Allstate Became a $38 Billion Company by Cheating Homeowners Again and Again
By Will Goode, Investigative Reporter
“Remember, if you put yourself In Allstate’s Hands, they’ll slap you in the face!”
Tom Wilson, President, CEO Chairman of the Board should be ashamed of himself. This week, a homeowner who, for the last 14 years paid an especially high premium to cover her wood shingled roof was just denied a $15,000 hail damage roof-replacement claim after three months of delay by the Allstate adjusters.
The homeowner said: “This $38-Billion-dollar company cares not for the individual, but only for its own bottom line.” “Well, too ” said Diana Kulik, spokeswoman for Mr. Wilson, who thinks Allstate did not become a $38 Billion-dollar company by buying its insureds a new roof every time they make a claim; even if they did pay an excessively high premium for the wood roof coverage for 14 years.
The game that the President’s office of Allstate plays is that no one gets to speak to the President and the President will not reverse the decision of the claims office that denied the claim, even if they lied to the homeowner and repeatedly made invalid excuses for denying the loss.
“Ridiculous,” says the homeowner, who after three adjusters came to her house, each accompanied by an engineer on all three occasions and when each adjuster and engineer did not even climb up to inspect the roof as they were required to do, and simply denied the claim. “You see, each adjuster upon arrival at the home said that ‘Allstate does not like to replace wood shingle roofs’” (even when the homeowner paid extra?). This shows that Allstate’s claims office was predisposed to the claim. “These adjusters never really found out what was going on with my roof,” said the homeowner, “they just came out to put on a show and then deny the claim.”
This homeowner had an estimator from a large roofing company who walked the roof, photographed it and found extensive hail damage, then recommended the entire roof be replaced as provided his report. That replacement would have been consistent with the special wood roof coverage. In spite of the clear evidence, but yet consistent with Allstate’s policy of denial, they let their claims office be the hatchet men who have the job of protecting Allstate’s President and his profits by finding excuses to deny claims.
In this case, the adjusters kept changing their reasons to justify the denial of payment. One found no hail damage while another agreed it existed, but said it was too old. When quoted, one 20-year veteran Allstate adjuster said he could see from the Estimator’s photographs that there were holes from hail strikes in the wood shakes, but he said the wood was not the right color and it appeared to be old hail damage. That’s an opinion and completely opposite of what the estimator found when he was actually up on the roof and saw the hail damage from the recent golf ball size.
So, it really does not matter how much a person pays for the insurance, or what special coverage that person might buy from Allstate, nor does it matter if Allstate is willing to sell a policy of insurance at a cheaper cost than some other insurance companies, if the official company policy is to cheat the homeowner out of a replacement claim when they suffer a loss, then that policy of insurance is simply dross and of no value.
The saying: “You’re in good hands with Allstate is nothing more than a slogan intended to deceive the public into purchasing Allstate products, while the hands of those in the claims department are schooled at inventing excuses to deny payment for covered losses, all of which increases the company’s bottom line.
Congratulations Tom Wilson, you’ve done it again. You’ve upped your profit by $15,000 this year but think about it, that’s only 0.00000000003% of your company’s net worth, hardly enough to sneeze at. But, by comparison, this amount is about equal to the annual income of this disabled homeowner. Good job, Tom, and by insulating yourself from the public and by pretending that your office cannot override the oppressive decisions of the claims department, you don’t even take responsibility for your company’s policies; then you escape with a salary and benefits of at least $25 million per year while you grind the faces of the poor, who are struggling and hard-working Americans. We all thought that when you came from Sears Roebuck, that you brought institutional integrity with you. However, it appears that greed at Allstate runs to a much deeper level.
