Thursday, November 17, 2011

State Farm – No Longer Awesome

We have had State Farm for what seems like forever, my wife has had them since the '70’s and soon after we got married we consolidated everything into a State Farm package so everything was covered. Since we had no claims everything was great! We bought the RV and had 2 claims, both were handled in my view perfectly by State Farm.

Enter the house, last June we had a bad wind and hail storm, the roof was damaged as was the siding. The claim process was a nightmare, denied the first time even though the examiner saw damage, so we said fine, if State Farm says there isn’t enough damage then what can we do? I am not the kind of person who files a claim without having very good reason and they say everything is fine. They had done right by us for the RV, why would they be any different for the house?

I have found that how one division acts has nothing to do with another division, they’re like separate companies completely. I was ignorant of this fact. Disappointed smile

We had our door knocked on by every single storm damage construction company out there saying they would handle everything and we turned each and every one of them down. Enter March 2011, an even worse hail and wind storm and now there is more damage, you can actually see the roof tiles were cracked from the impact and we have dings all over the siding.

State Farm came out and said yes you clearly have enough damage to warrant roof and siding replacement. They sent us a check for several thousand dollars less than the damage and said we would need to revisit the claim if the repairs were more than the check. We decided to wait until Spring of 2012…. our mistake… last night we get a form letter from some underwriter at State Farm stating “This insurance coverage is no longer acceptable to State Farm Fire and Casualty Company because of your overall claim activity”. Number of claims on file? ONE!  Disappointed smile

He then states the overall claim activity was the hail damage which hasn’t even been cashed or repaired yet. I do some research and find out that for State Farm this has become typical practice and there are class action lawsuits against them for it, who woulda thunk it?

I wrote my State Farm agent and told him there is no longer any reason to have State Farm unless this could be rectified since we would lose the discount from having everything insured with them, at least $220.00 a year discount, gone. Lets say he gets State Farm to keep our house insured with them, no way in hell I’m staying with them for longer than it takes to switch. How is one claim in all the years we have done business with them too many claims? The check is for $12,000, the damage is over $18,500 so now we can’t even get everything fixed without going back to get the difference.

I’m calling USAA since they give Veterans a discount plus they also insure everything and if they pass muster we’re going to drop State Farm like they clearly want to be dropped and hopefully USAA works out. I started doing some research about this and have found there are websites dedicated to exposing State Farm for their tactics in the home insurance field.

We’ll see how this new drama unfolds after our Agent contacts the underwriter to see what can be done.

10 comments:

Nan said...

I have heard nothing but bad things about State Farm over the years. If your choice of USAA does not work out, I would recommend Nationwide. We have had some claims and they have paid every time....with no complaint.

Rae said...

What a nightmare. We had hail damage this summer and I found out too just how State Farm operates. They gave us the runaround about our claim and we ended up dropping it. It's a shame, but we are at the mercy of the insurance companies.

Erik's RV Blog said...

I've been living on cloud 9 with them taking care of our RV so well. Reality is never what we expect and companies don't have to care but it would be nice if once in awhile they were some what like their commercial says but alas nope.

JoJo said...

This doesn't make me feel very good. I have all my insurance with them as well and even some Investment plans. And I also have been with them for about 15- 18 yrs. The only claims I have had was windshield repair, with no problems.

Sue and Doug said...

good luck..I guess State Farm is only good if you don't file a claim!

Donna K said...

Hmmmm...now it makes sense! We have had everything with State Farm since the 70s and have been very pleased with the auto coverage. In the 80s we had 2 claims for wind damage - once a fence and once a tree blew down on our patio cover. We got a call from our agent saying if our claims didn't quit we would be dropped. Sheesh - I wonder how many $$$ we have given them with NO return and they wanted to drop us for two claims. Had no idea this was an ongoing problem. I might look around too.

Erik's RV Blog said...

JoJo - Their auto division seems to be fine. We have only had to file a claim on our RV which might yet again be a different division but 3 of my neighbors have State Farm, filed damage claims from this big storm and have all been dropped.

Tells you something for sure, none of them have had claims in the past either so State Farm is obviously a different company than they used to be.

Sue & Doug - Agreed!!

Donna K - USAA has a good reputation and we're probably going to change to them very soon.

Big Matt said...

State Farm has been made of Suck & Fail for years and have been doing a bang up job of screwing people for a long time.

I'm with Farmers, myself, but I may check out USAA when I can no longer take advantage of leaving my residence listed with family (which gives me the family "fleet" discount because of the sheer number of vehicles, plus its a rural city, so lower insurance rate vs where I actually stay with the camper).

Karen and Al said...

I'm sorry to hear about your problems with State Farm. You don't want 3 claims in 2 years.

I think you will like USAA. Of course I'm prejudiced because I worked for them (as a claim adjuster). USAA normally is in the top of the claims satisfaction surveys for both auto and homeowners.

I couldn't find a recent survey, but check out this link from a few years ago to see where all the companies stand. I've also heard good things about Auto Owners.

Good Luck.

http://businesscenter.jdpower.com/JDPAContent/CorpComm/News/content/Releases/pdf/2009235.pdf

I think it's about the third page down where it shows the ratings of different companies. Notice USAA scored higher than the other companies. It's because they only insure military and can't be included in the group...even tho their score was higher. This is typical of USAA. Insurance companies strive to get good scores, and this survey is very important to them.

Kyra said...

USAA is awesome.