You have homeowner’s insurance on your property to help pay for the unexpected. When your home is damaged, you would assume your insurance provider would help pay for at least some the expenses associated with the damages and repairs.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy raged across the east coast. Although the storm hit some areas harder than it did others, it caused property damage from Florida to Maine. The damage resulted in 144,000 claims filed with insurance companies contracted by the National Flood Insurance Program.
In October 2010, Slate published an article online about payday lenders and a particularly egregious practice — one that went beyond the outrageous interest rates and failure to disclose fees. It all started with a site that promised to match borrowers with payday lenders.
We often talk about insurance being a highly regulated industry, but we wonder if we have explained just how far those regulations go. The state must approve rates and forms, for example, but the state also lays out rules for how agencies, brokers and insurers deal with their customers.
When it comes to unfair trade practices in the insurance industry, we don’t need the statute to figure a few of them out. Misrepresenting benefits, overcharging for coverage and underpaying claims — better known as lying, cheating and stealing — are universally acknowledged to be unfair trade practices. Yes, brokers and agents may try to justify the half-truth, and insurance companies may engage in advertising puffery, but, really, the lines are clearly drawn for those three misdeeds.
We are continuing our discussion of sinkholes and the difference between New Jersey and Florida. New Jersey has, as we said, had a rash of sinkholes appear; one swallowed a snow plow. Florida, of course, has its own Sinkhole Alley — Pasco, Hillsborough and Hernando counties — and a reputation to maintain.
We are going to pause in our discussion of sinkholes in New Jersey to explain who Henny Youngman was. We realize that our baby boomer is showing around the edges.
If the Northeast is going to share its weather with Florida, perhaps it is only fair that we share something with those states. New Jersey, in particular, has been learning about the dangers of sinkholes.
We are finishing up our discussion of the Consumer Federation of California’s complaint to that state’s insurance department about Geico Insurance Co.’s web-based application. According to the CFC, the app offers certain applicants policies with coverage limits that violate state consumer protection and auto insurance laws. The website asks for information in violation of state law as well, the CFC claims.
We are picking up the discussion from our last post — the discussion about the Consumer Federation of California’s complaint to the state’s insurance department about Geico Insurance Co. The problem, the CFC says, is that the Geico online application’s rating process requires applicants to supply information in violation of state law and then uses that information to discriminate against certain categories of applicants.
