Lessons Learned

When growing up life's lessons are taught mostly by mom and dad, family, or watching other people's mistakes.

Life's lessons that included:

1. Don't run with scissors
2. Respect for others
3. Play fair

etc...

These lessons, at the time, seem hard to understand and sometimes follow.

When you get older, you start having to learn lessons the hard way. This is often by choice (choosing to do something you know might give a negative outcome) and sometimes just by being naive.

I am learning a hard lesson currently. The lesson: sometimes people don't do what they are supposed to do, and you have to pay.

Since moving into our current house I have learned more about insurance, insurance agents, and insurance adjustor's then I would ever care to know.

5 years ago after the house (only 10 months old at that time) was hit by the tornado I discovered the ins and outs of how the insurance claim process worked. It was tedious and in the end I know that I was not able to account for everything that was lost.

Then 2 years ago, another storm hit and put holes in the siding, damaged the roof and air conditioner (something I could NEVER live without) and caused Gregg and I to bail water out of our sump pump for 5 hours in order to prevent flooding in our basement.

Again, I dealt with insurance people and the problems associated with it.

Example: Did you know that during a storm your roof can have hail damage but miraculously only 1/2 of the roof gets hit. This only requires the insurance company to pay for 1/2 the roof to be repaired. When I get to heaven I would love to know the answer to how only half of the roof could have damage???

When you spend 5 hours bailing water in a 5 gallon bucket one would want to make sure that in case this would happen again, one would be covered.

I called and talked to the agent. He informed me that there is a "rider" (another insurance term I had to learn) that had to be added to my coverage in order to protect (cover) us against sump pump malfunction. This would include the power going out and the sump pump not being able to work and overflow. Given the past situations I had this added to our policy.

This past Friday our basement flooded from the sump pump after the electricity went out.

No big deal...right?!? We are covered.

Come to find out, the insurance agent never added the rider to our policy. Needless to say we do not have that agent anymore. This change was made by us and others after the agent failed multiple times to accomplish certain tasks.

Now what??

Our claim is now assigned to a "team" of State Farm representatives to determine whether it should have been added or not. The agent is taking no responsibility for his negligence, big surprise, right!

Meanwhile, we have to keep all the molded carpet, padding, tack boards, etc...until they determine if we are covered so they can estimate the damage amount.

If you have State Farm Insurance and have an agent out of the Champlin, MN office, PLEASE email me to make sure that you do not have this agent. He is incompetent and you might not be covered!

Do not learn this lesson the hard way, like I am.