So then the next month, before I've even gotten around to depositing the check, I get a nastygram saying "we didn't get your last payment for $90, so we're cancelling your insurance as of the day before we mailed this letter."
That's right -- they sent my check back to me, then threatened to cut off my insurance because they didn't have the money they sent back to me.
So I call them on the phone and left a message (since their business hours do not correspond with my awakeness hours) describing this, and saying "so I'm sending in a payment for $90 today, how about you hang onto it this time?"
A week later I get a paper letter from them "explaining" that the previous check was returned as "an overpayment on the previous term."
Give me a fucking break! I've had insurance with these people for like seven years, and suddenly I've hit this window where, if the check doesn't arrive on the right day of the month, it gets rejected as an overpayment of last year's policy, and not applied to this year's??? They have got to be kidding!
So I ignored them for a while longer, assuming that eventually they were going to come bitching about their $5 penalty some time down the line. But today I got another letter from them (well actually it arrived last week, but I only just opened it) saying that "they have no record of reinstatement."
So I think what this means is, I will end up not having homeowners' insurance any more, because I'm just completely unwilling to talk to these assholes on the phone. This is a recurring problem. I hate dealing with this shit so much that I just... don't.
I guess I don't really need homeowners' insurance anyway. I live in a fucking concrete-bunker condo. I'm not even entirely clear what my policy covers beyond robbery, since I think my personal ownership of the building ends just beyond the paint.
I need a lackey.
i'm sure there are plenty of out of work geeks that would be your lackey. make sure you get one that can do laundry.
He's been trying to round up geek lackeys (lackies?) since the beginnings of DNA. They're surprisingly scarce.
With all the lack of jobs up here in Canada, there's tons of lackeys just waiting to be exploited for their laundry and dish washing skills.
What is the channel if not his evil army of the undead, doing his bidding?
but i know many lackies (??) from college who now go to the dnalounge. they are just lame enough to do this. i'm sure of it.
they can be found at meat.net
homeowners' insurance covers contents of your house as well as robbery -- so if there's a fire or something, contents of house isn't covered unless you've got homeowners :)
The main use for homeowners insurance, so far as I can tell, is that it is required to get a mortgage. With my homeowner's insurance, there are so many exemptions (e.g. earthquake, arson, theft, any kind of natural or man-made disaster, ...) that it's hard to imagine a situation where I might successfully claim it.
I have a similar billing problem with my health insurance. I set up an automatic payment to pay it on the first of the month. Apparently though, it is due on the last day of the month, to cover the following month. So every month I get a letter from them saying that my payment is overdue -- which they must send on the first day of the month, the same day the payment arrives.
I bet the got a new software program that automates everything... Boom!
Insurance is such a scam. Or at least it seems like one, the way insurance companies run it. I feel like my chances of cashing out more than I pay in are so astronomically low that I might as well play the lottery instead. Now that I mention it, I think I'd like to know...
I recently had the option of paying to keep the insurance I had with my former employer. The dental insurance was $20/month. I have a toothache. But my deductable was probably huge, and I wasn't sure what it was, so I finally decided that I'd rather pay a dentist an extra $100 for services rendered than pay an insurance company $20 for nothing, so I canceled the insurance. I guess I'll see how that works out.
When I had my wisdom teeth out, my dental insurance paid like 10% or something! It was so totally worthless. Apparently there's both a deductible, and a maximum payout per year hidden in the fine print. Like, "we pay everything after $200, but not more than $1000 ever." All insurance is a scam, but I think dental insurance is more of a scam than most.
(I know those numbers don't add up -- I don't remember the details, but when I did the math and factored in what I had paid in dental insurance along with the cap and the per-year and per-visit deductibles, the percentage payout over the term of the insurance was some worthlessly tiny percentage.)