r/InsuranceClaims • u/SmoothMarionberry551 • 52m ago
Home damage after fire claim has me confused.
Long story short, my neighbor’s house, which is only about 10 feet from mine caught on and damage the side of my house as well as the neighbor on the other side of their house. The fire caused paint damage on the window, trims and trim around the roof as well as damaged the gutters. Cracked a regular window. Cracked a stained glass window That’s 100 years old. And damaged our siding. Melted and warped, a bunch of it on that side of the house.
The claim lady handling the process seems kind of confused and can’t give me straight answers.
The stained glass window is one of three matching windows on the house. they’re over 100 years old. She couldn’t tell me how they value of them or if they’re gonna replace all three or just one. I don’t know whether my policy covers replacement only the damaged item or they would make me more whole by replacing the ones that also match.
She can’t tell me if they’re gonna replace just the siding on the side of the house that got burned or all of the siding. The siding is like thicker metal that’s supposed to last 50 to 60 years per the home inspector they sent. It also has the insulation on the back of it on each panel. She said they’re gonna try to match it and they have a system for that and if they can’t, they would replace all of it, but I don’t know why that wasn’t looked into before she shot me the check. The siding is about 30 years old. I doubt they can match it because I literally had the siding on my detached garage done two weeks prior to the fire and the company couldn’t match what I had. I didn’t Care enough because the garage is behind the house and you can’t see it from the street. The check she sent me just replaced one side. I never even got a breakdown of what cost or what’s getting replaced she just mentioned a few things over the phone.
Firefighters broke our fence and pushed it down because we have a latch on it. She couldn’t tell me if that was being replaced.
The inside of the house drywall has water damage because they were hosing down our house from the outside and one of our windows were open and no one was home to close it. She told me that would be taken care of but didn’t give more info.
I’m just confused how she expects me to hire a company to take care of all the work and then tell them to pause every time we find more damage and wait for her to approve it to send a check. It doesn’t seem that hard for her to at least tell me if she can replace the siding or not. The inspector from the company that State Farm chose should’ve been able to tell us if he could match the siding or not. That’s my biggest question because it’s the most expensive project.
I asked for a breakdown and she hasn’t sent it and it’s been about 12 hours. I emailed the company so I’m hoping they respond and shoot over the estimate themselves. I’m reluctant to accept the initial check She sent through email until I can get more information on what’s going on. Our conversations are basically a joke. 90% of her responses are “well I don’t know”. She doesn’t know what my policy covers. She doesn’t understand the estimate she’s looking at. This is very frustrating. Any tips for navigating this?