After a few hours of being away from the house running errands, we arrived home to find water POURING out of the ceiling of the main floor of our house, only to find out that a water pipe had burst on the 3rd floor of the house which resulted in flooding all 3 levels of our house! Since I had never filed an insurance claim before, I was under the impression that the insurance company was on my side, therefore would take care of the damage on the property I had been paying them to insure … after all, this was MY insurance company, right? I soon found out just how wrong I was.
The insurance company’s adjuster came out about a week after the pipe burst and inspected the damage to the house. Then we anxiously awaited his figures so that we could begin the work and get our family moved back into our home. We were shocked at that point to find out that the insurance company only wanted to pay us $11,000 to fix all three stories of our flooded home. I immediately called my agent for help and, despite his good intentions, I quickly discovered that no matter how well you know your agent and you good you think they are, they have absolutely no pull with the large insurance company. It was at this point that I knew the insurance company had no interest in helping me and I realized I would have to help myself, so I began searching the internet for options to help with insurance claims.
When I began doing research online for help with my insurance claim, I discovered the profession of a “Public Adjuster”, which I had never heard of before. I found a few different companies online and began calling around, as I wanted to ensure that I found someone that was reliable. I was not impressed with the large companies that covered the entire US, as they just treated you like another number … I did not feel that they would provide the personal level of service that I was looking for to address this major event that I had going on. I then called Mr. Bushart who personally answered the phone, listened to all of the problems I had, then explained how he could possibly help me. By the time I got off of the first call with him, I was very relieved … I finally had found help!
I have to admit though, at first I was leery of committing to pay the fee a public adjuster charged, so I thought about it for about a week before I committed to hiring Mr. Bushart, but in the end, I would have been more happy to pay him twice as much as he charged. Not only due to the eventual insurance payout of nearly quadruple their initial estimate, but more importantly because of the personal level of service he provided. He actually made two 9 hour trips to my house … first to view the damage, which I expected, but then he came back the second time when the insurance company sent their adjuster back out to address the discrepancies between their adjuster’s estimate and Mr. Bushart’s estimate. I was very glad that he did make it back the second time … it was worth every penny I paid to be able to sit there and watch Mr. Bushart use his vast knowledge to effectively address what I believed to be an unfair and arrogant adjuster sent by the insurance company.
I hope to never have to go through another insurance claim again, but if I do, I will call Mr. Bushart in on Day #1!
