Making a claim with the utility for damages?

[jkeyser14]

I had a brand piece of equipment with a 5hp motor that had a capacitor blow and I started loosing light bulbs at an alarming rate in my house. I called the utility out and they found that the line on their pole at the street was loose.

They keep telling me I need to file a claim with my homeowners insurance to replace my stuff. My homeowners insurance says it's the utilities problem and they are just trying to pass the buck. I'm starting to escalate the issue with my utility and I'm getting nothing but resistance. One person even mentioned that if they have to come out and investigate my claim it could take quite a long time before it's resolved. It feels like they are trying to get me to give up and stop pursuing it, but upwards of $1k in damage hits your pocket pretty hard.

Has anyone dealt with this before?

 

[Frank The Plumber]

Call your states department of interstate commerce or the group that watches your utility. It's a ***** to get justice out of these shoulder shruggers.

 

[mrb]

sounds like they had a bad neutral connection. i wouldnt waste my time with the utility. you need to rip your HO insurance a new one, they should pay for your damages and they can go recover their losses from the utility if they so desire.

 

[35mastr]

sounds like they had a bad neutral connection. i wouldnt waste my time with the utility. you need to rip your HO insurance a new one, they should pay for your damages and they can go recover their losses from the utility if they so desire.

This is what I would do. Let the insurance company chase them.

 

[ishiboo]

I'd eat it.

Homeowners insurance drops people for their first claim all the time. 1k isn't worth it unless you have like a $5 deductible, and your insurance may go up. My grandmother was with an insurance company for over 20 years with no claims. In a big storm, she had lightning kill two electrical appliances worth right around 1k. The adjustor came out and said you need a new roof too, the hail damaged it. (There were hundreds if not thousands of roofs damaged by this storm). They dropped her right after they paid it.

If you want to gamble, keep at the utility, find out what your rights are and hit them with small claims... then you're only in for ~$200.

 

[cowboyjosh]

I don't know if I'd eat something a utility problem caused, I'd get a claim on file that way if there is a issue in the future where another loose neutral causes issue, you at least have a paper trail.

Im not an insurance expert, but rarely will insurance drop you for a claim due to acts of God or a POS utility; its usually if your the one doing stupid **** like running your car thru your garage door, starting your house on fire, etc. Again Im probably wrong but when I had my one and only claim a couple years back for a lightning strike American Family didn't even jack my rates because the loss was essentially no ones fault. I reckon though the insurance company in this case can and will recover the loss from the POCO. In cases where others harm your ****, your insurance company is on YOUR side and is NOT the enemy.

 

[pprince]

They may not raise your rates but you will lose your claims free discount.

Same diff but from their perspective

 

[rsanter]

is this a private utility or a municipal utility?
if it is a private utility then there will be a state regulating body that you can go to and complain. keep pressuring them...

if it a municipal utility then you are dealing with the city/state.....good luck

bob

 

[jmauld]

Start here:
http://webapp.psc.state.md.us/Intranet/home.cfm

Your insurance company should not be held responsible for damage caused by someone else.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Call your states department of interstate commerce or the group that watches your utility. It's a ***** to get justice out of these shoulder shruggers.

+1 !

I had a friend whose whole subdivision lost power every time the wind blew. The electric utility would fix it in a day or two but this happened 4-6 times a year.

He sent a letter to the state regulators documenting all of the outages for the previous year. The utility came in and cleared the corridor for the main feeder lines for the sub of all of the undergrowth and overgrown trees. It took them a week or so, but he hasn't had a power outage since !

 

[MrMark]

If it were in CA, you would go straight to the PUC and they would help you handle it. It is the utilities responsibility and they should pay. I wouldn't even mess with any HO insurance. The utility will do nothing without the PUC on them or a small claims judgment. Don't give up, you can win but you have to use the tools you have. Talking with the utility is akin to pounding sand in a rathole. They just don't give a #@%

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

I'd eat it.

Homeowners insurance drops people for their first claim all the time. 1k isn't worth it unless you have like a $5 deductible, and your insurance may go up. My grandmother was with an insurance company for over 20 years with no claims. In a big storm, she had lightning kill two electrical appliances worth right around 1k. The adjustor came out and said you need a new roof too, the hail damaged it. (There were hundreds if not thousands of roofs damaged by this storm). They dropped her right after they paid it.

If you want to gamble, keep at the utility, find out what your rights are and hit them with small claims... then you're only in for ~$200.

What Ishaboo said is common place anymore,....

I think if you do a little digging on the internet, youd find that underwriters are making an exit from the home owners business, apparently with mold, and other new issues, they are not getting the ROI on houses, that they once used to. What Ive been told, is to absolutely NOT claim on you home owners, unless you have taken a substantial loss. After you get dropped, you might find a massive correction in the premiums you pay to the companies that are staying in that game. Let the dog sleep.....

My S/O makes her living selling inusrance as an independent agent. Its funny, things are so screwed up, she has our farm inusred through a agency that she does not work at. So she's paying full price somewhere else and is getting a better deal than any of the companies she represents. She could get it for cost at her agency, but cant beat the compeitors price....

Which to put in car anology, it would be like a mechanic taking his own car to another shop to ge worked on.... bizarre....

In the last 2 years, Ive replaced part of a roof from storm damage (wind), a 16x7 garage door (wind), and hail damage on three cars, 2 utility poles, overhead wires, and weatheread, none of which was claimed to insurance.

Take it for "what its worth", good luck !

 

[jkeyser14]

My homeowners deductible is higher than the claim amount would be for, so it would be stupid for me to file a claim. I think the utility is just trying to get me to drop things. I did talk to my insurance company about the situation and they agreed that they shouldn't be involved at all.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

Id check and see if you have some state "entity" that over see's your utility, we do in Illinois, its called the "commerce commision", they accept complaints from consumers, as well regulate the monopolies. Id look into that at least.

 

[jkeyser14]

Id check and see if you have some state "entity" that over see's your utility, we do in Illinois, its called the "commerce commision", they accept complaints from consumers, as well regulate the monopolies. Id look into that at least.

Yup, thanks for the advice, someone else mentioned it too. I'm giving the utility one more shot then going to our public service commission.

 

[Jarcese]

You're most likely not getting any money from the utility. If you read your service agreement, it will probably say that they are not responsible unless they were grossly negligent. If they somehow screwed up and didn't make the neutral connection or if you could prove that they didn't tighten that connection on purpose, then you may get some money. There's no way to prove that though. They can't be responsible for every bad connection that causes a problem. It *****, but that's how it works in most places. You're better off going to your insurance company for the money.

This is from the service agreement for my utility:
"NSTAR shall not be responsible for any failure to provide electric distribution service nor for interruption, reversal or abnormal voltage if such failure, interruption, reversal or abnormal voltage is without willful default or gross negligence on its part."

 

[Capt Chrysler]

Here it's the power co. problem till it gets inside on the building. thens it's your baby. I lost one leg of my 3 phase at work. 3K later. Now we have line protectors on all high dollar items.

Capt. Chrysler

 

[Berserker]

S

Your insurance company should not be held responsible for damage caused by someone else.

If you are in a car accident that is someone else fault, they will cover it minus deductible. Then they give you your deductible back, when they settle with the 3rd party.

In this case, who knows. Utilities are not good at settling. I would keep on them, its just your time.

For the reasons stated above, I probably would not get my insurance involved. I would if the amount was bigger.

Ya I know it *****.

 

[jkeyser14]

Just an update. As expected, the utility sent a letter trying to claim it's not their fault due to lack of negligence. However, I have two-way e-mail traffic that shows I had contacted them about this issue twice in the past reporting the problem and no one took it seriously. In one e-mail I was was actually told that no technician's can be scheduled at this time and try calling back again when I am home. I asked the case inspector for the utility to call me back to discuss the issue.

 

[BwBrown]

The state public utility takes voltage quality real seriously. (I'm in PA) Regulations state 120 volts + or - 5% I believe.

I had an over voltage problem in our rural area (136 volts!), electric coop isn't even regulated, they gave me a real run around - talked about my location on the line and voltage drop on older rural lines and on and on...

I made a call to the state public utility regulatory commission, the co-op was on the phone in less than 2 hours, had a monitor on my meter before end of day. They quickly fixed the problem by adding a new voltage transformer on our drop.

Just make the right call. When you don't get satisfaction, the direction to go is up.
Good luck.
Bob

 

[Berserker]

Utilities do take the public service commission serious. But they also say its an act of God, for alot of stuff too. Its your time, I would make the balls big, until you get bored.

 

[dbleskey]

Small Claims Court.

 

[jkeyser14]

I've tried to get a hold of the "inspector" for the utility company a few times over the last couple weeks and he's not returning my calls. I'm going to be contacting the public services commission.

 

[klhitman]

we had that problem at the place i work. a wire was loose on the pole and screwed up alot of stuff.the wire came off overnight when no one was there. so when the guy in the morning that gets there and turns machines on didnt know that one leg of the 3 phase was out. everything we got is 3 phase. we had to replace boards in our air compressors and the brake presses and fix the ac on the roof. the same guy works in our wood shop and said no one told him that he couldnt run his saw and cought it on fire so that was a nother fix but we went after the local power company and got them to pay the damages.


the bad thing about it is that you cant just change power company's like you change phone company's

 

[BADSIX]

my wife over paid your cable co. by accident through online billing. so she contacted them and sure enough they said she over paid and would send a refund. so after about 3 weeks and no refund she calls customer support, now this is someone out of us god knows where. but they said they had no record of this. then they said it was sent, this went on for another two weeks. all of this was on email, my wife made a call to the public utility com. and fowarded the emails. about three days later we have the check and numerous calls from the cable co. wanting to know how every thing was going and was their anything they could do for us. they all but wiped our a**. so contact your public utility com. they'er the watch dog for public utiltys

 

[Kevin54]

I don't know if I'd eat something a utility problem caused, I'd get a claim on file that way if there is a issue in the future where another loose neutral causes issue, you at least have a paper trail.

Im not an insurance expert, but rarely will insurance drop you for a claim due to acts of God or a POS utility; its usually if your the one doing stupid **** like running your car thru your garage door, starting your house on fire, etc. Again Im probably wrong but when I had my one and only claim a couple years back for a lightning strike American Family didn't even jack my rates because the loss was essentially no ones fault. I reckon though the insurance company in this case can and will recover the loss from the POCO. In cases where others harm your ****, your insurance company is on YOUR side and is NOT the enemy.

Oh yes they will. My parents paid for years for homeowners insurance and never once turned in a claim for anything even though they could have. I'm talking almost all of their life they paid in to the same company and they were in their 80's when a huge rain and wind storm caused their roof to leak. It did damage to the ceilings in their house (plaster ceilings). I told them to turn it in to Homeowners Insurance. An adjuster came, looked it over, and there was about $3000 in damage. Nothing huge by todays means. Everything was fixed, they got their check, and a week later was dropped with the reason that the company that carried them was no longer going to serve that area After that, I found out through a insurance person that anyone that turned in a claim was dropped by that company