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| State Farm Insurance Current investigative agents involved: Amy Foresight and Thad Sears Worthless policies that do not pay Internet |
| 1st of Dec, 2011 by User532386 |
| My husband and I bought three insurance policies through State Farm Insurance, one for our home, a renter’s policy and one for our small painting business, a contractor liability policy with a mobile equipment rider, and a workman’s compensation policy. We bought the policies in spring of 2011. We starting sub-contracting for bigger companies that required we carry these specific policies to be eligible for the contracts. We already had a renter’s policy through another insurance company that we had for years, but the agent who sold us these policies said that we could pay monthly installments if we had three policies through State Farm, rather than just paying one lump sum amount for six months of coverage. We opted to do this, and switched our renters over to State Farm, this being the third policy. This past September 16th, 2011, our garage at our home was burglarized and our company van and much of our personal and company equipment was stolen from our property. This is where the nightmare began. We of course called the police and went through the legal and necessary steps when the theft occurred, including calling to inform State Farm. We were told that it usually took under a week for the claim to be processed. I am writing this article on December 2, 2011, and my claim is very far from processed. State Farm informed us they had "red flags" concerning our claim. The biggest flag was that my husband did not make a lot of money and had a bankruptcy about 18 years ago, and I also had a bankruptcy 15 years ago. Apparently poor credit is a flag for possible insurance fraud. State Farm began the question phase of their investigation. Do either myself or my husband have any criminal records, if yes, what and when? Do we have any unpaid bills, what, when, and why? What kind of marital relationship did we share? They asked my oldest son if we were liars. Have we ever been sued or have any pending lawsuits or judgments against us? Were we a legitimate painting company? This question was crazy as why would buy policies for a painting company if we were not a painting company. Our taxes from several years prior, as well as our purchased paint and supplies for this year alone, clearly show we are a company of painters. As you might imagine, any yes answers to these types of questions, furthered our chances of our claim ever being paid. This burglary devastated our family. We lost all of our contracts for the remaining month of September, October, and November, as we had no equipment to perform the duties. We had no van to transport any remaining equipment that we did have left. Now we had bills that were not getting paid, and starting to hurt our already struggling credit, this also affected our claim being paid. You may ask how this has anything to do with being burglarized. Believe me, we have asked this many times ourselves. We went through 2 months of faxing State Farm every possible thing under the sun, every time being told that this claim would be wrapped up soon. Eventually our van was even recovered. It was found covered in the paint that was inside of it when it was stolen, and covered in gang nick names and symbols. The steering column was peeled and it was no longer a drivable company vehicle. It was a total loss. Our neighbors across the street reported that they witnessed three African American teen agers drive off with our van in the middle of the night on September 16th, this was reported as well. I want to say that my son is Caucasian. The newest tactic has been to switch investigating agents, as we have had four so far, this takes time for each to get up to speed. Also, there are two separate claims, any personal items stolen were covered by the renter’s policy, and then any business items were covered under a $5,000 mobile equipment rider for the contractor liability policy. Then State Farm informed us that they had received an anonymous tip from our neighborhood, that our oldest, nineteen year-old son stole our property. This was the last straw. It was obvious from the beginning that it was probably a neighborhood kid that did this, and the amount of equipment that was taken would have required another vehicle, besides our van that was stolen to transport it all. State Farm said they questioned people around this neighborhood and this tipster apparently said our son was behind it, and State Farm set up an interview to accuse him accordingly. Also, this tipster is saying the opposite of the neighbor who reported seeing the three African American teens drive off with the van. So this report is not credible because it helps our claim. The tipster who is a secret has been deemed credible, because it helps State Farms case. Also, it is State Farm who decides who is and is not credible! I need to say that our son has no criminal record, finished high school, attends church, and just left home a month ago for college in Hawaii. State Farm has decided that the tipster is credible, even though he did not even know my son's correct name, and that now we are moving into a phase of sworn depositions and testimony again, that will take another few months. All the while, our family business has been shut-down. We are not allowed to question our sons accuser, and do not even know if this person truly exists. I asked State Farm why they had not notified the police if they had evidence of my son committing this crime. As this would certainly be the next logical step in our minds. I was informed this week that they were only pursuing this as a civil matter now, and somehow have decided that my adult nineteen year-old son was also a policy holder, therefore they have ground to not pay based on that. How could my adult son be a policy holder? It is my and my husband’s policies! Maybe they could try and say his personal property was covered within our home; however, that is the smallest part of the claim, (personal property). Our adult son would certainly not be a policy holder in our painting company; he has never even worked for us. Meanwhile, State Farm continues to take our premiums out of our checking account every month to pay for our policies. We did not have groceries this month, and we have five children to feed, but we somehow came up with our insurance premium, just in case a contract comes in that my husband will be able to work and be eligible to take by being properly insured. We are continuing to pay for these policies that are obviously worthless. I want to warn everyone, if you do not have a receipt for every single thing you own, a picture, a serial number, or some form of absolute proof you owned it, if you are poor or ever went bankrupt, if you have unpaid bills or bad credit, if you are not well versed and do not know anything about insurance claims, you may have a worthless policy as well. My husband and I have always had insurance and we have never been the victims of a crime like this before. We had no experience to base anything on and we in no way prepared to deal with entire experience. We were victimized on September 16th, 2011 when were robbed, but we have been traumatized and victimized over and over again by State Farm every day since. This has devastated our family financially. There does not seem to be any hope of relief soon. I find it amazing that all of these questions they ask to generate their "red flags for fraud" were ever mentioned or asked when the policies were sold to us. As obviously they knew we did not meet the criteria for a claim to be paid out to us back then. This huge company has changed our lives. Our claim was approximately $8,500 total. We had no savings and had no way of replacing what we lost, that is why we had insurance. We had a false sense of security, and believed that if someone ever did rob us, we were covered from every angle. This obviously was not the case. If anyone knows what I can do to help get this claim paid, please contact me through this site. |
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