The 10 Claim Commandments

OBVIOUSLY, in a blog like this, it’s impossible for me to teach you everything I’ve learned in the nearly thirty years of handling claims. So my first, and, I think, best advice to you would always have to be pretty simple: consult a professional.

Having said that, I realize that there are people who will refuse to hire someone else to do something they feel they can do by themselves. So for now my goal is give you enough information to help you improve your current, next, or even your previous claim.

And yes, you read right. I said it is possible improve your previous claim. Believe it or not, you really can challenge a claim that the insurance company considers “closed.” It all depends on things like how long ago the claim was, and under what circumstances it was settled or closed. I talk to people all the time who tell me they “never knew claims can be re-opened,” or “never knew that claims can be renegotiated.”

It’s in the insurance industry’s financial interests, of course, for policyholders to believe that, once they cash a check, they can’t come back to fix an error. It really is a shame how many people think this way. Mistakes happen, and your claim can be reopened and renegotiated. Here are some of the basics on how this happens.

Many insurance adjustment errors, especially on catastrophe claims, stem from the adjuster overlooking or misquoting damages. Usually, this happens for one of three reasons: adjusters don’t spend enough time to identify all the damages; they are unfamiliar with the damaged item; or their estimating software incorporates a bad price.

Other mistakes happen when adjusters either misinterpret the policy or misinterpret the facts on the ground. Either circumstance can result in the denial of a claim that should actually be covered -- or in a payment that is lower than it should be.

If you decide to handle a claim yourself, or reopen one that you think deserves a second look, please consider yourself bound by the following ten “commandments” -- all of which a qualified public adjuster would scrupulously observe.

Commandment #1: Do not try to pull one over on your insurance company!

Be thorough, but be honest. Few things turn insurance adjusters on like the prospect of catching policyholders who are engaged in fraud. Most companies have entire departments devoted to rooting out fraud, and you can be sure that the insurance company’s fraud representatives will be among the best-trained people in the company. (Too bad the adjuster who comes out to inspect your home probably isn’t trained this well.). The fraud representatives have seen and heard it all, and they eat would-be cheats alive. Remember that insurance fraud is a crime. Don't even try it.

Commandment #2: Take notes.

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Buy a notebook. Buy a pen. Put them to use. Take your time and go around the property, noting everything you see to be damaged. Everything. Besides the obvious stuff like missing roofs and two-foot flood lines, you are looking for scratches, scuffs, scrapes, cracks, bangs, dents, tears, stains, discolorations, swelling, unevenness – I mean everything. Look high and low, inside and out. Write it all down.

You should also keep a detailed log of all conversations that take place with your insurance company, adjusters, contractors, and other players in this drama. Keep track of everything: Your own time cleaning up, time you spend making emergency and temporary repairs, and every penny you spend that has anything at all to do with the claim. I can’t stress enough the importance of being thorough and detailed.

Commandment #3: Get pictures.

Photograph it all. Video it all. When I say “all,” I mean everything. You may need these images somewhere down the line. Warning: Your adjuster may want a copy of these records. Be sure to keep copies for yourself in case the adjuster happens to lose the images you provide.

Commandment #4: Show the adjuster all the damage.

This sounds easy enough, but in order to do it, you must know exactly what to show them. Again, you’re better off working with a professional who has done this a couple of

hundred times. If you choose not to do that … well, be sure to give the adjuster a copy of your own exhaustive list of damage to the property, and keep a copy for yourself. Lead the adjuster around the property and be sure he or she notes each and every item on your list. If that means the visit takes two hours -- or ten hours -- so be it. Be more thorough than the insurance company’s adjuster wants to be. I tend to find that if an adjuster is inspecting a property for 30 minutes, I will probably be there for two hours. If the adjuster is there for two hours, I will probably be there for four to six hours. Am I just slow on the uptake? I like to think not. I am thorough, though, and I am careful. I don’t want to miss any damage. The adjuster wants to move on to the next claim. I want to make sure you get everything you’re entitled to. Two different agendas! Ask directly about the adjuster’s experience level. You wouldn’t want to be operated on by someone with little experience, and the same goes for the insurance adjustment of your largest financial asset, your home or business. Note that an ethical, experienced adjuster making any kind of effort should be able to point out a thing or two to you that wasn’t on your list.

Commandment #5: Remind the adjuster that not all homes are built with the same materials.

Image provided by motherearthnews.com

Insurance adjusters use computerized estimating programs that are designed to generate rough estimates (or, as I prefer to call them, “guesses”) about the average amounts of damage in average homes. These software programs tend to be fairly accurate in evaluating average homes and average losses – and tend to be less accurate on very small losses, very large losses, very low quality homes, or very high quality homes. The more familiar you are with your home and the quality of its construction, the better off you will be.

Commandment #6: Review the adjuster’s completed estimate in detail, until you understand each and every line.

This is where you will find mistakes – unfortunately, though, these documents can be extremely tough to read. Room sizes may be off, damages you pointed out may have

been omitted, or prices cited may be too low, either because the quality of the item being replaced is not correct, or because the prices being charged are higher than they were when the software for the estimating program was written. (This is a very common problem after a catastrophe).

Commandment #7: Have a licensed general contractor review the insurance company estimate and provide an independent estimate.

If this is impossible, at least see if they will indicate specific concerns they may have about the insurance estimate. This can be tough to do after a catastrophe, as contractors can be hard to come by. You may choose to get individual estimates

from the roofer, carpenter, electrician, plumber, painter, A/C man, flooring specialist, or other professional. I would not suggest that you get estimates from the “cheapest guys

in town.” If you get more than one estimate for a particular repair, count on the insurance company paying on the lowest figure associated with whatever you provide them.

Commandment #8: If the insurance company refuses to pay for an item, demand that they explain (in writing) why.

The company should not only do this, but also show you exactly where in the policy it says that what you are claiming damages for is not covered. This point is very important. Never simply accept that something is not covered because the insurance company says it’s not covered. The company has an obligation to make you understand why it is not covered. It is the company’s job to prove to you that something is not covered.

Commandment #9: Be persistent. Don't give up.

From redshoepr.com

This may be the most difficult commandment of all for you to follow, but it is absolutely essential. I am convinced that, as a group, U.S. policyholders walk away from millions of dollars in valid claims each year simply because they are sick and tired of dealing with the claims process. Hang in there. If it is appropriate to do so, write complaint letters to the company (making sure to cover the local, regional, and home office levels), as well as your state’s regulatory agency, Attorney General, or Governor; your municipality’s Mayor, Councilman, or Selectman; or anyone else in authority who may listen. Take advantage of any measures your policy or State has for reconciling these matters. (These are sometimes called Alternative Dispute Resolution methods.) When writing, be brief and to the point (I’ve seen people scribble page after page of ramblings that are impossible to make sense of. Even if they are right, these letters will never be taken seriously.) Keep after them. Be relentless. Try to stay calm.

Commandment #10: Seek professional assistance when needed.

Depending on the loss, this could mean a contractor, an engineer, a mold specialist, an accountant, an attorney – or, of course, you might decide that you need a good public adjuster after all. Again – a public adjuster will not charge you anything up front, but will, instead, charge a commission on what we are able to collect for you above and beyond what the insurance company is offering. It may feel strange, having to consult with someone to make sure that your insurance company pays you what you’re actually owed. But if they always did what they were supposed to, we would be out of work.

Think of us as your insurance against problems with the insurance company. No, it’s not “right” that you should need insurance like that, because you have probably been paying a large amount of money to the insurance company every month or quarter, and you’ve probably been doing that for years. But this is the way it is. At least now you know about it, and you also know what you can do about it.

Mark Goldwich is president of Gold Star Adjusters, a group of public insurance adjusters dedicated to helping citizens get the maximum settlement for any insurance claim.

The Top 10 List You Won't Find on David Letterman

by Mark Goldwich

This week I will cover the top ten warning signs of problems on the horizon with your insurer,

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especially if you are dealing with a large natural disaster. If you spot even one of these warning signs, you should start thinking about hiring a professional to assist you immediately!

Warning Sign Number Ten: By phone or by form letter, the insurance company tells you something to the effect that “due to the large number of claims received,” the process of resolving your claim will be delayed. Here, remarkably, is something you can be absolutely sure your insurance company is telling the truth about. If they say your claim will be delayed, take it to the bank!  Again, this is what usually happens in catastrophe situations. You will need professional guidance in this situation. 

Warning Sign Number Nine: Someone from a call center tells you that say an adjuster “should be calling” within 24-48 hours. The tip-off here is the call center, not the adjuster, is the one actually calling you. I wouldn’t suggest taking off work to wait for that call. You are almost certainly in for a long wait. Use the time wisely. 

Warning Sign Number Eight: The adjuster does not call when the call center indicated. Surprise, surprise. This seems harmless enough at the time, but it’s definitely not a good sign. You have now officially begun the process of risking your sanity. It’s simply not worth it. Get someone else to take on the process of tracking this person down. 

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Warning Sign Number Seven: The adjuster schedules the inspection of your home more than one week in advance. Most policyholders don’t realize that this is a clear indicator that they are not at the top of the list. No matter what you write down in the calendar, a time lag of more than one week before the inspection often translates as “You do not yet exist in my world.” This is not where you want to be! 

Warning Sign Number Six: The adjuster cancels or misses the scheduled appointment. Alas, this is quite common. It may signal any number of problems: the adjuster’s lack of organization in the face of a surrealistically high workload, burnout, confusion, reassignment, firing, or even the adjuster’s decision to go AWOL for one or more personal reasons. Of all of these, reassignment is probably the most likely reason for the failure to appear.

In catastrophe situations, adjusters can be -- and are -- reassigned from area to area a number of times, creating high stress levels, epic burnout rates, and serious turnover. You very likely won’t get any advance notice ahead of time about this reassignment. You are now at the mercy of the system. 

Warning Sign Number Five: After inspecting your property, the adjuster advises you that the estimate will take more than ten to fourteen days to complete. Big problems ahead. For a number of reasons, including but not limited to the inevitable failings of the human memory, estimates that are not completed within this time frame tend to feature significant mistakes. (Would you care to guess in whose favor those mistakes will probably lean?)

This kind of “open time frame” also suggests that the adjuster is taking on more and more inspections … rather than completing work on the claims that have already been seen. This kind of delay may improve the adjuster’s financial situation, thanks to the additional fees collected, but it probably won’t do much for your own bank balance. 

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Warning Sign Number Four: There are long time lapses between calls, inspections, and your receipt of the adjuster’s estimate. Not what you had in mind. This is still more evidence that the adjuster is overworked, disorganized, improperly trained, improperly compensated, or a combination of all of the above. Don’t try to fix these problems yourself; don’t try to bulldoze your way through them. You can’t.

Warning Sign Number Three: The adjuster tells you your file is being transferred to another adjuster or another unit. Somehow, this file transfer rarely seems to work out well for the policyholder. In most situations, you won’t like the new adjuster any more than you liked what was happening (or not happening) with the first adjuster. 

Warning Sign Number Two: You receive voluminous requests for information. Attempting to fulfill these voluminous requests will take you quite a long time. Some of the requested information will be impossible for you to supply. Some of it will be a little easier for you to track down. Some of the information you do pass along will not satisfy the Powers That Be. (You get the idea.) This kind of request is an indicator that someone in the bureaucracy “smells something fishy.” You may not know what that something is, and, as a result, you almost certainly won’t know whether you are hurting or helping your cause as you track down all of this data. 

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And the Number One warning sign that your insurer is about to make your life miserable …

You get letters with ominous language that you’ve never seen before, like “non-waiver” or “reservation of rights.” Most policyholders are confused and disoriented by this turn of events, and may even put off dealing with it because they don’t know what to do. This is what the insurer is hoping you will do. In fact, when this happens, you should be thinking “denial,” and you should be reaching out to a qualified public adjuster and preparing for battle.

If you’re like ninety-seven out of one hundred of the policyholders I run into, you’re simply not going to win this battle if you attempt to fight it on your own. 

If even one of these things happens … contact someone immediately. Of course, you should also contact someone in the case of later “warning signs” that suggest a major collapse of the process, like the insurer denying all or part of your claim, the insurer suggesting fraud on your part, or the insurer demanding that you (or someone else) be examined under oath.

Again: You wouldn’t try to handle an important IRS, medical, or other significant issue without a professional, so you shouldn't try to handle a major insurance issue without a professional on your side!

Mark Goldwich is president of Gold Star Adjusters, a group of public insurance adjusters dedicated to helping citizens get the maximum settlement for any insurance claim.

The NHL Has Nothing on These Guys

by Mark Goldwich

With the bone chilling weather currently gripping the country the thought of ice hockey

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seemed particularly appropriate when dealing with today's topic of deflection.  If you have been reading my posts, you now understand the basic principles behind what may well be the insurance industry’s ultimate weapon. As you should have noticed, it’s pretty mind-boggling.

Unfortunately, the process now gets even more complex. In addition to playing a kind of shell game involving you, the adjuster, and the engineering firm, the insurance company may bring other outsiders into the picture. When they do, the outcome, in far too many cases, is a game at a whole different level, a game that most policyholders can’t understand, and much less win. Just like the gambling casino in Vegas or Atlantic City, certain industries tend to promote games that it knows the House will win. Today I’m going to share one example of the kind of “advanced” deflection game you may well find yourself up against after a major property loss.

Q&A: What you should know

• What is “advanced” deflection on the part of the insurance industry? It’s deflection that uses a separate company that appears to be acting on behalf of the insurance company, but in your best interest.

• Why “appears”? Because, ultimately, the company may not be acting in your interest at all. Just like the insurance company, this company is best regarded as your adversary.

• Can you give an example of this? There are many examples, but perhaps the most dramatic involves special building contractors known as “preferred vendors.” As the name implies, these companies are “preferred” contractors recommended by the insurance company following a loss. But you should understand why the insurance company “prefers” to use them. The insurance company uses them because they’re cost-effective from the insurance company’s point of view. From your point of view, though, there may well be very expensive problems.

• How am I likely to come in contact with such a “preferred service provider”? It’s a distinct possibility, especially after a major natural disaster. (Keep in mind, though, that different insurance companies call these providers by different names.)

Here’s how it might happen: Let’s say your home has experienced significant water damage from a burst pipe, and your floor is ruined. The adjuster, or a representative of the insurance company, may say something like this: “We’ve got everything covered – you don’t even have to look around for a contractor. We’re going to send out a repair firm. They’re on our preferred list. They’ll handle everything. Just sign the paperwork they’ll give you when they show up and give them your deductible.” Those may not be the exact words you hear, but the gist of the message will probably be the same. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” How convenient it all seems!

• Then what happens? The contractor shows up at your doorstep … and you probably make a huge mistake.

• What mistake is that? You imagine that the contractor is working for the insurance company to fix your floor. But in fact, the contractor is operating as an independent business.

From a formal point of view, the contractor is now working for you, which means you, not the insurance company, are responsible for resolving any problems that arise.

• Wouldn’t that be true of any contractor I chose? Yes.

• Why is this relationship different? Because, even though the contractor is (technically) working for you, it’s been referred by the insurance company. In other words, that’s where it gets a good deal of its business from. So its priorities about things like quality, workmanship, timeliness, customer care, and even respect for your belongings may not be based on how happy you are with the job they do. Even though they may be legally working for you, some of these providers act as if the insurance company is the entity they’re most interested in keeping happy. This can lead to some very unfortunate situations.

Getting Hit with a Cheap Shot

• For instance? In one case I worked on, the homeowner had sustained significant water

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damage. The contractor showed up on the homeowner’s door, handed over some paperwork, and told the homeowner to “sign here.” The homeowner signed and paid the deductible, under the impression that the insurance company was actually performing the repairs, and would hold the contractor accountable. Not so!

As it happened, the job took three weeks, not the three to five days the homeowner had been promised. The quality of the work was slapdash, with paint splattered everywhere

and sub-par finish work. And as if that wasn’t enough, the contractor placed all of the homeowner’s furniture in a portable storage unit just outside the home … a portable storage unit that happened to have a leak.

Then the rain fell, but nobody knew that the furniture was being ruined. The family sustained thousands of dollars of additional losses to their furniture!

• Which the insurance company covered, right? No! (well, not right away) The insurance company claimed that, because the homeowner had “signed here,” the work of the contractor --- and the oversights of the contractor – were entirely the homeowner’s responsibility!

Once again, the insurance company’s response was an unwelcome one: “It’s not our responsibility.” That’s advanced deflection.

• What did the contractor do? It stonewalled, totally ignoring the homeowners.

• How likely am I to be able to turn around a situation similar to that on my own, as an individual homeowner? In my experience, not likely at all.

• So did this homeowner lose out? Fortunately, no. They came to me, and I was able to convince the insurance company to live up to its obligations.

• What was the result? The homeowners were compensated for the shoddy workmanship (enough for them to have all the work done again - properly this time), and the loss of their furniture.

In the end, I secured a $47,000 settlement for them over and above the $25,000 the insurance company had initially paid to the contractor to do the work.

• How the heck did you do that? Well now, that’s the “secret sauce”, isn’t it! The short of it is, I know what is important to insurance companies, how they develop and maintain relationships with “preferred” contractors, and how it can used against them. If there is anything an insurance company hates more than paying too much on a claim, it is looking bad and losing credibility – especially when dealing with a senior citizen customer of over 50 years!

By the way, I remember this homeowner saying “I don’t understand, they’ve always treated me so well.” And when I asked, “How many homeowners claims have you submitted in the past?,” I’ll never forget his answer…”none.” Nuff said!!

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• Are there other kinds of deflection I should watch out for? Sure. Every claim is different, and the ways insurance companies are handling them (and introducing other parties into the mix) changes all the time, so we can’t get into every type of deflection.

Ultimately when it comes to winning the game you need to understand the rules if you hope to protect the goal before a hockey game breaks out as you fight for your next insurance claim.

Mark Goldwich is president of Gold Star Adjusters, a group of public insurance adjusters dedicated to helping citizens get the maximum settlement for any insurance claim.

The Mad Hatter's New Gig

by Mark Goldwich

We're all familiar with the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland.  He's the character that doesn't quite

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see the world the same as the rest of us.  While a work of fiction, he would feel right at home in the insurance industry as you will see in today's blog.

In a previous blog, I gave you an overview of the insurance industry’s third big “coincidence” – what you and I might call intentional avoidance of responsibility.

When you encounter this event, which can come about at any point in the process, you’ll learn that the industry is quite adept at shifting responsibility for taking action on a valid claim to some other organization, entity, or person. In this blog, we’ll get a close look at some of the simpler methods that the industry has established over the years for deflecting important questions. What follows is a thumbnail sketch of what might be called “low-level” or “basic” deflection. (We’ll look at some of the more advanced strategies the industry can put into play in the next blog.)

Q&A: What you should know:

• How does the insurance industry make deflection work in its favor at the most basic level? By taking full advantage of the coincidence of incompetence among the very people it hires as adjusters and other third-party representatives. I can’t tell you how many times policyholders have had an experience like the following:

- Call the insurance company. Get a recording with another number to call.

- Call the number (disaster call center). Hold for extended period.

- Get disconnected.

- Call the call center repeatedly. Hold for extended period. Find out it wasn’t the call center that you wanted to talk to.

- Get adjuster’s number to call.

- Call the adjuster. Fail to get a response.

- Call the adjuster. Fail to get a response.

- Call the adjuster several more times. Finally, get some unsatisfying response.

- Call the adjuster. Fail to get any response, even an unsatisfying one.

- Wait absurd amounts of time. After losing all patience with the adjuster, call the insurance company to complain.

- Upon reaching the insurance company, hear something like the following: “We’ve had problems with that adjuster – he’s no longer working for us. We’ve assigned someone else to your claim.”

- And so on.

I know it sounds absurd, but you can rest assured that this kind of thing really happens. Here is an actual call center conversation sent to me by a client:

Policyholder: “Hello, I'm calling about my claim.”

Insurance company: “The phone number for the claims department is no longer being answered by the claims department.”

Policyholder: “Why?”

Insurance company: “The claims department is not taking calls because they are too busy. You can leave a message and someone will call you back.”

Policyholder: “When?”

Insurance company: “We can't say, because they are just too busy.”

Policyholder: “Is there a number I can call for the claims department?”

Insurance company: “Yes, the number you just called.”

Policyholder: “But you said you were not the claims department.”

Insurance company: “Yes, that’s correct…Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Policyholder: “Well, I'm not sure, since you haven't helped me at all.”

What is the hatter with me?

Notice that, because the call center person or adjuster is often an independent contractor, rather than a full-time employee, the insurance company itself is very often not “at fault” for anything -- beyond selecting a poor contractor. “Besides,” they will tell you, “this was a major catastrophe.” As if your home being in ruins wasn’t a good enough hint.

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Note, too, the cumulative effect of this whole process, especially the insurance company’s assurance that someone else is now on the case … someone who will be equally hard to track down. The cumulative effect is to further exasperate and frustrate the policyholder. You’re one step closer to giving up on the whole process. Once again, people within the industry are likely to say that such a turn of events is entirely coincidental and beyond their control. But this coincidence, too, endlessly repeated in the lives of thousands upon thousands of policyholders who have recently experienced a disaster or accident, happens to benefit the bottom line of the industry as a whole.

And all the while, the company can claim that the dereliction of duty is not their responsibility, but someone else’s.

• Are “incompetent” adjusters the industry’s only means of deflecting responsibility for taking action on a valid claim? Not by a long shot. Think of it this way: if you wanted to go out hunting for bear, would you load only one bullet in your gun?

• What other varieties of low-level deflection do policyholders have to contend with? One of the most common is what I call the “Engineer’s Deflection.” In this shocking coincidence, the engineering firm the insurance company hires becomes the scapegoat.

The insurance company will say that it has to arrange for the opinion of an outside expert – typically an engineering firm – to assess a specific damage to your property. Time will pass. The engineer will be identified. More time will pass. The engineer will show up to look at your property. The engineer will make an inspection, take some photographs and notes, and leave. More time will pass (usually a lot more time). The engineer will file a report with the insurance company. More time will pass.

Having taken even more time to analyze the report, the insurance company will find something unusual, strange, or inadequate about an issue the engineer has raised, and will tell the adjuster about it. More time will pass. The adjuster will inform you that his or her “hands are tied” – that the engineer has found a problem or inconsistency that keeps the adjuster from processing the claim in your favor.

You might as well say "I eat what I see" is the same thing as "I see what I eat!"

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In these situations, it’s not at all uncommon for the adjuster to tell the homeowner something along the following lines: “In most cases where we encounter (storm damage/fire damage/whatever damage) like this, we pay the claim … but in your situation, the engineer found (Strange Situation We Hardly Ever Encounter). I wish I could pay the claim, but the engineer’s report won’t let me.”

What the adjuster won’t tell you in this situation is that the same speech, with slight variations, has been delivered to countless other policyholders who trusted that insurance company, and paid that insurance company, to protect them against a certain risk.

• Can the engineer really “tie the insurance company’s hands” in this way? No, absolutely not. The engineering firm is not driving the process, and the engineer’s report is not binding on the insurance company. It is one tool, and only one tool, the company uses to determine the cause, nature and extent of the damage to your property. A different engineering report from a different firm can (and often does) point toward a totally different conclusion. But the insurance company, and the adjuster it hires to represent it, often likes to pretend that a report from an engineer that “raises red flags” is like an edict from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be an engineer. The entity “tying the insurance company’s hands” can be a roofer, plumber, contractor, restoration company, weather service – the deflection list goes on and on.

• Who else can the insurance company use as an agent of “low-level” deflection? You.

• Me? Yes, you, the policyholder. In a lawsuit filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, it was alleged that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and without drawing much attention to themselves, insurance industry representatives went around visiting homeowners and asked them to sign some (seemingly) routine paperwork before the adjuster could actually examine the property or pay for living expenses. Many of the homeowners, eager to get the wheels of the adjusting process moving, or out of desperation for the promise of financial assistance, simply signed these documents without reading them closely. Big mistake.

What the papers said was that the policyholders were acknowledging that they were victims of flood damage (for which they were not covered) rather than hurricane damage (for which they were). Thus, the final responsibility for nonpayment of the claim shifted to the all-too-compliant policyholder. Who made this deflection possible? You did!

• What’s the moral of these horror stories? There are three big lessons to take away from these stories. First, and most important, get a public adjuster working for you just as soon as you suspect you may have to file a claim for damage to your property (or, at the very least, once you find your claim going sour). Second, refer all questions about engineers and engineering reports to your public adjuster. And third, never, ever sign anything because you think you’re “supposed to” in order to get an insurance company adjuster to look at your property. There should never be any preliminary paperwork necessary to get an adjuster to assess damage to your home.

That’s “low-level” deflection. In the next blog, you’ll see some of the examples of advanced deflection from the insurance industry. They’re even scarier. What's the hatter with them?

Mark Goldwich is president of Gold Star Adjusters, a group of public insurance adjusters dedicated to helping citizens get the maximum settlement for any insurance claim.