My home in Cahaba Heights (Birmingham, AL) was destroyed by Fire in 2005. I was away, caring for my Mom in FL, who was terminally ill, and my young girls. On Feb 24th, 2005 I got a phone call….There had been a fire, and my husband, the girls Dad, had died. We contacted State Farm, our Insurer, and notified them of the tragedy.
Instead of quickly adjusting the loss, by rebuilding our home, paying for another temporary home, and paying for our personal property, State Farm weaseled out of rebuilding my home and took actions to make sure I was destroyed mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and financially.
State Farm, Employee, Fred Williams asked me in April 2005, to come to Birmingham to make a “Sworn Statement Under Oath”. I asked him, “When do you want me to be there?” & he said “Whenever. Just let me know whenever you will be in town. You don’t have to come here just for this.” He refused to give me a date or appointment at that time. He never told me that it would delay our claim. Later, State Farm claimed that *I* did not cooperate.
He was very cunning. He told me in April & August, 2005 (more than once) to NOT fill out a Proof of Loss about rebuilding the house. He said: “Just give us an estimate to rebuild it”, which I did. Little did I know that later, State Farm would claim that I never asked them to rebuild the house. At the time, I was naive and trusted State Farm, and did what Fred Williams told me to do. What a huge mistake. It’s obvious in retrospect that he set it up that way from the start in order for State Farm to save money by NOT rebuilding my house.
Fred Williams yelled at me on the phone when I called and asked them to honor the policy they sold me. Not only was he not helpful, he was mean and abusive. I called State Farm and complained but was still forced to deal with him. Fred Williams also refused to answer questions on how to make the claim and fill out State Farm’s Inventory and Proof of Loss forms. (I had never made any kind of insurance claim before this) Again and again, I have seen that Fred Williams intentionally misled me, or was unhelpful in order to be able to claim later that “I did not cooperate” with State Farm.
These are just a few examples of how the powerful and experienced State Farm effortlessly orchestrated the events.
I was not able to be present in Birmingham to operate my business, and we suffered financially due to State Farm’s failure to pay for another temporary home or “additional living expenses”. I lost my business, and the ONLY source of income to support my children & myself as a result of State Farm’s actions, and failure to perform as promised.
State Farm never repaired my home. Eventually, the roof fell in due to the extensive fire damage.
My young daughters and I had to live in a condemned house in 2006. There were holes in the walls and floors and animals came in at night. State Farm was aware of that fact, but did nothin for us.
Later, in a phone call, Mr Williams’ supervisor, Lloyd Renfrow, privately confessed to me the REAL reason they didn’t pay. He whispered into the phone,”WHY hasn’t your lawyer sent a final demand letter?” He said that my lawyer wasn’t doing enough for me, and that they knew he had a conflict of interest all along. In other words, he was telling me that State Farm was taking advantage of us simply because they saw the opportunity to do so.
It wasn’t even my lawyer, it was my husband’s Estate’s lawyer. I was unrepresented, and told State Farm so, not realizing that it made my daughters and I unprotected lambs for the Predator State Farm to take advantage of. I had asked State Farm if making an insurance claim required a lawyer, and they said no.
I have my phone records. They show over 80 calls to State Farm, not even including the calls to and from Fred William’s cell phone. It should be apparent to anyone that I was frantically trying to get State Farm, as promised in my policy. Fred Williams actually claimed, later on, that I was “hard to get hold of”.
It’s been over four years now, and State Farm is still lying, shifting blame, & trying to weasel out on technicalities that are unrelated to the validity of our claim. (BTW, State Farm has conceded that it was a valid claim) They now claim I caused delays that, in actuality, *they* intentionally caused. They told me I didn’t need a lawyer. Now I know why. It cost me over $8,000 to attempt to straighten out the mess. I eventually had to give up trying, as we were homeless by then, and were forced to live in a condemned house. More recently, I have been forced to spend thousands of dollars I can’t afford traveling to depositions given by State Farm, again and again, in which a huge table full of lawyers grilled me for 14 hours, day after day.
We lost our husband & father, our house, & everything in it at once. I lost my Mom, & then my business. I became sick & depressed, and unable to function. State Farm took advantage of us at our worst moment, and I resent them for it. After all, the reason we buy insurance in the first place is so that we won’t completely fall on our face after a tragedy or loss.
My policy promised to perform within 60 days. State Farm FAILED US miserably.
I never would have believed this could happen had this not happened to us.
Let us know your thoughts!!
This is edited down from the original with authorization.
What is this, a State Farm bashing site? Never saw one mention of these unsatisfied policyholders comments about their agents involvement. Leads me to believe that there are two sides of these stories.
State Farm is a good company, I had them insure me and my family for over 30 years and have had several claims taken care immediately.
carl
Thanks for your input Carl. This is one story. We welcome the bad and the GOOD stories to help people make a great decision on who to pick. Please provide your story here http://www.insurancepaper.com/share-your-story/ and we will welcome it.
I believe State Farm should tell their side of the story regarding this claim. It looks bad for State Farm, but it also looks bad for insurance companies in general.
Thanks Kianush for leaving your thoughts. It does also give a bad taste to the insurance industry as a whole. But we hope this site will also provide the good stories for everybody to hear and make a great choice.
You lost me as a follower and a reader when I saw your story for this was sourced as “StateFarmsucks.com”.
This site can’t be taken seriously with sources like that.
Too bad, rather well done interface.
Jishnu,
We tried to email you a response but the email address you provided does not work and our email came back undeliverable.
Here is our email response to you.
“Thank you for taking the time to review our site. We are sorry that we lost you as a reader based upon one story on our site.
The goal of the site is for people to make their own opinion of each story and make a right choice when it comes to their insurance carrier. We welcome bad stories and definitely the GOOD stories as well. We want this to be an open forum of information for people to make their own judgment call.
People come to us to share their stories with other people. The story that you refer to was written to us. Statefarmsucks.com is not our source but the person that wrote it claimed it as their source.
The opinions and stories are not representations of ours or our hosting company JP Web. We have no ties to this story or the other stories that are about an insurance company experience. We merely like to share information and have a place where others can share their experiences.
If you have a story or experience with State Farm we will gladly accept it. If you disagree with the current story please share your comments to the story writer with respect while nurturing discussion.
Please also look at other story http://www.insurancepaper.com/state-farm-positive-feedback/
as proof that we welcome all stories good or bad and have no ties to any insurance company or program.
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Well this story sure sounds sad and I’m not partial to insurance companies in general; however there are several questions that come up for me.
Where’s your state’s depaartment of insurance on this? They can certainly consider your complaint and investigate and put pressure on the company if they find it valid.
What about lawyers? If your story is true you should be able to find a hungry lawyer with dollar signs in his eyes! After all, this is an insurance company with a deep pocket. This is good feeding ground for scum-bucket attorney’s that will tear them a new page – of course they’ll end up with most of the money they win for you too. But you can at least make the insurance company pay if they treated you that way.
The picture of you and your little girls homeless and without your husband and father is very sad. It makes me mad just to think about it. But what is your responsibility in this? If your story is true you need to distinguish yourself and set yourself apart from the normal, day to day, average deadbeat out there that takes no responsibility and plays victim so that government or some other schmuck will come running to rescue you. They go around with their sad story trying to milk it for what they can get and do nothing to move from being a victim to being at cause in their life. That can’t be a satisfying place to be.
Get out of that trap, lift your head up and determine that you will not be a victim. Get whatever facts you do have and talk to the state department of insurance. Contact attorneys and if they turn you down ask for referrals to other attorneys that might consider your case. The purpose of insurance is to make you whole. To restore you to where you were before the loss occurred. If you had policies and paid your premiums then an attorney can have a field day with the company for not upholding their part of the bargain.
But if all attorneys turn you down, that’s a good sign that you don’t have a case and all you have is a sad story. Without hearing the other side I take your story at face value and I do believe you’ve been through a difficult trial. I do believe that your husband has died and that has to be tough for you. But is the insurance company to blame? Are you transferring your anger and hostility to them? Are you mixing up issues that don’t really relate to each other? I don’t know.
I wish you the best and I hope your family can heal and grow from this and find peace and love and financial success. And if State Farm really did do this to you, I hope you sue the bastards!