you have $175,000 in personal property coverage (I made up that number), there may be a limit of $5000 for coverage in computer equipment. If your claim had $7500 in computer related items, they may be looking at what is actually covered and what exceeds the limits.

Now, the next problem you may have is what value to they place on the items. This will depend on the policy you have, whether it covers full replacement cost coverage for actual cash value. If you are not clear on this already, you should ask your agent asap. If its replacement cost coverage, they will pay the value to actually replace the item, BUT, you have to replace the item, at least with something similar. This means you normally get 2 checks, one for the cash value, then a second one once the items are replaced. In smaller claims, frequently they don't bother worrying about it and may pay the full value upfront, but you probably are over most carriers threshold for a single pay claim.

There should be no reason to not have this claim finalized before Christmas, but there is probably no guarantees it will be either.

Dan

P.S. Tell your agent you would like a daily call on the status of the claim, even if he only leaves a voicemail for you. It will make him help push it along. I do this with most of my clients automatically.

 

[brooks]

My guess is your claim has been escalated to the special investigations unit or SIU. This unit gets into more detail about your claim. You must have triggered such an escalation by your information you gave the claims representative.

Things that would kick off such an escalation are the time you have been a policyholder, prior claims, a large dollar amount of items and such.