how do you handle adjusters like this??

[steve g]

last month got called out to a water loss in a dr office, we arrived on a wed morning much of the office had 2" of standing water in the basement when we arrived. so there was likely more water than that, that had seeped through the foundation, we do our drying process, which included pulling base and drilling holes etc, as you can imagine we had tons of soaking wet sheetrock. we set 19 air movers and dehus, adjuster shows up on friday afternoon, I made sure I was there when he was, looks everything over, at this point the glue down carpet is desert dry, patches on the walls are dry, however we still have wet insulation and wet baseplates in the exterior walls and spots here and there on each wall that are still wet. he gets ready to leave and says I counted 16 air movers, I said no 19, we go over the status of the job as I have related above. anyways we leave our equipment through the weekend and come back on monday morning, everything is bone dry so we pull our stuff and my painter guy goes in the next week and paints and replaces the base board, we reinstall one room that had pad and clean all carpets. over 3 weeks ago I sent the adjuster a copy of our breakdown, which had our drying charges and repair charges. after several calls without them being returned to even verify he got our breakdown I finally get a call yesterday from him. He says our 4 day charge for equipment rental is excessive and he is only paying for 3 days as that is fair to him. he also tells me that since he only counted 16 air movers that is all he is paying for, when I told him to his face we had 19 while we where standing on the job.

him saying he is only paying for 16 really pisses me off, as I told him 19 to his face on the job. he was there on day 3 and saw the job was not totally dry, yeah it looked dry but thats not reality. do you guys just get hosed on these deals?? I told him we could not eat that, we had the eqiupment there for 5 days and was only charging for 4, we had waited 3 weeks with no return calls and I was not inclined to take money off our bill for that reason. I told him we are going to bill the customer for whats on our breakdown, these kind of deals only turn out bad because now I have to be the bad guy and try to collect from the insured more than what is paid, how do you guys handle this??

 

[Craig Lindquist]

How much supporting documentation did you provide? You will never be able to eliminate this situation, but you can avoid them with a proactive approach.
Documentation of the loss and drying conditions on a daily basis is by far the most important. Just as important is communication with the adjuster. Tell him on a daily basis...this is where we are at, this is what we are doing, this is the expected outcome,this is the estimated cost...and then..."are you on board with this".

Make them dispute during the job and support their opinions. Remember, if you are questioned during a job your answer is an explanation, after the job it is an excuse. The same goes for documentation.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Hopefully you have a good relationship with the insured. I think you need them on your side, explain your difficulty with the adjuster and see where they stand.

The adjuster sounds like a jerk.

Remind him that the additional days were drying structure, not carpet. They get too hung up that the total dollar amount is for the carpet.

What would it have cost to remove and replace those walls, tape sand and paint? What collateral joint compound dust problems would they have. Business interruption too!

Same old story, inform if that's all he can pay, pay it but you'll be forced to bill the doctor for the remaining balance.

Is that what he wants you to do?

 

[KeithCo]

Show him the drying docs and the photos or video of the 19 air movers.


This usually takes care of things and puts a stop to the genius adjuster species.

Keith

 

[Craig Lindquist]

I agree with Richard.
It nevere ceases to amaze me how short sighted and narrow minded some adjusters are.