Almost a month ago, my apartment flooded from a pipe bursting in the vacant unit above us. It damaged a lot of food in our pantry, my wedding dress, our dining room set, beds, couch, and other wood furniture and décor pieces we had.
Our apartment manager got someone on site the same day to do 72 hours of trying to dry out the two apartments. I also filed a claim that night and got in touch with our “advocate” the next morning. They confirmed the peril and that it was covered under my policy. Since then, our advocate has been so hard to get in touch with. He never returns calls, sometimes emails take days to get replies, only to be replied to with a generic AI answer. I’ve tried escalating to a supervisor multiple times with no success. We’ve been staying in a family rental. He sent a third-party contents guy who went through all our things to determine what was salvageable or not. The guy TOTALLY trashed our apartment and even destroyed an antique book that we cannot replace. We’ve also been working with a contents restoration company that is doing their own inventory, pack-out, and storage, and will be moving our stuff once we move.
Our apartment complex said we are free to return to our unit during repairs or rent another unit (repairs meaning just drywall replacement to the roof where they opened a whole to dry out the units and painting, no mold remediation.) We toured a unit in the same community that smelled heavily of cat urine and was $400 more a month. They also offered us a smaller unit at the same price or offered to end our lease at no cost to us. Because I am pregnant and my husband gets sick every time we enter the apartment, and we already have two small children, we have been applying for places and finally got approved a couple of days ago outside of my advocate’s business hours.
Now it’s Monday and I’ve been trying to get him to help us with moving costs because we’ve paid out so much since being out of our home for a month and are still responsible for the rent and utilities at our uninhabitable apartment. He keeps responding with these obvious AI answers, saying my policy only covers additional living expenses but not deposits and such. At the same time, he explains it does cover move-in and application fees. Although I don’t agree with the deposits, I am willing to negotiate that later. I’ve sent him itemized documents stating why I asking for this money and why I need it immediately. I know of people who have had insurance wire funds under these circumstances. We still have over $4,000 that are not only specifically stated in our policy as covered but that he even agreed were covered when emailing me his AI messages.
We need the money in the next 24 hours to get our keys, or we may end up forfeiting our new lease. I’m 35 weeks pregnant and exhausted. Are our expectations unreasonable?
Posted by TisWell888
1 Comment
This is the typical Lemonade claims disaster unfortunately. They have very few humans working claims, and almost everything goes through AI. I’m sorry you are dealing with this especially while pregnant. Feel free to punch in the face whoever told you going with Lemonade was a good idea.
At the same time, you need to be reasonable on the time frame you will get paid. You are not going to get money immediately. You will need to pay for things, then submit the cost to be reviewed. It may take a few weeks.
Also, not every single expense is going to be covered. Insurance should cover the bulk, but you will still end up covering some things yourself that are not insured. Your deposit will definitely not be covered.