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When you are doing clean-up work, people generally "don't sweat the small stuff" if small errors occurred in the Insureds favor, you just let it remain.  But glaring issues like the "hypothetical" situation you present are different.  You don't add money on top of added money.  That's not the insuring agreement.

Yeah, like Bob said!

 

Mike, you are beginning to sound like a claim examiner -- asking all the peripheral (run for the dictionary) questions before you will answer the one question he wants to have answered.  I think the spirit of Racko has once again possessed you.

 

Part of your job on clean up is to catch the errors and report them.  The carrier needs to decide how to proceed after that.  In this case it seems a complete rewrite of the estimate including all damages (with correct measurments) and let the chips fall where they may as to whether the insured is paid a supplement or not.

 

 

Thanks to all who have answered. 

 

So what classifies and error as small with no need to mention vs. a large error?  Are we talking hundreds of dollars or are we talking thousands?

 

Thanks Again,

Jason

We already agreed we would fix a huge error that was made in the Insured's favor.  I was doing clean-up on one about 6 weeks ago where the claim had been "touched by many hands".  I noticed that there were 2 complete Air Conditioning systems in the estimate.  I looked over the history of estimates on this claim, and at first there was just one AC.  It didn't make sense.  I called the Insured, and confirmed they had just one AC.  Turned out there was a supplement to match a contractor quote for the AC system, but someone forgot to delete the original AC entry from the estimate.  The Insured was calling about something else, and I learned that the previous supplemental check had not been cashed yet.  Managment agreed we should "stop pay" the incorrect draft, fix the estimate to allow for the damaged (1) AC system, and re-issue the correct supplement check amount.

Let's look at a real world "small error" situation.  You are called out to the site a 2nd time because the Insd is very vocal about some overlooked interior damages.  Maybe they were overlooked, or maybe those spots showed up on the other ceilings in other rooms because he didn't mitigate damages, but he is pointing out all these ceilings that needed to be on the estimate.

 

You are going over the old estimate line-by-line, and notice that the dining area that opens to the kitchen should have had a large missing wall taken out of the paint, but the original estimator just entered the 14 x 16 x 8 "cube" as the dimensions, and painted all the walls and ceiling of that cube.

 

A 14 x 8 wall is 112 Sf that should have been taken out, but at the end of the day it is going to make a bit less than $100 difference on the estimate.

 

You are there because the Insured is "asking for more" and you are about to "take away".

 

You have to choose your battles, and every claim is unique.  I don't think you can decide that all things are always going to proceed per A, B, C, then D.

 

Sometimes you have to think on your feet, do what is right, but not at the expense of ruining the ability of establishing an amicable agreement in a pre-litigation environment.  The Insured should feel you are doing the right thing, not ripping him off or adding to his already existing baggage of "how long he has waited" etc.

 

If someone before you made a small error in the Insured's favor, you have to really want to fight that battle before you start walking that road.  I'm not saying never to fix small errors, but you have to weigh the consequences.  And to me, it depends who I am negotiating with.  If I am dealing directly with the policy holder, I am more inclined to let the small sleeping dogs remain. 

 

Or is it a contractor who is asking for 10 more squares etc, etc, then if that estimate changes from it's original version it will likely end up being right where it needs to be, per the exact measure of the roof with correct waste factor, with no fluff left on the table.  If we allowed too many turbine vents, etc, they are going off the estimate before one more square goes back on.