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Is It Worth It To File A Small Home Insurance Claim?
Today, we’re going to talk about if should you file a claim with your insurance company or if should you pay out of pocket? It’s a problem that I run into a lot as an insurance agent and so I think having Kristen with us from a restoration perspective will be really great. So read below to hear what she has to say.
Thank you so much for having me today, Michael. Education is key. You almost want to look at your premium of your insurance as being almost like a credit score.
So if you have a claim, for example, if you pay roughly $1,200 a year for the coverage for your home policy, your deductible is a thousand dollars and you potentially have a claim that really only comes out to about $1,500 in damage. What that can do to then your premium over the next three years, it’ll increase by about 10%.
So you end up paying an additional $840 out of pocket.
So if it’s not about three times what your deductible is, I would encourage you to consider paying that out of pocket than filing the claim.
Will My Insurance Company Drop Me If I File A Claim?
There’s some other warnings to heed. If you are within the first 12 months of the coverage of a new home policy and you file a claim, that is then a risk factor. You could potentially be non-renewed or denied. If you have more than one claim within a three to five year period, also with any type of insurance company, even if you try and switch from company to company, there is a back database that is going to log those items and you become an automatic risk.
So working with licensed, bonded and insured contractors and communicating with your agent is key because that is going to determine whether or not you really need to file a claim. If you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call.
How Do I Know If I Should File An Insurance Claim Or Pay Out Of Pocket?
Awesome. So I was telling you before we went on camera, that’s why I love Gateway Restoration because you guys won’t go out there and just say, “Hey, we need to file the claim. Give me your insurance information. Let’s do this.” You guys will actually talk with the client and assess the situation and help them decide if they should file the claim.
Absolutely. If it is something where you can pay out of pocket as opposed to filing that claim, and it doesn’t require a full blown general contractor’s license, but a licensed handyman, we have connections that we can get you hooked up with in any type of trades industry, depending on the type of damage and repair that needs to be done.
That’s perfect. Because I can’t tell you the amount of times where the client hasn’t even called me. They just file a claim and it’s a $1,200 claim. Then they have their second claim six months of the later and they wonder why their insurance company is dropping them and well that’s why, and they never had a restoration company explain that to them. They just go in there and start doing the work, file the claims.
So it is very important guys to work with a good quality, honest restoration company, disaster relief company so that they can guide you and make sure that you actually file the claim when you need to and that you’re not going to hurt your insurance going forward. So thank you Kristen for being with us. Appreciate it.
Again, I will put Gateway’s information down below. So if you’re in Arizona and you need help with a claim on your home, call them, they will take awesome care of you.
Gateway Restoration | (480) 338-2331 | https://gatewayrestoration.com/