how to negotiate<\/a>\u00a0with your insurance company.<\/p>\nUnderstand this is a Negotiation<\/h2>\n
You\u2019re used to negotiating when you buy a car or shop for handbags from street vendors in second-world countries, but an insurance claim?<\/p>\n
Make no mistake: When you make an insurance claim, you have entered into a negotiation, and your goal is to win this negotiation. Think of the insurance company\u2019s initial settlement offer as the starting point in that negotiation. And know that the insurance adjuster handling your case submits that initial offer with the expectation that you will make a counter offer. In many cases, they\u2019ll be offering you half of what they\u2019ve already been approved to give you, and hoping you\u2019ll just accept the offer and move on.<\/p>\n
Know that They Can Lie<\/h2>\n
Did you know it\u2019s legal for the police to lie to you? Well it\u2019s the same with insurance adjusters. For example, the adjuster may say something like, \u201cthis has to be approved by management,\u201d or \u201cthat aspect of the claim is not negotiable.\u201d Neither of these things is likely to be true. Everything is negotiable, and adjusters typically enter negotiations with lots of wiggle room to settle the claim. If they exceed that, they may need approval, but that won\u2019t be happening after your initial counter.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t Get Mad<\/h2>\n
There is a good chance the insurance company\u2019s first offer is going to be hilariously low. If a lawyer got involved, it might be 10 percent of the actually approved number. If not, it might still only be 50 percent. Don\u2019t blow your top. A good strategy in a negotiation of any kind is, if you suspect your opponent is lowballing you, is to dismiss their offer out of hand, and say something like, \u201cWe both know that\u2019s not a serious offer,\u201d and leave it at that. It resets the negotiation, and puts you in more of an offensive position.<\/p>\n
Document Your Claims<\/h2>\n
Typically, a claim will be itemized. A flood claim, for example, will usually have hundreds of individually appraised items on it. It\u2019s tedious, sure, but you can challenge the insurance company\u2019s valuation of any or all of those items. To be convincing, you\u2019ll need some kind of documentation, which is where receipts and things like used-market sales prices can help. If they say your table is worth $100, but you found one on Craigslist in similar condition for $300, you have a good chance of meeting somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Filing an insurance claim on your house can be one of the most stressful and frustrating experiences about home ownership, or adulthood in general. It\u2019s easy to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the project and intimidated by adjusters and insurance agents who handle these cases every day, and have an advantage over you. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesmar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}