Hail Damage and Bad Faith

Hail Damage Claims

Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois, Louisiana and New Mexico are among the top states for hailstorms and resulting damage. The insurance companies who provide coverage in these states collectively predict the risk of damage from hailstorms to be in the billions. Consequently, the financial risk of covering damage from hailstorms is factored in heavily by these same insurance companies when they determine what to charge consumers for covering hail damage.

The problem, however, is that while insurance companies calculate the risk of hail damage as high in these states so as to inflate premiums charged, the amount which they actually pay out on these claims after various claim handling schemes and underwriting tricks, is much, much less. By implementing these bad faith hidden schemes and tricks, the insurance carriers turn these Bad Faith tactics into ill-gotten profits for their companies. Although not intended to be an all-inclusive, some of the more common schemes and tricks are as follows:

• Claiming hail damage is simply wear and tear and not covered;
• Claiming there is hail damage but only to the soft metals (vent caps, pipe jacks, roof valleys, flashing and guttering), and those items are under your deductible;
• Claiming only a few shingles were damaged, and the claim is either under your deductible or those can be replaced with shingles that do not match your existing roof;
• Sending adjusters to your dwelling to inspect the claimed damage who are strictly prohibited from totaling your roof despite the damage without managerial approval;
• Failing to include or even consider local code compliance for your claim despite the fact your policy included code upgrade coverage;
• Selling you roof replacement cost coverage at a higher premium without any consideration to the companies actual underwriting requirements (i.e. you cannot qualify for this more complete and expensive coverage unless your roof is in good condition in the first place);
• The company never conducted any inspection of your dwelling and its roof before selling you their product – yet when you make a claim for hail damage, they take the position your roof was already in poor condition, and the damage you now claim is simply old or just wear and tear.