Lady at Allstate says my prices are too high

LeeCory

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I did two jobs for Allstate this week and I'm already hearing that they think my prices are too high.

On the smaller of the two jobs I gave the homeowner a guesstimate estimate of about 3k plus tax.

The lady from Allstate over the phone told me that they don't send out adjusters because they just do it over the phone. She also told me that my prices were too high.... I find it strange she can say that when she never saw the job or what was involved or even knew how much equipment I had in. It's also strange that she said they just do it over the phone when just two days earlier I met with their adjuster on a different job. Strange....

I am lucky that the homeowner would simply prefer to pay me the 3k with a credit card and deal with the insurance company himself.

But I am worried about the bill I submitted a couple days earlier for 5k on the other job.

I've never had an issue with an insurance company yet.... My prices are run of the mill standard stuff, how can they tell me I am too high?

This may be my first problem with an insurance company and would like some advice on getting paid if they give me a hard time. I am not interested in cutting my price...
 

Desk Jockey

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She is right, I can tell from here you are too high! :p

It's their job to adjust, if you fold a little and the next guy does too, think how much they save the company as that adds up nationally.

You make good points, she hasn't seen the job or the reasons why it's ove her national average.

Sounds like those were big lossses with multiple surfaces affected, just supply her with what you did and why and then stand firm.
 
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I guess I am wondering why you are talking to Allstate. You don't work for them, do you. We have taken ourselfs off of all insurance programs and don't talk to adjusters direct. If they have questions they can talk to thier customer and our customer can ask us. When we had insurance company playing us against the home owner we just said no more. The adjuster is not your friend. We charge our prices, mostly close to xactmate, and get paid. We also add late charges after 30 days of when the bill is sumited.

Al Bradham
Carpet Care Services & DisasterCare
 

dealtimeman

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i agree with both of the above post and will restate not to fold, charge your price and work with the adjuster as much as you can but remember the homeowner is your customer and the adjuster is there to do his or her job and save the ins co the most money possible.
 
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Hoody

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I laugh everytime the adjusters tell me that. Especially when they haven't requested pictures or any documentation of any sort.

First and foremost I have learned to keep the client happy. Let them know what you're doing, and any issues you foresee. Communication is the key, and keeping them on your side, and happy with your work. They'll go to battle for you when it comes to adjusters like these. You'll see it more with desk adjusters. They don't want to piss off their client and lost that monthly premium.

I was speaking with a friend a few weeks ago. He was restoring a decent sized sewage loss. The adjuster tried talking him into not removing drywall that was affect on a stairwell. I couldn't believe my ears, the adjuster told him "Oh just let that one go could ya?" At the first initial walk-thru they didn't find that area affected, until they opened up that part of the wall(to remove affected material) and saw the damage on the other side. After investigating it was noticed, and he did the right thing by mitigating the loss as he should.

Kudos to him.
 

tmdry

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Lee,

As everyone has posted do not worry about the gatekeeper(lady you speak of). I have several years of hurricane catastrophes background dealing with those scenarios when i was a supervisor for a few roofing companies in Florida. Allstate was always a pain in the rear to deal with, we would go thru a selected few with all their bs reasons. Some jobs were low as $5k upwards of $100k over just for the roof alone(residential), in the end of the road if you are doing your job right and using close to standards prices(xactimate/ect), you will always win...we've used xactimate along with several pages of documentations, pics, you name it and still got the price bs tag lines, always remember it's a business to them, they gotta save $ and try to intimidate you. Also sometimes the lady at the office might be looking at a different xactimate regional pricing than your area(if she's in a different state/region).

We didn't have to call the insurance company, but we wanted to do something different for our clients, so we took the drama from the adjusters/carriers and had a signed agreement w/ homeowner....I had to go to the state litigation/mitigation a dozen times due to the adjusters saying they were not going to pay our rate(standard prices), never once did i get payed for this but these were large accounts and our clients actually fired their public adjusters once they realized they are a waist of money(i dealt with those too).

Guess who always won....hopefully it will never get that far, but the state is always on the homeowners side, they won't admit it but they know deep down the carrier is in the saving $ business. You have proof to what you're doing at the job site, you and the insured should be compesated for it.

Bill
 

tmdry

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Not sure if you're already doing this(if so please disrecard).

One of the things that many adjusters like about our techs/estimators was that we typed everything up and carefully drawed out the rooms, walls, ceilings, areas affected in custom graphic paper. Xactimate also has a similar CAD like shapes that you can design in the software(not sure if you use the software or not). When we would fax everything over there would be a cover letter, detailed letter w/ policy/claim #, insurers info, along w/ a brief description to what we found and what needs to be done. We would also fax or email pictures, building code sections for the county of the job, signed copy of the agreement w/ you and homeowner, typed up estimate sheet w/ or w/out macros(xactimate). Anything to make the adjusters job easier.

This helped our estimators close many jobs a month.

Again, you might already know all of this. Thought it would help in any way.

If the gatekeeper(lady), still gives you more trouble, have your client call Allstate claims dept and ask for a different adjuster to be assigned to the claim, also them tell to say they'll be contacting their state's litigation dept...this should get you and the property owner with someone who can settle the claim w/out all the drama and nonsense.
 

topnotchman

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There was so much flood work here last winter due to the real cold weather we had, Allstate was backed up with claims and they switched adjusters 3 times on me. They never came out to look at this place. I submitted my bill with standard rates, job was around $3k, and 2 weeks later homeowner paid me my money when they sent them a check. No questions asked, no balking at the price, nothing. I got lucky this time around. Maybe they had bigger jobs to "adjust"
 

dealtimeman

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i found that when you use exactimate there is not that much "adjusting" for the adjuster to do. just like many have stated document everything well and i always take pics to have on file.
 

LeeCory

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Thanks for all the great replies. I feel confident that with the documentation I have, and close to 40 pictures of what I was dealing with, along with the info you guys have given I should be ok.

The 3k job is already paid for by the customer (the one that allstate thought was high) so that is no prob.

I will not budge on the 5k job since I feel I've earned every bit of it. It was a broken water pipe that ran for upwards of 12 days. I had 3 guys that worked for 11 hours each hauling stuff out of the basement. Some walls were wet from floor to ceiling. I had to pull all the tile from the concrete floor, rip out a bunch of drywall, clean, antimicrobial, 2 dehu's, 14 fans, 1 air scrubber, 4 days, 2 dead mice....

Thank you for all the comments and advice, it helps very much. I had 4 water damage jobs last week, and of course 2 of them had to be Allstate... :) Actually the 3rd one was also Allstate, but they denied him a claim right off... lol.
Lee
 

BlinkClean

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LeeCory said:
I did two jobs for Allstate this week and I'm already hearing that they think my prices are too high.

On the smaller of the two jobs I gave the homeowner a guesstimate estimate of about 3k plus tax.

The lady from Allstate over the phone told me that they don't send out adjusters because they just do it over the phone. She also told me that my prices were too high.... I find it strange she can say that when she never saw the job or what was involved or even knew how much equipment I had in. It's also strange that she said they just do it over the phone when just two days earlier I met with their adjuster on a different job. Strange....

I am lucky that the homeowner would simply prefer to pay me the 3k with a credit card and deal with the insurance company himself.

But I am worried about the bill I submitted a couple days earlier for 5k on the other job.

I've never had an issue with an insurance company yet.... My prices are run of the mill standard stuff, how can they tell me I am too high?

This may be my first problem with an insurance company and would like some advice on getting paid if they give me a hard time. I am not interested in cutting my price...

Honestly I think you are a bit too high for that....but as far as restoration goes, I would not mind paying your price, of course this also depends on the size of the home, and the amount of things you had to do and replace. If you feel you've earned every bit of it, you have. I always price at what I would be willing to pay for my quality of services. and so far I have only had 2 people go with the cheaper stanley steemer only to call me back to have me clean up after the mess they made (talking about carpet cleaning here, but was making a point about the price).
 

K&J Products

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Unless you are a licensed Insurance Adjuster you cannot Negotiate the Value of a Claim. The Policy Holder has the authority, as per the insurance contract (policy), to adjust the loss with the Insurance Company. Involve the Policy Holder in any changes to your billing or estimates and have the approval of the Policy Holder before making any changes.
 

Tom Sedwick

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Six year old thread with the same thing being done by Allstate, at least from my daily experience. Could make for a good conversation. Only reason that I replied to it. Sorry mod :) New to the site and looking to get engaged in some constructive conversations.
 

dealtimeman

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Still a good thread, remember it's not personal just business.

Adjusters job: to attemp to save the insurance co money by reviewing your invoice while attempting to undermine your invoice in any way to drop your total and justify her job/position.

Your job: make sure you performed all services you are charging for correctly and true to best of your abilities. Make sure your prices are as close to market as possible. Make sure you get paid so you can have food on your families plates and the families of your employees.

Do not get frustrated, as it is not personal. It is just a mere step in the process of getting paid.

With Allstate jobs, I have the mitigation adjuster guys number that will oversee that portion of the bill, by now if I think there will be a possible issue later on with the bill, I get him involved early on during the dryin process. Not to let him dictate what or how I am going to do anything, but to engage him and feed him some info as to how or why, so that it is not a surprise or brought to question later.

I am sure it makes him feel somewhat in control and gets my check to me faster in the end of job.

I am not on any vender programs, but after a few time around the mery go round, I just keep a file of who I need to talk to in regards to their insurance company and position in th money process.
 

Scott S.

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well i was thinking about getting into water retoration, but geez the problems your guys deal with would drive me insane.
 

Scott S.

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i dont even know how to start into this biz yet, or the documentation required, or how to figure out whats dry and whats not with the meters, and its looking pretty sucky.
 
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Scott S.

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im just reading up here to see what i can learn before going to wrt class and eventually advanced structural drying school.
 
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Desk Jockey

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Go to the class Scott then make your decisions. The work is not that hard, just takes someone thorough.

Far too dipshits in this business that you are already better than and you're just beginning. :winky:
 
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