Reopening your old claim:
Your insurance policy gives you the right to reopen a claim within a stipulated period of time if you come to realize that you were not properly indemnified. In Florida for example, claims can be reopened within 5 years from when the damaged occurred. And it doesn’t matter whether you have already received money from the insurance company and made the repairs.

How do you know if you were properly indemnified? One quick and easy way to find out is to use MySmartClaims.

Get your old claim, sign-up and start answering the questions. If the MySmartClaims loss estimate is greater than what you were paid, you should contact your insurance company and request that they reassess the claim.

After generating the MySmartClaims final report, mail it along with the executed Proof of Loss to your insurance company adjuster. If, however, your adjuster was someone from out of state, used to alleviate the pressure on local adjusters due to the large influx of claims from a catastrophe, then mail it directly to your insurance company, requesting that a new adjuster be assigned to this loss. All mail should be sent certified, return receipt requested.

Once the insurance company receives your letter, they’ll contact you within a few weeks and most likely set up a re-inspection of the property with a new adjuster. You should take this time to begin to make your case on why the insurance company’s estimate was low. Use MySmartClaims to highlight issues such as matching, indemnification, overhead, profit, etc.

Negotiation:
The process of settling an insurance claim is imperfect and rarely results in an equitable outcome because the parties are negotiating in a “zero-sum environment,” i.e. one party wins at the expense of the other. Winning or losing cannot be defined in absolute dollar terms but rather by how little money the insured leaves on the table, and how much money the insurance company saves.

There is no such thing as a “perfect” settlement. Just an “acceptable” settlement. Sometimes it benefits the insured. Most often it benefits the insurance company.

As in any negotiation, the party who is better informed and better prepared usually wins. And that is usually the insurance company. They negotiate thousands of times a year with their trained personnel and sophisticated software. The insured is at a disadvantage.

It is generally true that the more information shared by negotiating parties, the easier it is to get to a point that reduces each party’s downside. The insurance company doesn’t want to overpay for the loss. The insured doesn’t want to under collect. An equitable agreement lies somewhere in the middle.

In reality, that is rarely achieved. Most people with property damage have very limited knowledge of what they are entitled to under their insurance policy. They don’t know today’s true cost to repair their damage. With this disadvantage they usually defer to an “expert” -- the insurance company’s adjuster. The insurance company knows this and they count on something else -- they have no obligation to inform the insured of what they are entitled to. The insured usually accepts the initial offer, limiting chances to reduce their downside.

MySmartClaims eliminates this problem by providing the insured a detailed report of the true cost to repair the damage under terms of a standard policy. That figure is usually higher than the insurance company’s, and often triggers a settlement amount somewhere in between.

MySmartClaims helps many homeowners get more money. The process works. It gives the insured a stronger hand in the negotiation. It demonstrates factual reasons for a more equitable settlement.