Lowball Offers
An offer far below what a claim is worth is a denial of the difference. These cover how the number is produced, where it hides, and how to answer it.
Why Your Insurance Payout Is So Low
If you are wondering why your insurance payout is so low, the useful answer is that it was produced rather than decided. A low offer feels like an opinion about your claim. It is usually the output of a process — estimating software, a scope decision made by someone who spent twenty minutes on site, and depreciation applied by formula. All three can be examined.
Read more →Why Insurance Held Money Back From Your Payout
Money held back from a payout is usually depreciation, and under many policies it is recoverable once the repairs are actually done — which is the single most valuable thing to know here. A great deal of apparent underpayment is really a disagreement about which measure of loss applies, and about how much was subtracted for age and wear before the payment was issued.
Read more →When the Insurance Offer Is Less Than Your Contractor Estimate
When the insurance offer comes in well under your contractor estimate, the gap is the thing to work on — not the number. The instinct is to say the offer is too low. That is an opinion, and it is answered with another opinion. What moves a claim is showing precisely where the two estimates diverge and why.
Read more →When an Offer Comes With Pressure Attached
Offers sometimes arrive with an expiry date, a warning that this is the most that will be paid, or a suggestion that involving anyone else will slow things down. All of that is posture, and it works because it arrives when people are least able to test it.
Read more →When a Low Offer Crosses the Line
Insurers and policyholders can disagree honestly about what a loss is worth, and that disagreement is not misconduct. What separates it from something else is usually visible in the file rather than in the number.
Read more →Looking for the law in your state?
These describe how each denial works, which is much the same everywhere. What you can do about one is not — choose the state where your policy was issued.