You buy your home with the intention of having a place to raise your family, customize, and call your own. We are intensely proud of our home, as getting to the point of home ownership in the Bay Area is no small feat. We have 2 small children (3 year old and 1.5 year old) and like many other parents, our home is their fortress and play area. I was sitting on the couch with Sara on the evening of August 16th, the kids fast asleep, and I ask her as I often do "what the heck is that smell??"
She laughed and then did the deep inhale that you do when you're trying to discover a new smell, "I smell something weird too..." she said as I was getting up and walking around the living room. I looked behind the couches, under the end table, "is there a dirty diaper somewhere? It smells like poop in here!" I exclaimed as I searched around the room.
A somewhat funny situation quickly escalated to a big, expensive issue that I wish upon nobody.
Outside on the left side of our house is our crawl space access, where you have about 2.5 feet vertical space to crawl around under our house. Our house is on a concrete perimeter with dirt underneath, graced by plumbing lines and some cat5 cable from the home wiring job that the previous owner completed.
Oh, and about 3 inches of raw sewage. Wait, what? Yes, a deep puddle of raw sewage.
See, our main sewer line that runs down the left side of our home that connects the two bathrooms to the sewer drain in the front yard had exploded under the house. There was a 12" section of it that had blown out, and sewage had backed up and flooded under our house. The smell was from an undeterminable amount of sewage that had rotted under our home for an undetermined length of time. It was disgusting, rotten, and pretty much the grossest thing I have ever seen and smelled in my life. Truly awful.Saturday morning at 7am, we called our home owners insurance company, Safeco. We have had Safeco since we bought the home in March of 2012, and this was our first interaction with them. We also have a Home Warranty, through HISCO. That was provided to us by our real estate agent, and this was our 2nd interaction with them, the first was a problem with our water heater that they promptly fixed for the $75 deductible.
We were told that we needed the sewage cleaned up, the crawlspace to be disinfected, and a "moisture barrier" to be laid down over the treated dirt so that the sewage didn't seep back up into the wood joists and floorboards that lie under our hardwood floors in our home. Then, a plumber could come and do the plumbing work where they would cut out the section of pipe that broke and replace it.
The Safeco agent we spoke to said they would cover everything and reassured us in our time of sheer panic.
They said "Don't worry, we'll call a service company to come out and start the clean up. Everything will be ok." And they dispatched ServePro. ServePro was on site quickly and looking under the home. This job was right in their wheelhouse, a massive cleanup project that was paid for by home owners insurance --- easy work for them. "It's going to take us a couple says to do this, just so you know, so you'll probably want to go stay somewhere," said the clean up crew. We packed up the kids and moved them to our in-laws' house, about 20 minutes away. I stayed back to watch and tend to the crew if they needed anything and they finished about half the job that first Saturday. They came back Sunday and continued to vacuum up the sewage until they were nearly done.
However, nearly done meant "it's still a muddy disgusting mess under there." Terrible.
They came back again on Monday and started to disinfect under the house, and began laying down the thick plastic tarp when the ServePro rep's phone rang. It was our Safeco Insurance rep, and they were calling to inform us that they wouldn't be covering the job.
I looked at the ServePro rep, who was wearing a full hazmat suit, and said "Wait, what? You can't be serious.""Yes, I'm sorry. They're telling us that they're not going to cover the work now, and so we need to stop while you figure out if you want us to continue the work or not."
Wow, what a terrible situation. What am I supposed to do here? ServePro is a company that Safeco sent out, on their behalf, said they were going to pay for completely, and then when the job was 2/3 complete, pull back and tell us that they're not covering anything. Can this be really happening? I immediately asked ServePro for a full estimate, which took them the rest of the day to get to me.
$5,000 --- $800 for the sewage cleanup, $500 for the air pumps that pump the air out from under the house, and $3700 for the moisture barrier and labor.
Again, what am I supposed to do here? I needed the job completed, my family is pushed out of my home for 3 days at this point, and the plumbers still won't touch the job because the moisture barrier isn't complete and, well, they don't want to climb around in poop-mud. I don't really blame them.
Meanwhile, Sara is on the phone with Safeco. They say they're not covering the work. Sara argues with them, and they say "ok, we'll escalate to our claims manager."
I told ServePro to finish the job. I had no other choice. If we let that sit, the mold and mildew will infest our home and we'll have an even bigger problem. I truly had no other choice but to have them finish the work and prepare to fight with Safeco.
Another day goes by, and ServePro finished the work. They did a great job. But the issue remains, who is paying for it? I really believed that Safeco would keep their word and pay for the the services because I was told this in the very beginning. If I had known immediately that it wasn't covered, I would have called multiple companies and received bids on the job if I had known that my insurance would "change their mind." My father-in-law owns his own remodeling company, so I would even reached out to him to see what work they could have done.
We were told by our Safeco insurance adjuster that this was in fact not covered and that I received incorrect information from their phone agent, and that Safeco would only pay for the work that ServePro did on that first Saturday, which is approximately $1100 out of the $4500. We have a $1000 deductible with them, so they would only be on the hook for $100.
On the other side, HISCO home warranty said they would cover the plumbing issue, and they have been nothing short of perfect the entire time. They have covered everything completely, from fixing the plumbing issue to sticking a camera in the plumbing line to make sure that everything else is ok. (It wasn't, we had a small blockage that was completely covered by them to clear near the end of the line)
*sigh*
So, here we are today. We escalated to the VP of Claims Operations at Safeco, and were denied again. They claim that we were told on Monday 3 times that it wasn't going to be covered (which isn't true, they told the ServePro agent, once) and that we were liable for the clean up fee. They will not cover anything.I cannot believe Safeco operates this way. Promise your customer one thing on the phone, in a time of crisis, then when the job is under way, change your mind and claim the work isn't covered. What kind of horrible company does this kind of thing?
Our new Yelp review:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/safeco-insurance-co-of-america-northern-calif-br-pleasant-hill#hrid:bU7EL2C6GqBUQ6uTJOSztg
Google+ Post:
https://plus.google.com/114725982201022219503/posts/8HYA4rYYJku
@safecoinsurance doesn't take care of their insured. Looking at claiming bad faith. Here's my story: http://t.co/IS0IrJGrfF
— Frank (@hockeyfrank26) September 17, 2013
