CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Recovering from the August derecho, now nearly 6 months ago, is still a process of paperwork, forms, calls and texts for some people. For one Cedar Rapids woman, this process of working through her insurance claim has prolonged her ability to get her home repaired.
Lori Jenkins says, back on August 10th of last year, she came home to find several trees had fallen on her home on the Northeast side of Cedar Rapids. The damage was all over her roof, the chimney, and the bedrooms, plus water damage.
Jenkins filed a claim right away, and a State Farm adjuster came out and told her he saw severe damage and transferred her case to their catastrophic team. That’s when another adjuster came out but, during their inspection, she says they refused to acknowledge some of the damage, mostly the inside damage.
“The estimate we got was pretty much for initially pieces of roof, pieces of siding and then the water damage,” said Jenkins. “Basically there’s one crack, there’s a little drywall replacement, there’s scraping paint and repainting, and that’s basically what our estimate was.”
Frustrated, Jenkins hired a public adjuster that she is working with now.
“We handling 300 derecho claims right now and out of those 6 have been paid correctly. The rest we believe are underpaid or the policy was handled incorrectly or some other inadequacy with the insurance claim settlement,” said Caeden Tinklenberg, the CEO of Swift Public Adjusters.
Tinklenberg says it’s unlikely a policy issue in Lori’s situation but says, in any insurance claim, there are several elements that need to be reconciled between the insured and the insurance company.
“First, there’s the amount of damage and the cause of it, so you have to agree that that wall has a crack in it and that crack was caused by the derecho,” said Tinklenberg.“Second is the repair method.”
The others are repair costs and coverage. Jenkins says she now must prove that some of the damage in her home wasn’t there prior to the derecho. Tinklenberg says they are now working on a revised estimate to send back to insurance.
As for Jenkins, she wishes the process was less stressful. Her message to others is to document your home beforehand to avoid situations like hers.
“I think the sweet spot with insurance is either to have minimal damage, where they’re happy to say we see this and will fix this or to have it totally destroyed, where there’s no room for any discussion,” said Jenkins.
For now, she’s just hoping her home holds up through the Winter and for a resolution soon.
TV9 reached out to State Farm about Lori’s claim.
A statement read, “While I can’t provide specific details about this particular claim due to our customer privacy policy, I can share that our philosophy here at State Farm is to pay what is owed to our customers according to their individual policies and coverage. Each and every claim is handled on its own merits. We are in communication with our customer and her public adjuster, and have reached out to request additional information to help resolve her claim.”
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February 04, 2021 at 07:43AM
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Cedar Rapids woman frustrated dealing with insurance claim issues following derecho - KCRG
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