I am not going to tell you what you need to have in your home before the hurricane as you can get that information everywhere and anywhere.
What I am going to share are 4 practices that we wish every one of our clients would do. I can assure you that following these 4 simple tips will help to make the claim process go much smoother and ultimately get you the best possible settlement for your claim.
4 Tips that will Help the Claim Process go as Smooth as Possible.
- Document Your Property – You know the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”? If that is the case, then a video is worth a million words. Here is what I recommend: Grab your cell phone, put it on video mode. First, walk the exterior of your home, be sure to get every inch of your house on video from the roof to the grass (getting pictures or video of your roof is great but only do this if you are comfortable on roofs as it is not worth risking your life). Next, go inside your home and do the same thing through each and every room and closet, here you want to capture everything from the ceiling to the floor. With these videos, you will be documenting not only the condition of the structure but also will be documenting your personal property. Next, store these videos in a cloud-based system such as Dropbox or Google Drive to ensure they will be there when you need them, even if you lose your phone.
- Secure copies of all of your insurance policies. You may want to take pictures or scan these documents and store them in the same place as your videos as well & have a printed copy on hand. I am hoping that you have already reviewed your policy before now as you likely won’t be able to make any changes to it at this point. At a minimum, you should become familiar with your coverages, exclusions, and deductibles.
- Calling in your claim. When you call in your claim, they are going to ask about your damages. It is very important that you answer this question as thoroughly as possible while also advising them that you are not an expert and that you suspect there are more damages that you are not yet aware of. Request that they send a professional adjuster that can work with you to ensure that all damages are properly assessed.
- Mitigate your Damages to the best of your ability. If you need assistance beyond what you can do yourself, ask your insurance company for help. They should have a few “preferred vendors” that they can recommend and these vendors are typically going to be fair with their pricing. If they are not willing to assist with this, be very careful when hiring these type of vendors on your own. Get pricing from them upfront & before signing the contract. Any ethical contractor will provide you with this and if they refuse…RUN! Remember, these charges will be applied to your coverage limits and in the event of a large loss, this could interfere with you recovering the settlement that you need and deserve.
Most of all, stay safe and remember that this is why you have insurance. If you have any questions at all, we are always here to help as best we can.
Claim Concepts, Inc. is a Florida Based Public Adjusting Firm that handles claims throughout the entire state of Florida. The team of Public Adjusters at Claim Concepts has decades of experience in both working for the big insurance companies as well as representing policyholders to ensure they recover proper settlements.
