From: jack@myamiga.mixcom.com (Jack Decker)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers
Subject: Re: ***WARNING: BE CAREFUL WHEN DEALING WITH ALLSTATE
Date: 11 Apr 92 15:18:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: f8.1992Apr12.2020e
Organization: Northern Bytes BBS - Sault Ste. Marie, MI U.S.A.

In article <1992Apr9.111739.1196@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil> dated 9 Apr 92
16:17:38 GMT, bkottmann@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil (Brett Kottmann) wrote:

 >> If anyone has any advice, I'll be glad to hear it. I already have an
attorney
 >> working on it. There's no way I'm going to back down! I'm going to do my
 >> best to cause them to lose customers.
 >
 >	Go over the guy's head to the state/regional office.  Raise some hell.
 >Get him in some hot water, he's slime.

I have to agree with this.  My wife had an accident once where she was
rear-ended while waiting to make a legal left turn by a guy who did not even
attempt to stop until he was about two feet from her back bumper (he had been
reading a sign in a store window instead of watching the road!).  He hit our
car with such impact that her back snapped backwards and off, and she cut her
foot on one of the pedals. Fortunately, there was no permanent injury, but I'm
sure we could have got at least some compensation for pain and suffering, if
not substantial damages had we been the type of people who try to bilk the
insurance company.

Now, we live in a no-fault state (Michigan), which means that our insurance
company pays regardless of where the fault lies (however, they can only
increase the premium if it was our fault, so determination of fault does
matter!).  In this case my wife was clearly not at fault, especially since
Michigan has another law that in essence says that if you rear-end someone, the
presumption is that you're at fault, and you can be cited for "failure to stop
in assured clear distance" or something to that effect (I imagine that it's a
rebuttable presumption, if you could PROVE that someone cut you off and then
slammed on the brakes you could win, but the burden of proof would be on you in
that case).

Anyway, we were insured by Aetna Insurance and I promptly contacted my local
agent, a crusty old guy who had been in business for years (don't ask me how!),
but with whom we'd only been insured for about six months.  We only had one car
at the time and when I reported the claim he just took the information and
didn't give me any indication of when an adjuster might be by or anything like
that, so the next day I called him back to ask when we could expect an
adjustment to be made.

Well... obviously I was an interruption of his whole day, if not his whole
life! He said "Well, you only turned the claim in yesterday, what do you
expect?!?" I couldn't believe it!  So I explained that we weren't in the habit
of getting in accidents and I had no idea how long the adjustment process
normally takes. And he said "Well, you certainly can't expect anything to
happen in one day!" And then made a few remarks about how "impatient" I was,
etc.!

Well, I called 800-555-1212 and got the 800 number of the district office in
Detroit and related this conversation to them.  They were flabbergasted, to say
the least, and promised to call the agent to find out what was going on.

A few minutes later I call a call from the agent who was CHEWING ME OUT for
calling Detroit!  He told me I had no business doing that and that "In my 25
years of business I've never met anyone like you!"  I said, "Well, you have
now, and if you're not going to give me any information I'm going to talk to
someone who can!"  Then I called Detroit back and related the conversation I'd
just had.  They promised to work with me directly on the claim so I wouldn't
even have to talk to that agent again, which they did, and I got what I
considered a fair settlement reasonably quickly. The Detroit office always
treated me courteously and professionally, while my local agent was everything
but.

The kicker was when my premium came due.  I went in to pay and as luck would
have it, the agent's secretary was at lunch so I had to pay him directly.
Since I was paying cash I asked for a receipt, and he objected to writing a
proper receipt! He simply wrote "PAID" on my bill... no date, no signature, no
nothing that would have stood up in court.  When I requested that he at least
sign and date it, he did it but he blew up again and started in about how in
his 25 years of business he'd never met anyone like me, etc.  That did it.  I
wrote a letter to Aetna telling them that I would be letting my policy with
them lapse at the next renewal and telling them exactly why (I don't recall
ever getting a reply to that letter).

Sometime within the next year this agent's office was closed.  I don't know if
he's still in the insurance business or not.  His name is still listed in bold
type in the local phone book, but it gives no indication of what he's doing
now, and he's NOT in the yellow pages under "insurance."

So the advice to go over the head of someone who's giving you a hard time is
VERY good advice.  I had a friend who worked for the Better Business Bureau
many years ago, and one of the things they used to tell potential members was
that the BBB could help them keep customers by mediating disputes between
customers and the firm.  They would point out that often a lower level employee
would try to save the company money (and be a hero in the eyes of his/her
employer) by refusing a refund to a customer or trying to settle some disupte
in favor of the company even when the customer may have been right.  Often, in
the eyes of company] MANAGEMENT, the amount involved was trivial and they'd
have made the adjustment in a heartbeat just to promote customer goodwill, but
somehow they couldn't seem to communicate to lower level employees (and even
middle management in some cases) that keeping the good will of customers was
FAR more important than not paying out a few dollars on a refund (especially
since it's ALWAYS easier to keep an existing customer than find a replacement,
and disgruntled customers will often tell all their friends not to shop at that
store!).  The BBB claimed to act as something of a point of contact for
dissatisfied customers, where they would take complaints and then forward them
to upper management, which hopefully would give the complaint the attention it
deserves.

(Note that I am *NOT* promoting the BBB here.  They are in business primarily
to provide income for themselves, just like any other business, and I
particularly lost a lot of respect for them when I learned that they are using
900 numbers to provide consumer information in some palces).

Jack Decker                               | No, I don't own an Amiga; I just
Internet address: jack@myamiga.mixcom.com | get Internet mail via a gateway
Fidonet address:  1:154/8                 | system that runs on an Amiga.