In India buying a home is considered a big acheivement specially in this inflation where everything is at such high price. A home protects you from everything and its the only place where you feel the safest.
But as time passes the home is tend to get old and there could arise problems like leakage, water damage, an accidental fire damage, etc such that the house could require a repairing cost.
And to safegurard from this people buy a comprehensive home insurance policy but their claims get denied due to some reasons, today you will know about the best 6 super tips to claim your home insruance policy.
1# Be Precise and Brief
Number 1, when you make the claim or you make it either online or by telephone be brief what is meant by brief is, so usually when you are filing a home insurance policy claim online what you will find is the insurance company will ask you your policy number, the date of loss, and the description of damages.
Now let’s say your entire house was flooded and you had water damage from a pipe break what you will simply put is “water damage through the house” by keeping in simple.
Another thing is if you have roof damage and you have leaks in the house multiple ceilings in multiple rooms. Don’t put a lot in simply put “rough damage” or “damage the ceiling” Just make sure that you keep everything brief and to the point don’t add up a lot of things because sometimes while inheriting a claim when somebody gets denied and they write a book while pointing out things that are excluded in the home insurance policy claim things that really had nothing to do with the claim.
2# File Your Own Insurance Claim
Number 2, File your own claim file and handle your own claim if it is less than Rs25,000 then in such case what you can do is get the contractor’s estimate to know how much the damage repairing costs.
Now once you have the estimated amount keep that to yourself and don’t let the home insurance company know what the damage costs are there then the insurance company will send their adjuster to examine the damage.
3# Common Denominators
Number 3, when it comes to the denominator of the most common denominator when we see people get their claims denied this could be because of what they tell the home insurance company to happen, the other half is really that the insurance company just does not want to pay.
Prime example, two of them- roof damage most of the time people unexpectedly will call the insurance company and say it rained a lot and you have got roof leaks and you need to make a claim for roof there is no coverage in the insurance policy for rain, but there is coverage for tropical storms when there’s heavy wind or from a hurricane or a tornado.
So it’s important to know it has to be wind driven, now the insurance company is going to tell you a lot of times we see deny claims where the insurance company tells you well there’s no roof opening so we’re denying the claim don’t worry about that there’s a way to get around it.
#4 Water Damages
Number 4, Few things that are involved with water damage, firstly it’s the 14 day mark. So there is a 14 day mark sometimes the policies where you have to report your water damage claim.
Now let me give you two words that you should avoid using with water damage and the two words you want to use and the two words you don’t want to use they are what insurance companies would love for you to say to them when you report your claim is that- “Oh the leak has been there for a long time and it’s been gradual.”
Long-term gradual is not covered in the home insurance policy, now let me give you two words the home insurance companies hate- When you contact your home insurance company and tell them that you got to report a claim this “sudden leak just happened abruptly” sudden and abruptly are your keywords when making a water damage claim and that will get it covered long term and get gradual no good sudden abrupt just happened.
#5 Contractors
Number 5, when it comes to contractors after the home insurance company has come out and giving you their estimate, do not simply accept their estimate.
The insurance companies do not put everything in the estimate the materials cannot be had for the prices that they quote their labor prices are extremely low and there’s a lot of other things you want to get if you’re handling yourself.
Get three estimates- use the highest estimate or you can get two whatever it is get the high estimate use that one.
When you have your contractors estimate some things you can add in there to make your estimate a little bit higher.
You want to include things like a hazardous waste removal anything with drywall how much do you put that’s subjective you can go anywhere from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 from your claim amount.
Then overhead and profit 20% this will include that if you have an Rs8,000 estimate include 20% for overhead and profit because that’s what contractors are eligible to get but they don’t put it in their estimate you can simple things.
That we include moving your contents if the room is damaged you have furniture and to move that contents give yourself a few hundreds or thousand rupees put moving contents there’s another word we use is “content manipulation.”
If you use those two additional things put on thousand rupees for each, now you are going to make your estimate now a couple thousand rupees higher you want to be higher because the home insurance company is going to lower and hopefully you can settle somewhere towards your high end not their low end.
#6 Deman Higher Than Estimates
Number 6, demand higher than the estimates what does that mean? when you make your demand to the home insurance company and say the insurance company we have Rs.25,000 in damages now let’s say that’s a contractor’s estimate Rs.25 000.
What you want to do before you produce the estimate is include all these other things and then the estimate comes out to Rs.29,000. so then you write dear xyz insurance company, we are hereby making a demand for Rs29,000 we ask that you kindly review this and get back to us within the next 14 days on your position.
