Businesses Don't Like to Lose Money

They advise you against getting your own representation. What you need to ask them is, would you take a settlement if you where in a car accident without having it reviewed by someone who knows your rights?

They tell you not to sign with a contractor. This is because unless you sign with a contractor, the contractor does not have the legal right to negotiate with your insurance adjuster on your behalf. By doing this, the adjuster can get you to agree to a settlement before it is analyzed by a qualified contractor. In the end, this will most likely cost you money.

They use scare tactics, such as “beware of out of state storm chasers,” and “you should use local companies.” Although there are many fly by night companies known as “storm chasers” that come into a town after a storm hits an area to give legitimate companies a bad name, there are more local fly-by-night companies that start up.

What you will most likely never find with other existing, or new local or out-of-town companies, that you will see with your local United States Roofing office, is our ability to call for backup. While other companies get overwhelmed and start to make major management mistakes after a catastrophe occurs, United States Roofing calls in a complete emergency response team to assist. Our national backup is set up through our USRCT division. USRCT is an emergency response team put in place and trained to handle a large quantity of construction projects, in a short period of time. They are a professionally organized network-based-mobile, capable of setting up a fully-staffed, fully-functional local office, at virtually any United States Roofing location in the United States within 72 hours of a weather catastrophe. If required, they are capable of completing up to 100 projects per day.

USRCT will come into town and become a powerful asset to both your local United States Roofing office and local homeowners. This is because they’ve been through it before. They know the business and homeowners rights as well as, or better then your insurance adjusters.

The contractor profits from the storm, while the insurance companies takes a loss. It is obvious to see who is going to assure that everything damaged is repaired or replaced. The reason that insurance companies try and scare you away from using experienced companies, and push smaller local inexperienced companies, is because they know that most local companies don’t understand what they are dealing with when a catastrophe occurs. Most local companies have never been through the process before and do not understand the motives of insurance companies. This will save the insurance company a lot of money and will cost you later for repairs that should have been covered.

One way to confirm this is to ask your adjuster where he/she is from. Most of time, they are storm chasers who travel in teams around the country, profiting from saving insurance companies money. Major insurance companies do this because they know that, as with most local contractors, their local staff is not always qualified or capable of handling a large amount of clams in the way which is least expensive and efficient for the companies. They call these their CAT teams. As with USRCT they are mobile units and generally set up operations within 3-21 days of a weather catastrophe.

They tell you to use their approved contractors. This is done because they have negotiated pricing with companies that are generally lower than other high quality companies in the free market (such as in and out-of-network, as used with health insurance). What they don’t tell you is that you are legally allowed to use any company that you chose, even if your choice charges more than their approved company. Again, why do you think they would push their approved contractor?

They tell you to get three estimates. Insurance companies are not telling you to get three estimates because they want to pay the highest one. They are telling you this so they can pay out based on your lowest price, even if it may cost you in quality. Also during a storm, it is very hard to get three estimates because any reputable company is extremely busy.