I'm in Harris County, TX and I had a house fire. 911 was called, firefighters came out, their report states "upon entering found smoke inside." There was not black soot but a horrible stench. Firefighters also turned off the power to the HVAC at the breaker and told me not to turn it back on. Two days later, Allstate sent their HVAC inspector from HVAIC to my house along with their smoke remediation vendor. Their HVAC inspector recommended full HVAC replacement in a report Allstate hid from me for three weeks despite multiple requests to see it. 26 days later Allstate is still withholding the smoke remediation report from their vendor despite multiple written requests to see it and to see the full file. When the smoke and remediation vendors were in my home, they let it known that I would probably need to leave for the type of cleaning they would need to do. Because I am truly interested in knowing exactly what damage was done and what I need to do to make sure my house is safe, I had a different smoke remediation company come out today (at this point nearly a month after the fire) and they are recommendation structural and contents cleaning. My questions are: 1.) In the state of Texas can they send a vendor to my home, receive a report, then not share it? 2.) They sent an estimate that was only for HVAC, not even mentioning smoke and said that if I took the initial money for the HVAC the claim would be closed. What are the implications of that? 3.) Should I just go ahead and file a complaint with TDI?
Had a house fire now Allstate won't provide their own vendors report
byu/KeptSwimming inInsurance
Posted by KeptSwimming
1 Comment
Typically when an insurance company sends an engineer/mitigation contractor/whatever any reports generated are considered “work product” and typically not released by the insurance company. Exceptions are if you chose to use that contractor/vendor/whatever for repairs then you are entitled to those reports as a paying customer.
It doesn’t really sound like your carrier has broken any regulations. Unfortunately poor customer service isn’t regulated by the TDI. As long as they are sending their update letters plus whatever statutory stuff hour state requires in a timely manner there isn’t really anything for TDI to do.