Such are the reasons why I don't buy Allstate.
No surprise. AllStateFarm are two companies I avoid. And I sell insurance for a living:
http://www.badfaithinsurance.org/indexdetaillist.html
I was driving to work one day, and the DJ on my radio station was going off on his auto insurance coming. Words like "thieving bastards", "lying SOB's", etc.
And then he came up with this.
"I feel it would be a service to the public to warn them about these thievig bastards. However, management says I can't mention their name on the air. So, let's just say that they may call themselves the good hands company, but all they did was give me the finger!"
I was laughing so hard I had to pull over.
For those of you in the Mid-Atlantic area, I highly recommend Erie Insurance. Their rates are competitive and their customer service is excellent.
btt
I worked at a personal injury firm over the summer. I went in a little embarrassed about doing personal injury work. I left convinced that the insurance companies are the real crooks - and Allstate was one of the worst.
The third claim came, I went out to inspect a motorcycle, the owner was talkative, he wasn't happy, the Allstate staff, had tried to chop, chop, chop, over the phone, he was to the point of going to a lawyer, I went over the bike carefully, wrote a fair estimate, and sent it to Allstate, immediately more whining. By then I had figgured out what they were doing, they wanted me to go out and beat prices down, after their staff made the vehicle owner mad, in other words, put me at the head of the line for a law suit.
A couple of days after I sent that file in, a supervisor called, talked to my wife, (office manager) the supervisor said that they didn't want me, or my appraiser doing any of their files, my wife said it's just the two of them, there is no one else. The supervisor said they wouldn't be sending us any more work.
That made my day, it saved me from calling Allstate, to tell them I wouldn't do any more work for them.
I was hit by someone with Allstate insurance. They were at fault and got the ticket but put me through 9 months of crap. I hate them.
I find this article and all the negative posts on this thread improbable. Allstate has a deep-voiced black man as their TV spokesman. That alone guarantees their sincerity.
the only issue is this guy should have his pants sued off for revealing propriatary business information. Allstate isn't forcing anybody to buy their insurance.
ping
Scuttlebutt from the legal arena: State Farm recently (within the past 4 years) won a few big lawsuits it did not expect to win, and got a little cocky. They negotiated with far more vigor (and often walked from the table) in situations where they previously would not have. Apparently, the attitude is spreading.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070411/ap_on_re_us/katrina_state_farm
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 11, 9:22 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS - E-mails sent by officials of an engineering firm that assessed Hurricane Katrina claims suggest that State Farm Insurance Co. wanted engineers to blame damage on flooding so that it could make minimum settlements with policyholders.
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The e-mails, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, indicate that State Farm was threatening to dismiss Raleigh, N.C.-based Forensic Analysis & Engineering Corp. less than two months after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005.
Attorneys for homeowners suing State Farm claim the e-mails support their argument that the insurer pressured its engineers to alter their reports on storm-damaged homes so that policyholders’ claims could be denied.
State Farm denies that the company pressured engineers to alter their conclusions.
State Farm and other insurers say their homeowner policies cover damage from wind but not rising water, including wind-driven storm surge.
The e-mails between Forensic president and CEO Robert Kochan and Randy Down, the firm’s vice president of engineering services, outline complaints about the firm’s work from Alexis “Lecky” King, a State Farm manager in Mississippi.
In an e-mail dated Oct. 17, 2005, Kochan says the firm will continue working with State Farm, but discusses needing to “redo the wording” of a report after a discussion with King “such that the conclusions are better supported.”
It also says King didn’t want local engineers to inspect properties because they were “too emotionally involved” and were “working very hard to find justifications to call it wind damage when the facts only show water induced damage.” She was also apparently upset that a report was based upon eyewitness accounts, the e-mail said.
In a reply dated Oct. 18, 2005, Down questioned the insurer’s motivations and questioned if there was an ethical problem with State Farm telling the firm what to put in reports. He also suggested that on another occasion, State Farm asked the firm to remove information from a report because “they would then have to settle.”
“I really question the ethics of someone who wants to fire us simply because our conclusions don’t match hers,” Down wrote in an e-mail dated Oct. 18, 2005.
“But what about the obvious fact that SF would love to see every report come through as water damage so that they can make the minimum settlement,” he wrote.
Chip Merlin, a Tampa, Fla.-based attorney who has sued State Farm on behalf of dozens of homeowners, said the e-mails are “the first paper evidence we’ve got where you can see engineers expressing concern about being pressured to change reports.”
“Whoever Randy Down is deserves a gold star on his forehead for being one of the most ethical individuals,” Merlin added.
Zach Scruggs, an attorney who is part of a legal team that sued State Farm on behalf of hundreds of homeowners, said Forensic turned over the e-mails as part of the pretrial discovery process for one of the lawsuits. The e-mails, he added, “confirm everything that we have always suspected.”
“What it says is pretty shocking,” Scruggs said. “This outlines the whole scheme of theirs.”
Kochan, in an interview, said plaintiffs’ attorneys are taking the e-mails out of context. King “just felt like we weren’t doing a technically accurate job,” but she wasn’t pressuring Forensic to change conclusions so that claims could be denied, Kochan said.
Down, who has since left Forensic and started his own engineering company, said in an interview Tuesday that he was relying on “secondhand” information about State Farm’s complaints and wasn’t directly involved in Forensic’s work on Katrina claims. He said the threat to fire the firm came “out of the blue.”
“The question was why,” Down added. “The initial internal discussion I heard is that they didn’t like our reports.”
State Farm spokesman Phil Supple rejected the notion that the company pressured engineers to alter their conclusions on storm damage so that claims could be denied.
“Our employees are committed to conducting themselves in an ethical and appropriate manner,” he said. “Any suggestions to the contrary are simply wrong.”
I see a circumstance where the pattern is institutionalized and really begs the question of RICO statuates where the insurance company is practicing organized crime. I think the CEO should be held to the same standards of Enron and Worldcom.
My suspicions are substantiated by anecdotal first hand knowledge as an individual whom did pass the MD insurance exam and a very knowledgeable indivdiual on variable annuity life insurance policies... I know a great deal about this subject and the practices should warrant a criminal probe.
In 1981 when I was licensed this would have been criminal.
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