like a bad neighbor
I received a letter in the mail yesterday informing me that State Farm has decided to drop me as a customer. When I called up to find out why, it is because I claimed a loss after the hurricane and then I went over 30 days without remaining a State Farm customer (I removed my name from the plan in February of this year, and rejoined in May). In the world of insurers, this is a recipe for cancelling a plan.
Now, the reason I was without a policy for three months is because I was homeless. When you have no home, you don’t need insurance. So basically State Farm is penalizing me because
1. I was homeless after the hurricane, and
2. They had to make a payment to me as a result of the hurricane (of course, if it had been a reasonable payment I wouldn’t have had issue #1 occur)
So there you go. State Farm has choosen to not insure someone who needs insurance because there is a possibility they will have to actually provide the protection that was paid for. If anyone can recommend a good insurer in this town, please let me know.
Related posts:
What’d you have? Renter’s insurance? Car insurance? You aren’t talking about home owner’s insurance, right? I will assume you attempted to explain the reasons for your lapse so my advice would be threats of physical violence or threats of litigation - either way….
Join the club sweetheart. I hate it for you.
The good hands people did something similar to me. I got a notice a week ago that on May 28th my home owner’s policy will be no more. I was told that my (ex-) agent shouldn’t have written the policy because Allstate issued a moratorium on new policies. When pressed on when this happened they said it was in effect since before the storm. Our policy was written on December 27th of 2005.
I have contacted seven different insurance companies and they all said they are no longer writing policies in this area, however if were to have called them two months ago, they would have been able to.
I got off the phone this morning with Maggie McGurty of Allstate’s corporate office and she said that she would have to call me back after looking into it. (i.e. Allstate’s liability to us and the bank that holds our mortgage as it pertains to the letter from the agent at the time of closing.) That’s a guess on my part, but I’m thinking pretty accurate.
So now its crunch time to find suitable coverage that isn’t through the state. The state charges $3300 for wind and hail for the Mandeville area. Considering I was paying $1200 with Allstate, you can see my frustration.
Good luck to you. Oh, by the way, I know a good insurance lawyer if you’d like his number.
Someday I’ll regale you with all the fun we had collecting from the state insurance (called the Louisiana Fair Plan, anything but actually) with our Covington house.
Try AAA from an independent insurance agent. Depending where you live you might still have a chance getting a policy. I too had SF and was told when I bought my new house that insurance policies won’t transfer now(post K) and that SF will not be writing any new policies.
AAA isn’t writing in NOLA now.
My father-in-law is an State Farm agent and he’s been pissed about the no new policies thing for quite a bit now. State Farm hasn’t been writing new policies of any sort - renter’s, home, auto, health - in Louisiana for at least 2 years, maybe longer. It had nothing to do with Katrina - it was in instituted due to rampant fraud and high theft rates. You can add new vehicles or transfer coverage if you are an existing customer, but no new policies, period. Unfortuantely - so many Louisiana residents got caught like you Heather, through no fault of their own and State Farm and Allstate and all the others took the opportunity bail completely.
:-(
Maybe Nationwide or Farm Bureau? Someone has to be writing, surely.
It’s weird indeed. I did not file a claim on my homeowner’s insurance (dry ground!) and it doubled. I DID file a claim and get money from my business insurance (3-4 feet of water), and its premium actually went DOWN by $400 this year.
To date, no one has been able to adequately ’splain this to me.
I have heard reports of a major class-action suit against State Farm for the mass droppings of policies.
Well, we all know what class action lawsuits do. You’ll get a nickel, and the lawyers will get millions. (Maybe the warm fuzzy feeling of sticking it to the big insurance companies is supposed to be worth hundreds of thousands.)
Dear Heather,
Firstly, apologies for using the comments section to get in touch.
My name is Roy Kareem and I’m a post-grad environmnetal research scientist based at University College London in the U.K. I’m writing my dissertation on Katrina, and specifically on how people were able to use blogs as a platorm for the production and consumption of views in the aftermath, as opposed to relying on more traditional forms of mainstream media reporting.
I’m in town for the next month doing interviews with various folk, and wondered if you’d be interested in having a chat about your blogging/Katrina experiences? If so, please get in touch on this email address, and hopefully we can arrange something.
Cheers,
Roy Kareem
Email didn’t appear above, so here it is: r.kareem@ucl.ac.uk
Cheers,
Roy Kareem