Home Insurers’ Secret Tactics cheat fire victims, the migration of profits
Julie Tunnell, remembers their constant debris scattered, if the ramp to the top man approached jeans. Your north of San Diego-style Tudor was burned at home a week earlier in the largest wildfire in California history. The fire in October and November 2003 swept over an area 19 times larger than Manhattan, destroyed 2,232 houses and killed 15 people.
Now, another shock. A representative of the State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest home insurer in the USA, arrived on the remains of verkohlten Tunnell’s at home, they tell the company would only pay $ 306000 $ 220000 the cost estimates for rebuilding the house.
“ It was disastrous, I stood there and cried,’’says Tunnell, 42, accounting for the sign of San Diego City College. “ I felt completely abandoned.”
Tunnell, thousands of people in the USA, has already undergone a secret on insurance: When there is a disaster, companies homeowners to protect them from financial ruin usually pay less than what politicians.
Insurers often pay 30-60 percent of the cost of rebuilding damaged a house - even if air carriers ensure owner completely covered, thousands of complaints with utility insurance and civil court cases.
Paying less for disaster victims has helped produce record profits. During the last 12 years, the insurance company net profit has increased - in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the worst natural disaster in the history of USA.
Net income highest ever –
Damage and accidents, coverage for damage caused to houses and cars, reported their highest ever prize of $ 73 billion last year from 49 percent to $ 49 billion in 2005, according to data Highline LLC, Cambridge, Massachusetts, established enterprises, compile insurance industry.
The $ 60 million, the owners pay more than $ 50 billion per year on insurance premiums are often disappointed when they discover the insurer is not the full costs to rebuild their houses destroyed or damaged.
Property systematically deny, insurers and insured to reduce their debts, according to court records in California, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Tennessee.
Insurance companies refused to pay market prices for housing and content replacement, they use computer programs to reduce payments, they change with reports no explanation, they ignore or alter reports engineering, and they sometimes ask their devices to lie, For customers, court records and interviews with former state employees and regulators.
“It is Despicable”
As the Mississippi USA Republican Senator Trent Lott and thousands of other homeowners have found, the insurers bottom - or refuse to pay - and then people dare to defend.
“ It is odious to make a good faith, for everyone,’’says Robert Hunter, Texas, was insurance commissioner from 1993 to 1995 and is now director of insurance in the State of Washington - based Consumer Federation of America.
“ Money Manager took the whole industry,’’said Hunter. “ Your eyes are not humans are violated, but the bottom line for the next quarter.”
The industry player for the profit has overwhelmed its commitment to policyholders, “said California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, a Democrat. How California’s insurance commissioner from 2002 to 2006, Garamendi imposed a $ 18.4 million in fines against the alternate for the mistreatment of customers.