Jonathan Cooper’s Blog

1.  Make sure you have insurance that covers this type of claim - before the claim occurs. Although this may sound overly simplistic and obvious, it is probably worthwhile to spend an hour or two going through your insurance to determine what is actually covered by those policies, and perhaps more importantly, what is NOT covered by those policies.

2.  Make Sure You Follow the Policy’s Claims Reporting Guidelines.  Having taken your hard-earned money in insurance premiums, you would think that the insurers would step up and pay your claim promptly. Although that could happen, don’t bank on it.  A favorite insurance company gambit is to deny claims that do not strictly comply with their reporting requirements.  That brings us to our next rule …

3.  Report Your Claim Promptly. New York’s insurance laws and regulations generally allow insurers to disclaim coverage for claims that are not reported “as soon as practicable” after the claim arose.  Although a definitive time period has not been etched in stone, this has been often interpreted as being no more than 30 days post-incident.

4.  Photograph the Evidence. If your claim is for damage to your property or car, make sure to get your own photographs of the damage before these items are removed from your sight - forever.

5.  Document All Damage. Spending one extra hour now will save you a lot more time and heartache 6 months or a year from now when you can’t remember what happened to that favorite throw pillow you got from Aunt Phyllis. Perhaps one of the best (and easiest) ways to catalog your losses would be to download the free software at www.knowyourstuff.org.

One final thought:  although many articles on these topics, particularly regarding the insurance industry suggest that even mentioning the word “lawyer” may hurt your relationship with the insurer, and hurt your chances to resolve your claim, consider this: if that were true, why aren’t there much fewer trial lawyers?

The truth is, the insurers will likely pay an insured more money after they’ve “lawyered up” than before, if for no other reason than to avoid defending costly litigation.

Tags: consumer protection, filing insurance claims, insurance claims

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 1:28 am and is filed under consumer protection, insurance claims, legal mistakes, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.