Insider's advice on resolving home insurance disputes

Solutions to disputes with insurance companies

FOX 13's Craig Patrick digs into the issues that many people are facing when dealing with insurance companies over hurricane coverage.

TAMPA - Families across Tampa Bay are still struggling to rebuild from the hurricanes, and some are still fighting with their insurance companies as they hit one dead end after another.

The backstory:

Ann Pici is a home insurance adjuster with 20 years of experience who advises homeowners to help avoid claim disputes by saving receipts and pictures of their belongings (particularly for appliances and remodeling work).

"Document your house long before you have a loss. Photograph every room, every closet, every cabinet. It's all digital today. It should take no time," Pici said. "And as boring as the insurance policy is, it's always good to at least review it once a year."

She also has advice on what to do if an insurance company lowballs a damage estimate.

"You just can't be intimidated by these people on the desk or a supervisor," said Pici. And she ought to know.

Dig deeper:

After Hurricane Helene, a power surge started a fire in her Pinellas County home, causing significant damage. She pulled into her driveway not knowing flames were racing across her ceiling.

"When I opened up the back door, you could not see through the house. It was full ceiling to floor, black smoke," she noted.

Thankfully, she had ample coverage with full replacement costs and two decades of expertise in resolving this for others.

"I measured the house. I photographed everything just as if I was running a claim for someone else," Pici explained.

Then she saw firsthand what could go wrong, starting with delays.

"I called and said, I haven't heard from the field adjuster and then come to find out, was never assigned to a field adjuster."

READ: Insurance payments and the call for reform

Then the estimates did not match her receipts. She also said the home measurements in the estimate did not match the square footage of her rooms.

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She described months of runaround.

"I can see the measurements were all wrong," she said. "The room measurements are still off."

She provided her own receipts and measurements to support her assertion that she had a total covered loss of $252,000. The insurer’s total estimate was around $160,000, a difference of approximately $90,000.

She asked them to send her case to a department that handles larger claims, but that didn't work.

"Well, they're not going to do that they said. Well, that's ridiculous. That's where I should be," she said. "I was told we're not paying any more money. You got enough. I said, getting enough is not how a claim is handled. You have to pay the replacement cost value of the home."

Ann eventually filed a complaint with the state, and a different supervisor with her insurance company called her to apologize the same day she filed the complaint.

He acknowledged her documentation and told her they could ger the issues resolved.

What's next:

"Never give up," she advised. "I even told them, I said, I don't want to file a complaint. I just wanted to be transferred to a large loss. He says that's where you should have been."

Florida's CFO and Department of Financial Services provides advice on dealing with home insurance.

It also offers an online system to submit concerns.

It leads to a page where consumers can also file specific complaints.

The Source: FOX 13's Craig Patrick researched the content for this article.

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