Only people who suffer serious, demonstable losses due to the most aggregious behavior of an insurance company deserve anything more than an apology and an incremental award for their inconvenience. We can thank our lawyers and the judges who think this is just a game for making absure “bad faith” punitive awards. It’s crap and it’s coming home to roost. Our legal system can’t even manage to punish felons much less businesses.
When those in charge have trained claim handlers in proper handling, including ethics, no insurance company will have a problem with high awards against them. The creeps that think everybody is trying to steal lack objectivity. These are the ones that harm their policyholdrs as well as the insurance adjustment industry. These creeps deserve to be punished and high awards are good. Maybe it will get the attention of management who will change the sickness breeding in their claims departments.
I’m getting fed up with the idiots that touch claims and only serve to ignor contractual obligations. What happened to the desire to learn and build a career? What happened to showing basic respect to others. Most adjusters do a great job, but it takes only one to shift perceptions of the public.
If you work in claims, look around you at your fellow employees and ask yourself, “Do we treat our customers with dignity and respect all the time?” For those who answer “No” please find a different line of work so that the rest of us can practice with pride and respect.
I don’t disagree with Old Adjuster, but actual bad faith handling isn’t the issue that the article addresses.
The problem is that there are so many ways that a slick attorney can try to pin bad faith on what is really a technical error- paperwork, postmark dates, etc, and collect big sums.
This forces claim departments to set up unneccessary redundancies, wasting thousands of hours of time on issues that have nothing to do with actual claim handling, just to make sure every single T is crossed.
I have nothing real to add other than I agree with Josh and Old adjuster. I think we as a society are looking for somebody we can claim is screwing us over and insurance companies are easy targets.
And while you are putting in your “bad faith” claim make sure your lawyer gets you one of those “mortgage-free” homes courtsey of the same people who brought you Fannie Mae. G-D America!!
Of course bad faith claims increase the cost of insurance. However that doesn’t mean that bad faith suits are by definition bad. Bad faith is a huge hurdle and not too many unmeritorious suits can hold up to the burden of proof required.
Third party bad faith needs to make a comeback to stop some of the claimant abuse we see every day. When I was an adjuster, we just paid the loss of use (or rental) following a car accident, the claimant didn’t have to ask for it. And we didn’t try to con them into believing they were only entitled to basic transportation which is common tactic used these days.
I am not saying that claimant actions to try and get a payday out of every little fender bender don’t warrant due diligence in making sure claims are legit, but we as an industry need to extricate the log from our own eye before we complain about the splinter in the claimants’.
We have updated our privacy policy to be more clear and meet the new requirements of the GDPR. By continuing to use our site, you accept our revised Privacy Policy.
Agree with old adjustor
Only people who suffer serious, demonstable losses due to the most aggregious behavior of an insurance company deserve anything more than an apology and an incremental award for their inconvenience. We can thank our lawyers and the judges who think this is just a game for making absure “bad faith” punitive awards. It’s crap and it’s coming home to roost. Our legal system can’t even manage to punish felons much less businesses.
When those in charge have trained claim handlers in proper handling, including ethics, no insurance company will have a problem with high awards against them. The creeps that think everybody is trying to steal lack objectivity. These are the ones that harm their policyholdrs as well as the insurance adjustment industry. These creeps deserve to be punished and high awards are good. Maybe it will get the attention of management who will change the sickness breeding in their claims departments.
I’m getting fed up with the idiots that touch claims and only serve to ignor contractual obligations. What happened to the desire to learn and build a career? What happened to showing basic respect to others. Most adjusters do a great job, but it takes only one to shift perceptions of the public.
If you work in claims, look around you at your fellow employees and ask yourself, “Do we treat our customers with dignity and respect all the time?” For those who answer “No” please find a different line of work so that the rest of us can practice with pride and respect.
I don’t disagree with Old Adjuster, but actual bad faith handling isn’t the issue that the article addresses.
The problem is that there are so many ways that a slick attorney can try to pin bad faith on what is really a technical error- paperwork, postmark dates, etc, and collect big sums.
This forces claim departments to set up unneccessary redundancies, wasting thousands of hours of time on issues that have nothing to do with actual claim handling, just to make sure every single T is crossed.
I have nothing real to add other than I agree with Josh and Old adjuster. I think we as a society are looking for somebody we can claim is screwing us over and insurance companies are easy targets.
And while you are putting in your “bad faith” claim make sure your lawyer gets you one of those “mortgage-free” homes courtsey of the same people who brought you Fannie Mae. G-D America!!
If the feds take over all of the businesses they can’t be sued. NO MORE BAD FAITH! See, there is a silver lining after all.
Of course bad faith claims increase the cost of insurance. However that doesn’t mean that bad faith suits are by definition bad. Bad faith is a huge hurdle and not too many unmeritorious suits can hold up to the burden of proof required.
Third party bad faith needs to make a comeback to stop some of the claimant abuse we see every day. When I was an adjuster, we just paid the loss of use (or rental) following a car accident, the claimant didn’t have to ask for it. And we didn’t try to con them into believing they were only entitled to basic transportation which is common tactic used these days.
I am not saying that claimant actions to try and get a payday out of every little fender bender don’t warrant due diligence in making sure claims are legit, but we as an industry need to extricate the log from our own eye before we complain about the splinter in the claimants’.