Homeowners Insurance Surprise

[H2ODude]

Have experienced high increases in HO in past, shopped around to bring it down. Not in a risky area, but NC certainly had some hurricane damage lately. I've seen no increase of note for several years. We got Metlife, pay 245 a month for ~$400k house, 18 pickup, 15 BMW, and a $2million umbrella. And they take the 245 on my Fido Visa, so knock 2% off that.

We returned from 2-1/2 weeks in Europe to discover over several days various damage from lightning. TV, irrigation controller, two landscape lighting transformers and 10 lights, modem, router, landline phone, and ethernet port on new iMac. Last one Apple will take care of, but total now well over the $1,000 deductible. Won't file. For the 300-500 bucks the hassle and chance of increased premiums not worth it. Have no idea what dealing with Metlife would be like on a claim, but to cover everything for less than $3k a year I'll risk hassle. FWIW their combined package is called "Grand Protect."

 

[KM]

Another happy Amica customer here....saved a boatload when we switched and the increase have been very reasonable including some $0 years.

But our homeowners did see quite a jump this year. We have “replacement cost” so an inflationary factor is built in each year. When I looked at what they said it would cost to rebuild our house I laughed. It was ridiculously too high. So I called them to question the value. They plugged in all the individual pieces (sq footage, foundation type, etc etc) into their program and a much more reasonable estimate came out. The service rep suggested I call and do this every 3 years or so, as sometime the “inflationary factor” puts things out of whack.

So am I unhappy with Amica? Sure.....it seems to me they should ensure their inflationary factor doesn’t put it out of whack. But the bottom line is every time I call Amica, a person answers the phone, I can understand them, they work very hard to fix my concern, and always call me back when they say they will. Can’t say that about other insurers I’ve had.....

 

[COcheesehead]

We used Auto Owners to bundle and saved a bunch. We rebid every year and they were the lowest for about 4 years. Then last year Travelers was lower and we switched to them. Anyone that has an online dashboard is favored by me. All our docs, billing etc is just a few clicks away. It makes things very easy. Both Auto Owners and Travelers have nice interfaces.