If you have and insurance loss, your adjuster may recommend an insurance reconstrution company or give you a list of companies. The companies have employees that their job is to obtain information about fires, floods, Etc. from watching the news, news papers, they even have firefighters that are on their payroll that pass on info faster than your adjuster can; just like ambulance chasers, they'll come knocking on your door the next day! I used to work for the worlds largest insurance restoration company and I can tell you they are scum; we had a saying "They put the CON in reconstruction". I was doing mold remediation jobs without being certified and if I found mold and your policy didn't cover it, we had another saying "Just make it go away". I was working on and insurance job and an employee of the company hired to do the pack out told me he was told to "Pack the boxes half way"; and why was he told this?, because they charge the insurance company by the box, half way, more boxes, more money. This was also a Farmers Insurance job, I contacted the fraud department and I never got a call back! I was told to "Cut corners" on jobs so the jobs would go faster and cost less; the PROJECT MANAGER from the insurance restoration company gets a COMMISSION base on the final cost of the job, so there is a built in incentive to cut corners. The insurance companies and the reconstruction companies use a computer program called TIMBERLINE to estimate the cost of the job, the project manager comes out and looks at the job, measures and takes pictures and inputs the info into the computer and comes up with an estimate. One trick they may use is to low ball the bid just to get their foot in the door, then part way through the job the project manager will call the adjuster to the site and start saying, "This was a CODE CHANGE or an extra required by the inspector or it was overlooked on the original bid"; they usually cough up the extra money. THIS IS ADVICE YOU SHOULD NEVER FORGET!. Prepare BEFORE a loss, Have the model, make and serial numbers of EVERTHING you own, take pictures of EVERYTHING, have your receipts; YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY WILL ASK FOR THEM and make sure you have them or duplicates somewhere that they won't get destroyed if your house burns down. Take pictures the day of the loss or the next before anyone gets there. Take pictures of the reconstruction progress, the framing, electrical, the demo, they will become your evidence if you have to fight them. DO NOT believe everthing the insurance reconstruction people tell you, THEY DO LIE, take notes of dates and times of what was said and by whom; if you have friends that know construction have them look at the work as it progresses, they can tell you if you're getting scammed. The reason I'm telling you to know exactly what you have in your house is if you have an expensive stove, oven, frig, cabinets the reconstruction company may try and get CHEAPER appliances and cabinets, sometimes seconds, if you DON'T know what you had it's your word against them. When they try and pull that on you, pull out your pictures, model numbers and receipts, then you have them by their onions.
I worked on jobs where the computer program estimated in a piece of equipment or supplies that were never needed or used, and were never removed from the final bill. I know all this because I lived it, and I refused to be an accomplice or compromise my values. I used to have Farmers Insurance, and yes they do SUCK!
