People with no morals
 

I barely know this boat owner who recently had his transmission go out in his boat. This is his first boat (highend boat company) and he bought it pre-owned (no warranty). He's apparently is trying to get his insurance to cover the cost of the repair by claiming he hit something in the water although nothing is wrong with his prop, drive components, and no damage to the hull or structure underneith the boat. It's to the point where the insurance company is calling the passengers on the boat and they are lying. I hope the insurance company is not that stupid.

Its easy to suspect but hard to prove . The insurance co may just buy it rather than expose itself to a lawsuit . This could effect his insurance rates after such a claim. Its not right but with all the aggressive lawyers ready to Sue at the drop of a hat that's the way it is in this country.

I hear it allot doing claims work on boats. My favorite is:

"Hey Buddy, I gotta tousand dollar deductible, bury it in the claim and I'll split-it witcha"

Sure pal, I'll commit felony insurance fraud and trash my career for 500 bucks.

Sometimes you have to tell the insured no. The key to the decision in my mind is if I can call it an accident. By that definition I must be able to trace the damage to a single point in time and it should at least be aggravated by an external event. Not cumulative. Sometimes stuff just breaks. It doesn't always have to be somebodies fault. I hope they send a proper surveyor and not some poor under-trained adjuster.

I have a claim to view Monday afternoon, same story. The term is "SSO" or "striking submerged object" I have the boat being hauled and the reversing gear being torn down before my eyes. The running gear will be pulled and cleaned before my eyes. The insurance company is paying for all of this. When I call it, I will be right. No guess work. The statement from the owner is only back-ground. I prefer to listen to the boat. My report will have a insureds' statement, inspection details, Extent of loss, conclusion, Summarized with cause and origin statement, estimated cost of loss with estimates from factory service providers, The non- loss related bloat trimmed from the service estimate, my own estimate to keep them honest and the ACV of the boat and the deductible and depreciation figured. The day of inspection the adjuster will have a reserve estimate. Pending lab work the report is issued in 24 hours.

This costs money that all insureds pay with their premiums.

The insurance companies try to get it right. They really do. The want to pay every nickle they owe........ but not a penny they don't.

I know it's not popular for wake and ski boaters to hire a surveyor when buying a new to you boat but gear temps under load and a $40 fluid sample at survey may have indicated high bearing wear or clutch pack wear. The buyer then adjusts his offer to accommodate the repair. Presto! the survey just payed for itself threefold.

You guys are dropping 20-40 large on used boats then try to save 400$. I'm surprised the insurance companies and banks aren't demanding a survey for coverage or financing.

And to stay on topic, shadow this guy in a month at a local bar. You will hear him bragging about how he screwed the insurance co. out of a new gear or how he was screwed by his insurance co. Nothing in the middle.

I hear where you are coming from Baitkiller, I recently had some storm damage repair work done at home. Paint 75 lineal metres of eaves and 60m2 of ceiling, all in ceiling white paint. Insurance said get a quote from a builder. Buiders' quote was for $AUS 3,731, I nearly fell over when I saw it and said to the minister of finance to ask the insurer if they would give me $1,500 to do it myself. Insurer said no, so I watched two blokes paint from 8.30 am till they finished at 2.30pm with an hours break in there as well. Someone is making a HUGE killing!!!

And people wonder why their insurance rates are so high...

I know I"m still hung over from yesterday, but I'm having a hard time reading this post. It's totally my fault, but damn. The metric system and exchange rates, this early in the morning on a monday, really?

Well a square metre is just under a square yard, and our dollar is around 80 cents US . Basically it would come out at around $US 20+ per square yard give or take.

Or divide it by three so we can follow it.

Comes out to around 6.33+ per square foot.

Last time I checked, 1 square yard equaled 9 square feet.....

So $2.22 per square foot.

Thank you Baitkiller
I am an adjuster for a major company, and work hand in hand with our boat unit. We hire surveyors all the time and they know their stuff. When their report comes back, it is gold, regardless of what the people on the boat believe they heard or saw. Too many times we see damages where people truly believe they hit something, as they heard a loud noise and felt something, where, in the end, it was their motor throwing a rod, or something in the upper case (speaking in regards to i/o's) breaking lose.
As for the boatowner, I hope he gets nothing but a letter. When someone gets away with fraud, and it happens way too often, it comes out of everyones pockets. And Baitkiller is right, we want to pay every cent we owe, but it isn't fair to the rest of our policyholders to spend their premium dollars paying for things we don't. It sucks for him, but a policy is a contract, both parties need to stick to their part of the deal, and far more often than not (I honestly can't think of a time we have not held up our side of the deal in all my years here), it is the Insureds, not the insurance company, who are breaking the contract.

If everyone wanted a big break on their premiums, they'd stop commiting fraud. Rates nationwide, on pretty much everything, would drop 30-50%.

Paul, as for your situation, I have no idea why your company would not have paid you to do the work yourself. I would have paid you in a heartbeat!

Put it another way, it equates to $ US162.69 per hour for each painter. I couldn't understand why the insurers only required one quote, it seemed very odd to me, especially as I was the person contacting the builder. You would like to think that for the sake of keeping premiums down and contractors on their toes, at least three qoutes would be a standard.

Paul,
Many times, we don't even require one quote, but we will write the estimates ourselves. Regardless of if you get 1 or 50 quotes, we always write an estimate to make sure everything is in line. Your quote - not reasonable. We call that the stupid price. A contractor didn't want that small of a job, so they bid it through the roof at a completely stupid high price, if they get the work, it's just that much more in their pocket, if they don't, they didn't really want it anyway. Not sure why they didn't price check, but yeah, I agree, that is a crazy amount to pay those guys.

Hey non-metric-understanding people, how about using Google to convert instead of expecting someone else to do it for you?

Kharma. Pretend that bad things happened to you and they will in the future. When ever I have a ligit claim, I still weigh whether it is worth filing. I have had some claims that I should have reported (a tree fell on my cabin and wiped out the deck, Ice storm did some damage to my cabin gutters and put a couple of holes in my roof at the lake), but I did not claim them. If I was unable to do the work myself or if it was major and I couldn't afford to do it then I guess that I would claim it. It stinks that people take advantage of the system like this. We all pay for it, but as I said, Kharma!

Yepper.....That's what no coffee gets you.

while i agree that fraud happens and is very very related to our prices i have a question. what percentage of fraud claims are paid out and actually discovered to be fraud? if ya'll cut a check do you then find out it was fraud? i mean if premiums are paid i would imagine that's what they are for:to fix things. i've been paying premiums for 5 years and have not made a claim so that's thousands in the bank.