I finally got internet access again! So I want to finish my story so that I can finally move on.
The second plumber from the home warranty company arrived. He took a quick glance at both of the leaks and said that we did not need a leak detection because the leaks were obvious...again, duh. Meanwhile, we find out that the home warranty we got only covered $1,000 for pipes in the house (for the entire term of the contract btw). Oh yeah, and the first plumber cost $60. The second plumber they sent out cost another $60. So, we are actually down to $880...well, $825 since we also had to pay $55 for the call to the home warranty company. Basically, it won't pay for a whole heck of a lot. We cashed out on the contract to pay for the first plumber. Now we are down to...$475.
We spend another couple of days going back and forth with the home insurance company. Only to find out that our deductible is $1,250.00. They want to make it two different claims because it was two different pipes occurring at two different times (hours apart) at two different locations in the house. So you can take that deductible and multiply by two.
But wait, there is more. Every plumber that came out including their own, said that we need to re-pipe the entire house. The first plumber would not even take the job to do a direct access patch job because with these old houses that has galvanized steel pipes in the slab, what they find a lot of the times is that they can't even re-thread the pipe because it will just crumble on them. And they may cause leaks elsewhere while drilling into the slab. It is just too much trouble. Some plumbers may recommend doing direct access if you don't have any money and you just had your first leak but having a second leak hours from the first, it's just not a good idea. However, the insurance company will only pay for direct access plus patching up the work and the damage it caused. Basically, we found out that our deductible is still more than what they will pay for direct access work. And the amount that our insurance will go up for the next three years because we made two claims will be more than what they will pay in patching up the work and whatever damage it caused. Basically, they will make money off of the deal. How's that for fair?
We cancelled the claims. We spent another couple of days and got a bunch of estimates from various plumbers. They started work on Friday morning and we are paying for it all ourselves.
1 comment:
That's terrible, why do we even have insurance, the only ones who benefit are insurance companies.
Post a Comment