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Same Insurance Claims, Different Results in La. Town
Residents of Gretna, La., have had drastically different experiences dealing with insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina.
(By Rick Wilking -- Reuters)
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Other homeowners have reported greater difficulty with their claims. Several Allstate policyholders say the company has required adjuster visits, which, for displaced homeowners, can be difficult to arrange.
Don Cherrie, a pilot for Southwest Airlines, said he had so much trouble arranging an appointment with an Allstate adjuster, he finally offered to fly them both in a helicopter to his flooded house in the New Orleans East area, planning to land on a nearby golf course. The offer was declined, and the inspection took place weeks later.
Cherrie said he is still waiting for written confirmation of the loss, which he needs before he can close on a new house elsewhere in the city. "I pretty much call Allstate on a daily basis," he said.
William Mellander, a spokesman for Allstate, based in Northbrook, Ill., said Allstate is processing claims both over the phone and with on-site inspections. But typically, he said, claims involving both wind and flood damage need to be inspected.
"Those kind of subtleties can create a difference in how claims are handled," he said. "It varies from claim to claim."
There is some dispute over the status of Cherrie's claim. Mellander said Allstate's records show the claim was paid Nov. 5. However, Cherrie said Allstate told him Nov. 17 that the company's "major damage committee" was still reviewing the claim and he would hear in "a few weeks."
FEMA does not yet have data on claims handling, according to spokeswoman Nicol Andrews. She said that she has not heard any reports of disparities in treatment of policyholders by the agency's flood-program contractors.
J. Robert Wooley, the Louisiana insurance commissioner, said the department has received 1,271 formal complaints involving hurricane claims. He said the figure is low considering his office has fielded 20,000 calls a month since Katrina hit, five times more than normal.
Wooley said it is understandable that flood claims might be handled differently, even on the same block, since water might have risen to different levels or an inspection might be needed to determine a house's value before deciding how much to pay on a policy.
"It's still subjective," he said. "Not everybody is just going to get a flood check. They still have to do some adjusting."
That has been the case with Cosenza, a 41-year-old U.S. Navy petty officer who had lived in a single-story house in Gretna, about six miles south of New Orleans, with her mother, husband and their two children and a grandchild since 1999. The family fled to Houston two days before the storm and is still there.
Cosenza said she first contacted a unit of American National Insurance Co., the Galveston, Tex., company that sold her the flood policy. Representatives at American National referred her to National Flood Services Inc., based in Kalispell, Mont., which referred her to a claims-handling contractor, Simsol Insurance Services Inc., based in Niceville, Fla.
