I bought my house in 1994. Got a great deal because, as the realtor said, the owner's wife died on the property.
'Died on the property' meaning "shot herself in the head in the back yard," of course, which gives you the wiggins but it wasn't worth giving the house back for, once I found out.
Got divorced - ex didn't want the house, so I kept it. Three months after the divorce was final, being ten years ago, the place was hit by lightening. Blew the roof right off - you stood in the living room, looked up and saw the sky. I kept the house and, over three YEARS, had the insurance company fix it. I actually set a legal precedent in what they could and couldn't do when they negotiate.
So four months ago I'm doing my laundry, close the top of the washing machine and, what's this? I seem to be able to see through the back wall. Well, that's not right! Lo and behold, I have a sink hole and my house is breaking in half.
Frown on that - I call the insurance company and they inform me that they'll send an adjuster out real soon. By real soon, they mean in the next month, which they do, and he says, "You know - this could be a sink hole." Well, at this point there is a wrinkle in the roof over the garage and the cracks are worse, but there you go. He says that he can't make the call on the sink hole - he needs to recommend that the insurance company call a geologist, who will come out right away.
Right away meaning, "Another month." They come out and do sonar all over the yard and in the house, and take readings, and say, "Hmmm - we're not sure that this is a sink hole," however now there are cracks in all of the walls and the cinder blocks are coming apart in the garage and the cabinets that I just had done in the kitchen are moving such that you can see that the wall has twisted. They're going to have to drill in the yard for further evidence, within the next month.
The next month means that after five weeks, I call the insurance company and ask, "Where are these clowns," and get them to come out the week after that. They drill the property for two days to get soil samples, but then assure me that it only takes about 4 weeks to do the final assessment.
By four weeks, they mean six weeks before they claim to need two more weeks. Now there are cracks in the load-bearing walls and the exterior of the house has really bad cracks in the pattern of the cinder blocks under the stucco. As well, the roof has clearly moved and you can put your hand between the ceiling in the garage and the exterior wall.
So I call the state, and I call a lawyer. The lawyer, of course, would LOVE to take the case, because the insurance companies notoriously roll over for the lawyer, who's going to take 1/3 of whatever I get. The state will ACTUALLY call the insurance company and tell them to be done with this, one way or another, in twenty days, but of course they call the wrong company the first time. That company called me that night to say, "Hey, man - you're not our client," so at least I know that they take the state seriously. I get the state to call the right company, and then call the insurance company myself for the "what exactly is going on" conversation.
Ok - why so long, you ask?
The insurance company knows that you have a life, and a job, and a tolerance for pain. Ideally, what they want to do is to come to the maximum amount of stress that you will take, and say, "Listen - this can all be settled if you just accept this lowball offer." Believe it or not, most people do. If you don't it hasn't cost them any additional money. They have all of the time in the world.
Now, there IS a thing called, "Negotiating in bad faith," which means that if one course of action or one result is clearly the way to go, they can't just be difficult and refuse to take it. As well, if an offer has been made or a conclusion come to by them, they can't then say, "No - we aren't going to do that, after all. We're only paying a percent of that offer, or sue us." Taking a long time because they want to get every inspector on the planet to check the property isn't "negotiating in bad faith" until one of them says, "This is what you're going to have to do."
