Alex Krnic of AAA did a phenomenal job managing our 2 back-to-back claims during COVD and the worker shortage!!
We had two claims that happened right after each other, both for water damage. We brought our claims to my AAA agent Alex Krnic and he handled both of them. This was a difficult time for many organizations (because of COVID and the worker shortage), but Alex was wonderful. I always had my calls picked up or answered quickly. I was never left hanging. Finding a restoration company that had really good reviews to do the repair work was difficult. I found that companies that had a history of good reviews were now not operating because the owner had COVID or were recently having terrible reviews. I wanted our damage fixed well. We ended up using a restoration company that had shown us that they do very good work (our plumber recommended them when our house had the first leak and they dried the house out) even though they were known to be expensive. Reading their reviews, people mentioned paying more than their insurance allowed because they wanted quality. Knowing they were expensive, AAA still worked with them. They were able to negotiate the price down to what they would pay and the appraiser they sent out showed us ways we could bring the price way down by refusing services we didn't want. For example, our restoration company usually packs up all the belongings and furniture in the rooms that need to be worked on and then takes it to their warehouse---this is a big money maker for them. They wanted 15K to pack up and store our kitchen and move a few couches, but we didn't even want this. The appraiser pointed out that we had plenty of room in undamaged parts of our house and we thought storing our things in other rooms and our large garage was a much better plan. Since our house was worked on from February until July and we lived in our house for all this time except for two weeks, we were glad to still have my kitchen stuff--they would have packed up everything in my pantry! BTW, the reason it took so long to get the work done was because of the worker shortage.
In brief here is what AAA did for us:
--always answered or quickly returned calls and emails
--worked with a company known for charging high rates and finding ways to get their prices down
--used Barker Claims Service to appraise the damage which actually handled the negotiations with the restoration company
--when we were due money it was sent immediately
--everyone was really nice and seemed to really care about what we were going through
Something to know about AAA home insurance that surprised me:
While AAA negotiates the amount contractors can charge you, they do not pay the contractor. When work was done on our house we had to pay the contractor deposits and our deductibles. We were given a check to pay for 60% of the work once an agreement was made for the price, but we did not receive a check for that last 40% until all the work was finished. Something to note, you could use the money and complete the repairs yourself. However, in order to recover the last 40% an appraiser would be sent out to see if you completed all the repairs.
My understanding is that there are some insurance companies that work directly with the contractor and the client only has to pay the deductible. Also, there may be companies that handle that last 40% differently. If you don't have the funds to handle that you might want to ask your agent about this. read more
