Ever made a claim on your house insurance?
 

Fire?
Wind damage?
Water damage?
Ceiling collapse?
Basement flooded?

Earthquake???


By launching a claim did it up your premiums? :1orglaugh

I'm laughing but at the absurdity of it, because really the insurance companies never lose, even when they do pay, they get their money from you. One of my upstairs toilets just sprung a leak and water poured through my downstairs ceiling, opening up a huge wet rift in the drywall. Stipple is hanging and chunks of it are all over the floor. Yay.

I have a 20-year claims-free record going, which gives me a 20% discount on my insurance. If I make this claim that goes away.

Plumber says he can fix it for under a grand. I doubt I'll be making a claim.

I had the same thing happen last year, an upstairs pipe developed a leak and ruined the drywall in the ceiling below. You should be able to fix that for much cheaper than a grand. I wouldnt even think about filing an insurance claim, it will raise your rates and I'm sure you probably have a deductible.

Exactly. Yes, it will but UNDER a grand as I said. I'm not sure how far under, he'll know once he rips open the floor.

My rates would rise by a good (bad) $300-400 per year if I were to make this claim. Not worth it.

We've never claimed for none of the above, but claimed for a few items on home insurance when a few items were damaged & a burglary. The premium seemed to stay about the same, although the car insurance went up dramatically when we claimed for the car.

Made a claim for hail damage in 2012 - the damage assessor we hired put in a claim to our insurance company for replacement roof (shingle to 40 year Asphalt) full house repaint, deck and fence re-stain, garage ceiling re skim/paint.

Cost was 38k, insurance company paid and didn't raise premiums.

As we were pulling out of the garage one night, my wife hit the remote control - causing the garage to come down just as I was exiting. Garage door was destroyed.

I don't recall if it caused our insurance to go up. Our insurance is rolled into our mortgage so we don't pay too much attention to it.

I am my own insurance.

Had a robbery and had several thousand of stuff stolen. Not a big deal. Then 6 months later I had a nearby lightning strike and claim was over $17k in destroyed electronics. Insurance company said if I wanted to stay with them I was going to have to raise my deductible to $5000 for 3 years. Otherwise it sounded like I was going to get cancelled. So I did it and my rates actually went down because of the high deductible. It's past 3 years now and I haven't asked them to lower the deductible yet since I am enjoying the low rates. But I guess I probably should.

My house used to have kind of a shoddy carport area. We had heavy snow a few years ago and it caused the carport to collapse onto my car.Totaled the car and did some damage to the house. I made claims for the house, carport and car (all with the same insurance company). They paid it all and haven't raised my rates.

That said, I have been with them about 20 years and the only other claim I have ever made was getting my car towed once when I had a flat tire and realized my spare was flat so it was towed to a tire place to get fixed.

Had an early model dslr cam repaired/rebuilt through house insurance claim...many years ago. No premium increase.

Only claim we've made.

House Insurance with USAA.

Have you watched their TV ads? The ones that say that over 90% of USAA members plan to stay for life?

I'm one of them.

Started USAA for car insurance and credit cards in 1979 when only military personnel were eligible. They've treated me fair and square, and sometimes a bit more than fair ever since.

I've had them for homeowners insurance for decades. Any and all claims, even basement flood damage, covered without any hassle. And when it was caused by a defective sump pump, they claimed against the manufacturer. When they won, they sent me a check years later to refund my deductible, $1,000. I'd forgotten about the claim by then, but they didn't forget to send me the first fruits of their claim.

Now, they are essentially replacing my 30-year-old roof for free. "Wind damage" required its repair, you understand. :-) . I use them for everything except professional practice coverage, which is outside their turf.

And I'll stay with them forever.

Are they a bit more expensive than Geigco and the others? I've never checked. I suspect that they are. I worked for Travelers Insurance for ten years defending injury claims, worked with lots of lawyers paid by other insurance companies. Including the cheap "substandard" carriers. I saw every day that the insured individuals get what they pay for. Those who pay the lowest insurance premiums get the worst treatment, with cases that drag on for years and years, and sometimes the results are worse. You really do get what you pay for.

I just can't run out of good things to say about USAA.

When those damn crack head punks broke in twice,I had one insurance company drop me after the first one.So tempted to rig a shotgun for the next time

That's... amazing. Then again, did you have a longstanding "claims-free discount" like I have? If not then you probably wouldn't notice a rise in premiums. I on the other hand enjoy a 20% discount which I would lose if I make this claim. In 20+ years I've never once made a claim. I always did repairs myself or paid someone.

And as I said it's not really all that lucrative of a claim, 1-2k at most. If it was worth 20 or 30k I'd consider it.

Ah, I see now that you have one insurance co. for everything. Here I deal with one broker, but through them I have separate ins. co's, one for house, another for the car. In my province auto insurance is a crown corp, meaning it's owned by the Province. Home owner's insurance co's are private.

Holy hell. I'ma go rewatch Death Wish 3.

sounds similar to my GTR car insurance, apart from the excess went up to £1000 & my actual annual amount went up to over £1500 a year too, all from full no claims, after 2 claims in one year :Oh crap

Around 12 years of no claims. TBH I have no idea if that translated into any sort of claim free discount bonus.

Company is USAA and Joe Obenberger posted above everything I would say about them. They are great with their customers.

TBH most of the damage the insurance adjuster put in the claim seemed OTT to me. When the USAA guy came to the house a week later to meet the adjuster and verify his claim I fully expected him to slice 75% off the claim and say to the adjuster, you're asking for too much work and most of it probably wasn't even storm related - but he didn't.

They both walked around chatting and after 20 mins he gave the claim the full go ahead. I'll admit to being fully shocked but I'll never change from them now.

Claim
 

Didn't you have an infrared motion detector to stop the door coming down?

My son had $10,000+ damage to his basement due to heavy rains backing up the drains. he didn't file. Year later same thing. Still no claim, in case something serious happens, such as the whole place burning down.

Had a burglary a few years back. Took enough to trigger the $1,000 deductible. American Family replaced items like my 5 year old MacBook Pro with a new one. Biggest problem, to collect I had to go out and buy everything I claimed before they would issue the check. Rates didn't go up.

Just once a damaged roof claim from a storm on one of my apartment buildings.

They came out to appraise right away and cut a check right away immediately. Rates did not go up.

The update on this water damage/plumbing job --- it's only going to cost around $450 to fix.

Pocket change!

Here you have to pay extra for backed-up-drain flood damage, and must pay for a pump to be installed to boot, due to the fact that there are so many areas of the city where it's been happening frequently in recent times.

As luck would have it my properties are not in those areas. :D

Flooding
 

My son's problem must have occurred to previous homeowners, at some time. It's just the first few years there wasn't that much rain. Just the past couple of years it's rained like crazy where he lives.
Had it happened in the first 2 years, he could have sued for non-disclosure.
Now he's going to have to disclose that when he sells, knocking down the value of the house.