403Gemini
07-24-2009, 11:08 AM
This guide isn't any guarantees on how to have the perfect experience, but its more designed to help your adjuster help you.
I've been doing claims for over 3 years now, started in auto, the moved onto CAT (Large losses like hail storms, wind storms etc), moved onto small content property files and I am now a field adjuster for property claims. These are just some tips that I have experienced that if you do them, you will help out people like me, and trust me, it all adds up.
1 - Have a good attitude. I'm not saying have the attitude "YES! I JUST GOT REAR ENDED! My neck hurts, my car is undriveable! What a wonderful fucking day!" Do not call at the scene of the accident, or right after your hot water burst , you will be pretty emotional. Also you will be rushed, and the first call you make , the adjuster and/or broker will not get all of the information since you will be ushering them off the phone to deal with the police/the other person in the accident/contents floating around in your basement, etc.
2 - Call the insurance company directly, not your broker. If you don't have your insurance companies phone number and just your brokers, ask them for the number. 9/10 times when a person freaks out about not getting a call immediatly it is because they called the broker first. The broker will process the information you give them, which is likely they will miss important details the adjuster will need (i've experienced the broker missing a phone number for the insured...). Secondly ontop of the missing information, the broker will fax / email it in, from there it gets processed in the clerical team, handed to the assignment team, who then submits it to an adjuster who may or may not be busy at the time. If you call the insurance company direclty, you will speak to an adjuster, they will take the information THEY need and they will start the claim right away for you.
3 - HAVE ALL INFORMATION AVAILABLE! DO NOT phone into the insurance company without your policy number. You are not the only Kevin Jones, or Bob Richardson in Canada. Most systems only let you search by names or policy numbers, and with Canada becoming extremely multicultural, that means even people with ethnic names aren't safe from the "rarity" of their names. Also if you are calling regarding a auto claim, have this information;
a.) Your policy number
b.) Make and model of your car (you'd be surprised how many people dont know this...)
c.) Best DAYTIME phone number you can be reached at
d.) Names and contact numbers for anybody in your car.
If another vehicle was involved;
e.) Make and model of their car
f.) THEIR INSURANCE INFORMATION BARE MINIMUM, Their name, their policy number, their Insurance company. NOT their brokers office. Their broker will not release their clients information to another parties insurance company.
g.) Most importantly - The police report number (This will always start with either 4 digs or 2 digits then a dash, and the 4/2 digits will always be a year, it will look like this: "09-XXXXX" or "2009-XXXXX"
4 - Next, be precise. Don't say "I was driving down some road and got hit on my drivers side rear passenger quarterpanel from being rear ended." Go back to the scene if you don't remember street names, use google maps, ask a friend. The more information you can give the better. A good description was "I was heading northbound on 14th st SW and a blue sunfire heading southbound on 14th st made a left hand turn in front of me onto heritage drive and I t-boned them. I have front end damage, the damage to their vehicle was on the passenger side."
5 - Leaving a voice mail message for the adjuster. As Tyler Durden said it best: "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake." Now don't get me wrong, every claim will be treated equally and with the same degree or urgency, just be aware that depending how busy they've been recently, adjusters are handling anywhere between 150 claims to 400 claims. With a city of a million people and growing, there is a CONSTANT stream of phone calls be it for auto or property. You would not believe how much stuff actually happens around this city, it would frighten you to the point you would almost not want to leave your house, if you didn't realize with some property claims you would swear the house was just trying to kill the person :rofl: That said, DO NOT leave multiple upon multiple messages for the adjuster in 1 day. Chances are the adjuster you are dealing with is a telephone adjuster, and these are like call centers. They deal with times where they can make calls, and times when they cannot make outbound calls. And this is monitored VERY thoroughly through management.
Also leaving a message, keep it short and sweet. Be precise and accurate and HAVE YOUR POLICY OR CLAIM NUMBER READY. Sometimes the adjuster forgets to give you the claim number at the end of the initial call, this happens, but they can look it up using the policy number. Your name, as said before, is not enough. When you leave a message, it should be short and sweet, such as: "Hi this is Mack Jones, <claim number here>, Just wondering the status, the best number you can reach me at is 403.555.5555." See? Simple! Name, pol/claim number, BRIEF message of what you want, and a phone number.
Also when you leave a message, with your phone number, we're not buddies, I don't know your phone number off hand, so when you say it mach 5 like "fourzerothreefivefivefive, fiveseventwonine" i have to listen to your message 3-5 times just to write down 1-2 numbers each time. SLOW IT DOWN, a nice pace, like "Four zero three<pause> five five five <pause> five seven two nine."
6 - The elusive adjuster, how to catch them! - As I said before, its a call center for most adjusters so sometimes they are on the phone where they can't answer direct calls , but rather only calls over the queue so when that happens, well your shit out of luck. However here are some tips to generally catch adjusters.
a.) Do not phone in the morning or at the end of the day. Thats right, do not phone at the beginning or end of their shift, because everybody else is phoning at this time. Everybody thinks "I need to get this done and out of the way today" and calls in the morning or they think "I need to get this done today! I Forgot!" and calls at the end.
Monday mornings and Friday late afternoons = almost impossible to reach the adjuster.
b.) Adjusters, contrary to popular belief, are humans too. They need to eat. Nothing gives me an upset stomach for the afternoon more than coming back from my lunch break to see 17 missed calls. Do not call on a lunch hour because you won't get them.
c.) Best times to call: 9:30 - 10:30 am, or 1:30-3:00 pm. During these times they have usually been in the office for awhile and got their coffee in the morning, or have checked their voicemails and begun their call backs from lunch. It is also a slower time for the call center calls so the telephone adjusters are generally freed up a bit more and you should have a better chance of reaching them.
7.) Satisfaction of the repairs - You got your car back from the shop, or the carpet layers are done in your basement. You aren't totally satisfied with the quality of the repairs. In this situation 2 things will happen:
a.) You used the insurance companies rely shop/vendor, and you have the insurance company backing you
or
b.) you choose your own shop/vendor, and you have to look after this yourself.
If it's option b.) , well you're on your own. Good luck
If it's option a.) , now this will be hard to grasp, do NOT call the insurance company right away. "BUT YOU SAID THEY WILL BACK YOU!" yes, I did, but the question I always ask the insured when they call in screaming is "Well, when you told the shop/vendor about you not being satisfied with the work, what did they tell you?" 9 times out of 10 i get the response "I didn't tell them." We have to give the shop/vendor an opportunity to rectify the mistakes before we can do anything. In the event that the shop/vendor won't help you, then go to the insurance company. HOWEVER, when you do, don't call in pissed off and screaming and insulting. The insurance companies have a very outstanding relationship with their rely vendors, so they have a lot of pull. If you call in screaming "<INSERT AUTO BODY SHOP NAME> HAS A BUNCH OF JACK ASSESS OVER THERE! INCOMPETENT FOOLS CANT DO SHIT FOR ME!" You are going to put the adjuster on the defensive even though you aren't attacking them directly. If you call in and calmly explain what went wrong, and what you would like to see, they will help you. If you can provide pictures of what it looked like before, lets face it, thats easy for us being car junkies we take TONS of pics of our cars, but even regular people take pics of a new car purchase they make. Or if its regarding a poor carpet install , try and find holiday pictures or anything that would show some of the carpet or a full room layout that can assist with the adjuster. Most of the time, you wouldn't even need to provide that and the adjuster will just make a call over to the shop and speak to them over there and everything should move along smoothly. JUST. BE. CALM.
8.) If you get an inch , don't take a mile. - I've encountered situations where i have been more than generous to help an insured out because they were quite friendly at first. However when I do that, and then they get angry because it takes a week longer than expected and they call management screaming. Now you've pissed off the beast named the adjuster. If you ask for anything else, they will pull out any exclusion in the book and throw it at you since some losses are an adjusters call. DO NOT Bite the hand that feeds you, if they give you a little more than you deserve, be grateful.
9.) The process - The adjuster knows what he/she is doing. Let them walk you through this. You constantly making calls, interrupting the body shop/contractors/adjuster is doing nothing but digging your heels in and slowing down the process. There is always red tape and adjusters have to get a lot cleared through management so anytime you ask for some icing on the cake, it needs to get approved - if you aren't wanting to wait, let the people do their jobs. There is exceptions to this, and if you want to avoid being lost in the entire process, just simply ask the adjuster "What is the process." They will have NO problems answering this for you - infact they would prefer this and I always make note to explain the process myself to try and mitigate any useless phone calls in the future.
I even offer to email the insured a check list of stuff that needs to get done in a general order. There will of course MAY be bumps in the road, but if you have a general idea of whats going on it should be pretty easy to follow.
10.) Scheduling for repairs - This one always cracks me up. Pretend you're getting repairs done to your car that isn't through insurance. What do you do?
Step 1 - Make an appointment, get damages appraised
Step 2 - Bring in vehicle, get damages appraised
Step 3 - Schedule appointment with shop to get vehicle fixed
Simple, right? Most of my phone calls were/are "I took my vehicle in to get the damages appraised - now what?" or "The contractor has been out and scoped the damages to my house, now what?" Well here is the process for insurance:
Step 1 - Make an appointment, get damages appraised
Step 2 - Bring in vehicle, get damages appraised
Step 3 - Insurance reviews/approves estimate, and if you went with the insurance rely shop/vendor then this process goes A LOT faster (if not instantaneous)
Step 4 - Schedule in for repairs.
Best bet, call the shop/contractor and ask "Can we schedule for repairs?" The shop will tell you if they are waiting for anything from the insurance company, but normally you can just schedule with them directly.
Lastly regarding scheduling - DO NOT ask the adjuster to schedule for repairs for you. I never understood this. I don't know your life schedule, i don't have keys to your house/cars to let them in/bring the car down - so why the hell would I schedule the work to be done for you?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well that's all I can think of for now, if other people in insurance can think of stuff to add , let me know. Hope this helps you guys out in the event you make a claim (hopefully you don't!).
Stay safe out there! :)
July 24 edit - Some minor grammatical fixes, added a few things - added point 9.) & 10.)
I've been doing claims for over 3 years now, started in auto, the moved onto CAT (Large losses like hail storms, wind storms etc), moved onto small content property files and I am now a field adjuster for property claims. These are just some tips that I have experienced that if you do them, you will help out people like me, and trust me, it all adds up.
1 - Have a good attitude. I'm not saying have the attitude "YES! I JUST GOT REAR ENDED! My neck hurts, my car is undriveable! What a wonderful fucking day!" Do not call at the scene of the accident, or right after your hot water burst , you will be pretty emotional. Also you will be rushed, and the first call you make , the adjuster and/or broker will not get all of the information since you will be ushering them off the phone to deal with the police/the other person in the accident/contents floating around in your basement, etc.
2 - Call the insurance company directly, not your broker. If you don't have your insurance companies phone number and just your brokers, ask them for the number. 9/10 times when a person freaks out about not getting a call immediatly it is because they called the broker first. The broker will process the information you give them, which is likely they will miss important details the adjuster will need (i've experienced the broker missing a phone number for the insured...). Secondly ontop of the missing information, the broker will fax / email it in, from there it gets processed in the clerical team, handed to the assignment team, who then submits it to an adjuster who may or may not be busy at the time. If you call the insurance company direclty, you will speak to an adjuster, they will take the information THEY need and they will start the claim right away for you.
3 - HAVE ALL INFORMATION AVAILABLE! DO NOT phone into the insurance company without your policy number. You are not the only Kevin Jones, or Bob Richardson in Canada. Most systems only let you search by names or policy numbers, and with Canada becoming extremely multicultural, that means even people with ethnic names aren't safe from the "rarity" of their names. Also if you are calling regarding a auto claim, have this information;
a.) Your policy number
b.) Make and model of your car (you'd be surprised how many people dont know this...)
c.) Best DAYTIME phone number you can be reached at
d.) Names and contact numbers for anybody in your car.
If another vehicle was involved;
e.) Make and model of their car
f.) THEIR INSURANCE INFORMATION BARE MINIMUM, Their name, their policy number, their Insurance company. NOT their brokers office. Their broker will not release their clients information to another parties insurance company.
g.) Most importantly - The police report number (This will always start with either 4 digs or 2 digits then a dash, and the 4/2 digits will always be a year, it will look like this: "09-XXXXX" or "2009-XXXXX"
4 - Next, be precise. Don't say "I was driving down some road and got hit on my drivers side rear passenger quarterpanel from being rear ended." Go back to the scene if you don't remember street names, use google maps, ask a friend. The more information you can give the better. A good description was "I was heading northbound on 14th st SW and a blue sunfire heading southbound on 14th st made a left hand turn in front of me onto heritage drive and I t-boned them. I have front end damage, the damage to their vehicle was on the passenger side."
5 - Leaving a voice mail message for the adjuster. As Tyler Durden said it best: "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake." Now don't get me wrong, every claim will be treated equally and with the same degree or urgency, just be aware that depending how busy they've been recently, adjusters are handling anywhere between 150 claims to 400 claims. With a city of a million people and growing, there is a CONSTANT stream of phone calls be it for auto or property. You would not believe how much stuff actually happens around this city, it would frighten you to the point you would almost not want to leave your house, if you didn't realize with some property claims you would swear the house was just trying to kill the person :rofl: That said, DO NOT leave multiple upon multiple messages for the adjuster in 1 day. Chances are the adjuster you are dealing with is a telephone adjuster, and these are like call centers. They deal with times where they can make calls, and times when they cannot make outbound calls. And this is monitored VERY thoroughly through management.
Also leaving a message, keep it short and sweet. Be precise and accurate and HAVE YOUR POLICY OR CLAIM NUMBER READY. Sometimes the adjuster forgets to give you the claim number at the end of the initial call, this happens, but they can look it up using the policy number. Your name, as said before, is not enough. When you leave a message, it should be short and sweet, such as: "Hi this is Mack Jones, <claim number here>, Just wondering the status, the best number you can reach me at is 403.555.5555." See? Simple! Name, pol/claim number, BRIEF message of what you want, and a phone number.
Also when you leave a message, with your phone number, we're not buddies, I don't know your phone number off hand, so when you say it mach 5 like "fourzerothreefivefivefive, fiveseventwonine" i have to listen to your message 3-5 times just to write down 1-2 numbers each time. SLOW IT DOWN, a nice pace, like "Four zero three<pause> five five five <pause> five seven two nine."
6 - The elusive adjuster, how to catch them! - As I said before, its a call center for most adjusters so sometimes they are on the phone where they can't answer direct calls , but rather only calls over the queue so when that happens, well your shit out of luck. However here are some tips to generally catch adjusters.
a.) Do not phone in the morning or at the end of the day. Thats right, do not phone at the beginning or end of their shift, because everybody else is phoning at this time. Everybody thinks "I need to get this done and out of the way today" and calls in the morning or they think "I need to get this done today! I Forgot!" and calls at the end.
Monday mornings and Friday late afternoons = almost impossible to reach the adjuster.
b.) Adjusters, contrary to popular belief, are humans too. They need to eat. Nothing gives me an upset stomach for the afternoon more than coming back from my lunch break to see 17 missed calls. Do not call on a lunch hour because you won't get them.
c.) Best times to call: 9:30 - 10:30 am, or 1:30-3:00 pm. During these times they have usually been in the office for awhile and got their coffee in the morning, or have checked their voicemails and begun their call backs from lunch. It is also a slower time for the call center calls so the telephone adjusters are generally freed up a bit more and you should have a better chance of reaching them.
7.) Satisfaction of the repairs - You got your car back from the shop, or the carpet layers are done in your basement. You aren't totally satisfied with the quality of the repairs. In this situation 2 things will happen:
a.) You used the insurance companies rely shop/vendor, and you have the insurance company backing you
or
b.) you choose your own shop/vendor, and you have to look after this yourself.
If it's option b.) , well you're on your own. Good luck
If it's option a.) , now this will be hard to grasp, do NOT call the insurance company right away. "BUT YOU SAID THEY WILL BACK YOU!" yes, I did, but the question I always ask the insured when they call in screaming is "Well, when you told the shop/vendor about you not being satisfied with the work, what did they tell you?" 9 times out of 10 i get the response "I didn't tell them." We have to give the shop/vendor an opportunity to rectify the mistakes before we can do anything. In the event that the shop/vendor won't help you, then go to the insurance company. HOWEVER, when you do, don't call in pissed off and screaming and insulting. The insurance companies have a very outstanding relationship with their rely vendors, so they have a lot of pull. If you call in screaming "<INSERT AUTO BODY SHOP NAME> HAS A BUNCH OF JACK ASSESS OVER THERE! INCOMPETENT FOOLS CANT DO SHIT FOR ME!" You are going to put the adjuster on the defensive even though you aren't attacking them directly. If you call in and calmly explain what went wrong, and what you would like to see, they will help you. If you can provide pictures of what it looked like before, lets face it, thats easy for us being car junkies we take TONS of pics of our cars, but even regular people take pics of a new car purchase they make. Or if its regarding a poor carpet install , try and find holiday pictures or anything that would show some of the carpet or a full room layout that can assist with the adjuster. Most of the time, you wouldn't even need to provide that and the adjuster will just make a call over to the shop and speak to them over there and everything should move along smoothly. JUST. BE. CALM.
8.) If you get an inch , don't take a mile. - I've encountered situations where i have been more than generous to help an insured out because they were quite friendly at first. However when I do that, and then they get angry because it takes a week longer than expected and they call management screaming. Now you've pissed off the beast named the adjuster. If you ask for anything else, they will pull out any exclusion in the book and throw it at you since some losses are an adjusters call. DO NOT Bite the hand that feeds you, if they give you a little more than you deserve, be grateful.
9.) The process - The adjuster knows what he/she is doing. Let them walk you through this. You constantly making calls, interrupting the body shop/contractors/adjuster is doing nothing but digging your heels in and slowing down the process. There is always red tape and adjusters have to get a lot cleared through management so anytime you ask for some icing on the cake, it needs to get approved - if you aren't wanting to wait, let the people do their jobs. There is exceptions to this, and if you want to avoid being lost in the entire process, just simply ask the adjuster "What is the process." They will have NO problems answering this for you - infact they would prefer this and I always make note to explain the process myself to try and mitigate any useless phone calls in the future.
I even offer to email the insured a check list of stuff that needs to get done in a general order. There will of course MAY be bumps in the road, but if you have a general idea of whats going on it should be pretty easy to follow.
10.) Scheduling for repairs - This one always cracks me up. Pretend you're getting repairs done to your car that isn't through insurance. What do you do?
Step 1 - Make an appointment, get damages appraised
Step 2 - Bring in vehicle, get damages appraised
Step 3 - Schedule appointment with shop to get vehicle fixed
Simple, right? Most of my phone calls were/are "I took my vehicle in to get the damages appraised - now what?" or "The contractor has been out and scoped the damages to my house, now what?" Well here is the process for insurance:
Step 1 - Make an appointment, get damages appraised
Step 2 - Bring in vehicle, get damages appraised
Step 3 - Insurance reviews/approves estimate, and if you went with the insurance rely shop/vendor then this process goes A LOT faster (if not instantaneous)
Step 4 - Schedule in for repairs.
Best bet, call the shop/contractor and ask "Can we schedule for repairs?" The shop will tell you if they are waiting for anything from the insurance company, but normally you can just schedule with them directly.
Lastly regarding scheduling - DO NOT ask the adjuster to schedule for repairs for you. I never understood this. I don't know your life schedule, i don't have keys to your house/cars to let them in/bring the car down - so why the hell would I schedule the work to be done for you?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well that's all I can think of for now, if other people in insurance can think of stuff to add , let me know. Hope this helps you guys out in the event you make a claim (hopefully you don't!).
Stay safe out there! :)
July 24 edit - Some minor grammatical fixes, added a few things - added point 9.) & 10.)