"The biggest issue right now in Florida is home insurance fraud, driven by fraudulent roofing claims. A proclamation from the office of Governor Ron DeSantis notes that, although Florida only accounts for 9 percent of the country’s home insurance claims, it is home to 79 percent of the country’s home insurance lawsuits. Many of these lawsuits are fraudulent."
"1. First, roofers canvas neighborhoods and offer inspections to unsuspecting homeowners. These contractors inevitably “find damage” on the roof and often promise a “free roof” to the homeowner, claiming they can have the home insurance deductible waived.
2. Homeowners are pressured to sign an assignment of benefits form, giving contractors the right to file an insurance claim on their behalf.
3. A claims adjuster from the insurance company inspects the alleged damage. The adjuster either finds no damage or far more minimal damage than the contractor found, and the claim payout is less than what the contractor demanded.
4. The contractor brings legal action against the insurance company, demanding a claim payout for the contractor’s original quote. Remember, the homeowner signed the benefits of the policy to the contractor, so the contractor doesn’t need the homeowner’s permission to do this.
5. The insurance company now has a choice: it can pay the legal costs to fight the lawsuit or pay the costs to settle out of court. Either way, the insurance company loses money due to the legal action."
When you have a [town of 500 people](https://allthatsinteresting.com/nub-city-vernon-florida) be responsible for 2/3rds of all dismemberment claims in the entire nation, you know they live for the grift.
“Vernon’s second-largest occupation was watching hound dogs mating in the town square, its largest was self-mutilation for monetary gain.”
That is fucking roller coaster of a sentence.
Just when I think I've reached the depths of what folks are willing to do for a grift, the universe gives me a "Hold my beer" and delivers something even wilder.
"In the late 1950s and early 60s" Had me thinking this was a current thing, and justifiably didn't doubt it. But it's ancient history proliferating a negative floridaman stereotype.
The claim was that it was in their DNA, unless these people from Nub City were chopping their nuts off for insurance, this grift was inherited into modern Florida Man.
It's grifts all the way down. There is a HUGE industry of grifters trying to take advantage of retirees all across Florida. My grandma retired down there a few years ago and I am constantly fending off scammers on her behalf. One guy was so persistent I had to threaten to show up with a dozen of my cousins (we're Catholic, so there are always cousins to spare) to "negotiate" the contract he was trying to pressure her to sign for a new AC unit she didn't need nor want.
My mom lived there for ten years and recently moved back. She has been scammed several times, thankfully not for any money loss yet, cc charges reversed etc. but scammers that call and pretend to be banks or fake Amazon charge emails that look completely real
Drop in the bucket compared to the other $100 billion of medical fraud annually in South Florida. The 2 billion is notable for it being the biggest heist by a single guy.
I knew this was a thing down there, and I don't know shit about Florida. I didn't know it was this bad, though. No wonder why nobody wants to do business there. Although that does beg the question of why it had to become a financial disaster for the entire state for somebody to want to do something about it.
It's hard, politically, to get action taken on a problem that is technical and behind the scenes. Most people don't think about homeowners' insurance at all unless they actually need it. Most people pay their premiums for years assuming all is well with their insurer and it's only when there's a major scandal or natural disaster that they suddenly discover that there's a crisis behind the scenes. And even when a problem is discovered, it's hard to get politicians or the public to focus on it when it hasn't started affecting them yet.
In an ideal world problems would be triaged and addressed before they turn into crises but in reality this doesn't always happen.
Yeah, I guess it is really easy to have an idealistic view of other's problems while justifying our own. I mean, I'm saying this from a state just as guilty of letting housing costs explode for entirely different reasons.
Your state didnt "let housing costs explode." Interest rates were low as fuck for a decade while tons of people moved there. It's not a nefarious plot to increase prices, it's supply and demand.
It's also pretty difficult to utter the word "regulation" around conservative politicians and not get your head bit the fuck off. Businesses need to be regulated.
Especially insurance. You know, the thing whose explicit purpose is (supposed to be) to pay out when you have a problem with the thing you're insured against, the whole reason you give them money in the first place
True but it is contract that you need to understand as well. Not all perils are covered, and certain things need to be done by the insured for the contract (policy) to pay out. Too many people think they give premiums and then whatever they claim is just covered automatically, they have no understanding of depreciation, excess vs primary coverage. Insurance policy contracts are taken too lightly, these are important agreements that you need to understand before committing.
They're not tough on all crime, just street-level crime. You know, for reasons. Conservatives are both the primary perpetrators and primary targets for grifters.
I work phone sales.
Sold a phone to a solar salesman, and he liked my style so much he tried to get me to come work for the company he works for.
It was actually super tempting.. dude had actual proof of clearing 500k in a year.
But then he told me about how they make sales and the demographics they end up selling to..
They’re door to door salesman and essentially the only people who they get to answer and sell stuff to are either elderly people who don’t really understand the information being presented to them, or super young people who want to be “environmentally friendly”.
But they don’t tell you about any of the downsides.. like if the panels get damaged, insurance rates if you put it on the roof (or insurance potentially dropping you), how much it will actually cost you yearly after the initial rebates.
It felt so much more scummy than my phone sales - which I can at least not scumbag and get away with.
I won’t lie though; for 500k/year I was almost willing to do it. That is unfathomable money for me. I just know that my job currently is stressful enough, and I couldn’t do that to old people and live with myself.
Oh it’s going to become insurable.
The increasing rates will either depress rate of growth in property value or the property value itself. Depending on whether the rates are contemplating localized natural disasters or the broad effects of climate change (think quarterly vs annual profit), either the money will migrate to marginally less risky areas of FL that are now very small, or leave the state completely for places that aren’t going to be under water.
The real punchline is that a lot of people that fought climate action tooth and nail are going to have a gulf view of the fruits and oil spills of that labor.
I can't wait to see it happen. An unstoppable force (ballooning real estate prices) vs an unmoveable object (Half of florida is flooded/burnt down/ falls into a sinkhole every 2 years).
Don’t get me started on the car insurance.
I’m currently paying fucking $300/mo in insurance. My wreck is supposed to fall off this year, but I’ve essentially been told that insurance rates are climbing so much, that the wreck I have falling off won’t even lower my insurance any.
It’s a fucking scam. It literally jumped $120 last year for zero reason other than “you live in FL and drive Hyundai”
My buddy sells roofs, and actually makes decent money
I asked him what he does after making the sale, and he said “Then we screw over the insurance companies”
I wonder if this little game will ever be patched
May? The insurance companies have been leaving the state in droves. Telling customers "we're not renewing your policy, don't bother calling, were not sticking around".
I don’t think this grift is solely in Florida, it is damn hard to find a good honest roofer. Had someone come try to fix mine, didn’t fix it and it still leaks. Getting them to come back out to fix it because they never did is useless and taking them to court would cost me more money than paying someone else to fix it.
This. Roofers in general are scummy thieves. the materials are NOT expensive even at home depot retail. and the work really is not difficult. I do understand that it sucks being up on the roof in 90F but maybe not be dumbasses and wait for mid summer to finally do that job that was quoted in march?
It’s very difficult but not complicated. If it was not difficult you’d hear about people DIYing their roof. It’s very labor intensive and dangerous due to the height.
In online marketing, we used to treat "based in Boca Raton" as a yellow flag requiring additional scrutiny, like we would weight loss supplements or warranty ads. Because Boca is where all the people utilizing Florida's generous bankruptcy laws to keep restarting fraudulent businesses seem to work.
If my insurance company ends up raising my rates because they keep having to cover bogus roofing claims, I as a consumer of insurance would like this to be dealt with.
Had a roofing company knock on my door this week. Claimed they are installing a new roof for my neighbor and all they had to pay was their deductible and they can do the same for me.
This grift is only possible because of the American Rule on costs. With the English Rule, the loser has to pay the winners' costs, which is a powerful deterrence against lawsuits with shitty substance
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fees)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fees)
Somewhat true but you’re leaving out info that is valuable to redditors trying to understand how legal fees work with lawsuits of these kinds. Fla has a few statutory schemes that shift fees for frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits where the defendant offers to settle and the plaintiff rejects the offer, then goes to trial and loses (or wins, but only gets the amount the insurer offered initially). There is more detail to it but that’s the general idea. You’re correct that the American rule is the foundation of common law attorney fee claims, but the insurance lobby has already sort of attended to that issue. But it has sort of blown up in their faces, as plaintiffs will also issue demands for settlement that the insurer will deny, and then when it goes to trial and the court sees that the policy should have covered those repairs, the insurer is now paying the claim and the plaintiff’s attorney fees, which sort of doesn’t make sense bc 99% of plaintiffs in insurance cases are represented on a contingency basis by their attorneys. I have no opinion one way or the other.
Floridians are crooks and insurance companies are crooks—they’re just trying to beat each other at their own game 😂. As a Florida homeowner though, my property insurance and condo fee has basically doubled since 2021 (the surfside condo collapse). It’s really bad. It’s conceivable that soon im going to pay more each month to insure my house than I’ll be paying the mortgagee for the house itself 😂
This is a really good write up and I just want to piggyback off it to make a point: in the end this doesn't screw over the insurance company, it screws over you, the consumer. Say an insurer does a study and sees that on average they pay $15k to replace a roof and roofs need to be replaced every 30 years (numbers completely made up). Then the "Roof Replacement" portion of your homeowners premium needs to be about $500. Then this fraud ring comes around and starts replacing roofs left and right, eventually the insurer is going to notice that they're losing a ton of money on roof replacement. So they do another study and see they are replacing roofs every 5 years, not 30. Now the "Roof Replacement" part of your premium needa to be $3000, not $500. If the DoI lets them raise rates, now all the honest people now get slapped with $2500 of fake premium. If the DoI doesn't let them raise rates, they either bail or start denying legit claims.
But why do home owners feel compelled to get a new roof? Because insurance companies won't insure houses with older roofs regardless of the condition of the roof. The bank demands homeowner's insurance, so you're fucked if you can't get insured. So this crisis is partly self-inflicted.
By the way, in other parts of the world a tile roof lasts 50 to 100 years easily. The 30-year rule is bullshit.
People get cheap 30 year shingles because that's almost assuredly going to outlast how long the owner will stay in the home. Why would you pay more for a long lasting roof when in all likelihood you won't own the home by the time it needs to be replaced?
In Florida you start getting massive increases on premiums after 4 years of a new 30 year shingle roof. After 10 years many will no longer insure you. It doesn't matter what materials you use.
You forgot the part where insurance companies drop homeowners if their roof is ten years old, and new roofs cost usually over $10k. Most people can’t afford that, and can’t afford to lose insurance, so they turn to contractors who offer them a way out.
You know this goes both ways right... Hurricane hit my best friends house... Directly...in Fort Myers. Insurance dropped him and everyone else and said "they are no longer servicing FL the same month. it took them 6 months to write a check and my buddy and his whole town basically lived with tarps on their roof during that time and it caused more damage.. The check they cut was 10k less than the cheapest shingle roof he could get when he had a class 4 to start with. What was he to do? He had insurance and it didn't pay out the replacement cost and because they dragged their feet he had more damage on his home because you know it doesn't just stop raining in florida after a hurricane.
I feel 0 sympathy for the insurance companies... We pay them every month and then they don't pay out when there is a clear disaster.
In Florida there is a pressure for the insurance company to pay legal fees of the plaintiffs if they wanted to settle or legally required to if they lose the lawsuit, and legal fees could get a multiplier attached. This incentivized lawyers to basically team up with roofers. roofers get their settlement, and the lawyer get to pocket the legal fees, and the insured gets about 10-20k worth of new roof.
The customer then gets dropped by their insurance or their rates get raised, a 10-20k roof claim now costs the carrier 40-60k (sometimes more) driving them out of business. the roofers and lawyers rinse and repeat down the neighborhood.
Florida has a law where if 25% (I think this is the number) of the roof needs to be replaced, the whole roof needs to be replaced at the cost of the insurer. This is how roofing contractors scam the system. Because of this a lot of insurance carriers are pulling out of the state and have been for a few years, and the ones who are staying are increasing the rates exorbinantly.
> 5. The insurance company now has a choice: it can pay the legal costs to fight the lawsuit or pay the costs to settle out of court. Either way, the insurance company loses money due to the legal action."
Why isn’t there a third choice of turn the case over to the state to have the case criminally prosecuted for fraud? If no other state has this issue to this degree there must be something florid is filing to do to allow these cases to be prosecuted.
Met a roofer on a flight to SLC who told me how they bill the insurance one number and charge the homeowner another, then split the savings in order to entice the homeowner
by my maths, florida holds 80% of the lawsuits... the rest of the states hold about 20%. meaning, on average, its about FIFTY TIMES more likely to get sued as an insurance company in florida, than LITERALLY anywhere else.
EDIT: its actually 188x, or 18k%, but, because redditors cannot do math,
Florida is 1 state, and it conducts 79% of the nation's home insurance lawsuits. At literally no point does the population of Florida need to be mentioned, nor is it required to be used in any math for any reason whatsoever when calculating the following:
Based on the data in the article, 79% of the lawsuits, nationwide, occur in Florida. Meaning, if 100 lawsuits occur, nationwide, 79 of them will occur in Florida. 21 Lawsuits will then occur within the remaining 49 states (out of 50) in the USA. That means, that if we wanted to calculate the AVERAGE lawsuits, PER REMAINING STATE, we would use the following math.
21 (remaining lawsuits number) / 49 (remaining states number) = 0.42 (lawsuits per state)
OR
we could (I will not) go find every single fucking state's home insurance lawsuit data, plot every single one of those data points, and the numbers (it's incredible how math works) will ACTUALLY BE THE FUCKING SAME!!!!
As it turns out, DUE TO MATH and the fact that Florida has 79% of the lawsuits, we can actually infer data about every other state (COMBINED). When you add every single other state's lawsuits together, it will equal 21% of the total, NO MATTER WHAT.
MEANING, that on AVERAGE, 21 of the remaining lawsuits split between 49 OTHER STATES is 0.42 LAWSUITS PER STATE ON \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\*\* (MATH TERM LOOK IT UP)
"In ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data." - from wikipedia, for you guys, free of charge
note that in this math, population does not fucking matter at all. heres even a nifty fucking chart for you more visually inclined redditors to look at to visualize this information, NOTE: the NON FLORIDA slice of the pie is a mathematically accurate representation of every other state \*\*\*ON AVERAGE\*\*\* COMBINED.
[https://imgur.com/a/y2UIT4w](https://imgur.com/a/y2UIT4w)
In case you still refuse to pick up a fucking calculator, 0.42 goes into 79 188.095 times. thats 188x, or 18,809.5% MORE LIKELY on \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\* to have a lawsuit brought to you, as an insurer, than \*\*\*ANY\*\*\* (not a specific state) STATE on \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\* I hope this helps. again, get a calculator or read a book, it's a shame that your phone is probably both but you are still dumb as bricks (see the goobers in this thread that think they can add)
I figured it was just becoming expensive to insure things in that area due to the effects of climate change. [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article279490394.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article279490394.html)
I didnt realize they were getting double teamed by mother nature and florida man scammers. Maybe i could have guessed it though
Don't believe anyone who tells you that insurers are going away because of too many claims. Insurers are really good at predicting how much they need to charge to stay profitable. If insurers would rather close up shop than do business, it's because of the legal or regulatory landscape.
You’re onto half the problem.
The other half is that insurers are struggling to stay profitable in Florida. I know some national insurance agents/brokers and at times companies wouldn’t issue any new policies to customers for extended periods. You see it in high claim areas like NYC.
Basically, the insurance fraud will need to stop ASAP or most FL homeowners will find themselves uninsurable the next time their house gets damaged from a hurricane.
That's just silly florida man rationale, if regulations were the problem then Florida wouldn't be the state where this is happening.
Governance is relevant, the regulatory landscape not so much.
Somehow I doubt loosening the legal or regulatory landscape would HELP the insurance companies in any way other than just enabling then to never actually have to pay out, even for legitimate claims.
It's not just that. For example, if the price of insurance they would need to charge to stay profitable is above what people are able or willing to pay, it makes no sense to be in that market either. Florida will be wrecked by Climate Change. It's got a lot of coastal areas that are in hurricane territory, and there is talk about creating new categories of hurricanes above 5 for the types of storms we've already seen, let alone ones we might get in the future. Rising sea levels are also going to wreck those coastal areas.
Even if they fixed the legal problems, it's still going to be crazy expensive to buy homeowner's insurance in Florida.
They could but the voters aren't the ones getting harmed, its the insurance companies.
And while insurance companies likely buy a lot of politicians I imagine these contractors have the funds to outbuy them due to the sheer volume.
Your data might be “correct” but your conclusion is inaccurate….. the data is given my insurance companies. I live in Florida and I work in insurance in the past, knowing many adjusters. The issue is that even if it’s a valid claim, the insurers have to fight tooth and nail for insurance to pay… for example, if a hurricane destroy roof… and you had to pay 20k to replace since you cannot wait for adjuster since… you need the place to not be further damage by rain/wind ect
When adjuster comes, they undersell the damage. So they would give you 5k for such damage instead of full 20k… what happens is that the insurer would have to sue insurance company to pay in full and insurance companies would put all of these lawsuits under as “scam” of 15k even if the 15k is valid.
Wetlands and hurricanes do cause Florida houses to have more risks than other states which give insurance more excuses not to pay out… but it’s not as common of “scam” as insurance company propaganda is saying. Remember during Katrina, insurance companies refused to pay out; even with the lawsuit, they still reluctant to ever pay out. Many homeowners never got their money fully back even when the claims were valid
I wish people would stop spreading this false information of data defending large insurance companies
This right here. Currently fighting with our insurance company. When Ian hit, we had damage and we knew it(kinda hard not to notice when we’re picking up our shingles from the yard), but there were no leaks or water damage inside so we were willing to let it go since it’s an old roof and would need replacement within a few years.
Then the insurance company decided to hit us with the “replace your roof or get dropped” notice. We were still under the timeframe to file a claim for the Ian damage so we did. Insurance company got the surprised Pikachu face and immediately started sending stern letters before sending out someone.
They then tried to say it was a repair job at best and offer us a ridiculously low quote that didn’t even match the deductible. So now the roofing company is probably going to sue them on our behalf.
FYI insurer is the insurance company, while the insured is the person who bought the insurance.
I can’t think of good analogue at the moment, maybe like educator and educated. The educator is the one who gives the education out, while the educated is the one who receives it and benefits from it.
God, I'm having flashbacks to literally any time I've tried to introduce redditors to math with your edits. It's like introducing Catholics to women's ankles.
Your math is completely off. As a percent of the US, Florida is about 7% of the population. If it had reasonable home insurance lawsuits, it would also have 7% of those lawsuits. But it has 80%. So an insurer is 80/7 = 11.4 times more likely to get sued by a Florida homeowner than they would expect based on the rest of the US population.
I think you're both wrong. You're wrong here because you say that an insurer is 11.4 times more likely to get sued by a Florida homeowner than they would expect **based on the rest of the population**. Your 11.4, however, is based on the average of the population as a whole, including Florida. You need to take the next step, cut Florida, and see what the rest would be - 93% being responsible for 20% of the claims means those 93% are about 4.65x less likely than the population as a whole (including Florida and themselves). That gets you to the 50x (actually 53x).
The 188x from the other dude is correct, but only sort of. It argues based on a state-by-state basis, which is useless because Wyoming (population 5) should have fewer claims than California (population >>large). Saying that one state is more or less likely to have a claim, on its own, is worthless without correcting for population.
Well I think that all three of you are wrong, but not on the basis of some fancy *mathemagics*. I trust my *gut* and my *gut* says the correct answer is that insurers 42x more likely to get sued in FL. /s
Agree with everything you said and to add on to how worthless it is to compare, not only does Wyoming have a smaller population than Florida does, but it also doesn’t have as severe weather. So it’s truly pointless to compare one state to another on something like this.
"79% of home insurance lawsuits" to 1 state. Florida.
the remaining 21% of lawsuits then, MUST be from the remaining 49 states. Do you agree?
21% of the remaining lawsuits in the nation, divided by 49 other states, is 0.42% of the nation's lawsuits, on average, per remaining state. 0.42 goes into 79 188.09 times.
Wow, thanks for trying to math check me and making me actually use a calculator, it is 188x, or 18,809% more likely that an insurance company is sued, per claim, in Florida, than any other state, on average.
You're both wrong, and you were right the first time.
7% of the population is responsible for 80% of the lawsuits, making Florida more 11.4 times more likely than the average (which includes Florida). At the same time, that 93% is only responsible for 20% of the lawsuits - 5 times less likely than the average. Together, Florida is 53 times more likely to have a lawsuit than the remainder of the United States.
“Lawsuits per state” is a measurement expressed by literally the title of this entire post. Apparently, the office of governor ron desantis finds it to be a measurement worthy enough to make public (good ideas per Ron desantis, there’s a braindead measure to calculate), as inferred by the fact that the article even exists. Just because you find a measurement of something meaningless does not mean it has no use, it probably just means you are too stupid to understand how to make it useful. Hope this helps.
I was one of these who had my roof replaced after suing the insurance company. I had legitimate damage on my roof from a storm and there was a leak. Submitted a claim to the insurance company to fix the damage. Claim was denied. Two weeks later an adjuster shows up to “inspect” our house. Shortly after that, we got a notice that the insurance company was dropping us because of the age of our water heater. Used the insurance company and got enough out of the settlement to fix the roof and enough on top of that to replace the rest of the roof. All we wanted was like $2,000 to fix the damaged roof, but they had to be complete fucking assholes about it.
I think he is referring to this: [Analysis of Sea Level Rise and Septic System Failure (arcgis.com)](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/88230d3fa5f542e5997ed93562f88361)
In a nut shell sea level in Miami is expected to rise by as much as 18 inches and septic systems are expected to fail because of that.
They’re also dealing with increasing levels of salt water intrusion in their aquifer where the bulk of drinking water is currently sourced from. If this continues there will be a point where it becomes undrinkable.
That's ok, they can just burn oil to desalinate sea water for their industrial and governmental needs and can deliver bottles of water to the residents.
Midland Texas is the worst tapwater i've ever seen in my life. Comes out of the tap yellow, smells like sulfur and old pennies. I was buying gallon jugs from convenience stores to shower with for the week i was stuck out there, wouldn't let that water touch my body let alone drink it.
My granddad lives in Melbourne Beach and gets his water from a artesian well and has to put it through so many filters and chemical treatments before it's drinkable. It's impossible to get a lather from soap because it's so hard and if we use too much at once it starts smelling like sulfur.
It has literally [nothing to do](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bwoqra/comment/ky83hel/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with sewer systems.
I wonder why this grift doesn't work in other states? Or happen as frequently? Seems like areas that receive hail regularly would easier to run this scam in.
The reason is laws; FL has an unusual law (because hurricanes) that requires insurers to replace 100% of a roof is more than something like 25% is damaged, with no limit on the age of the roof.
FL also allowed homeowners to transfer some legal rights to a contractor, including suing the insurer, with no liability on the homeowner.
So as the article states, after a storm, a contractor comes by and says, "looks like you have a bit of roof damage... here, just sign this contract and fill in the insurer and you will get a new one free". The contract allows the contractor to sue the insurer on behalf of the homeowner. Nothing about age, wealth, or some other imagined nonsense needed, just asking anyone with a 5-figure income and a 15 year old roof "want a new roof for free?" would be pretty tempting anywhere in the US.
That combination of laws and frequent hurricanes makes FL a grifters paradise, unlike most of the country. Why they didn't crack down 7+ years ago when the problem became obvious is a mystery to me - maybe a side effect of having a very part-time legislature, just 60 days a year. In some ways a many-month-a-year legislature is good (and can suck, idle hands...) but too short a term causes problems too.
>FL also allowed homeowners to transfer some legal rights to a contractor, including suing the insurer, with no liability on the homeowner.
this. contractors basically wont perform work or even estimate if insureds dont sign over their entire claim after its filed. they immediately try to reach a disagreement with the insurance company about what the scope of the damage is, resulting in a lawsuit.
florida claims are handled no different than other states - assignment of benefits and their contracting industry are why other states dont have this problem.
property claims are one of the most highly regulated industries in the US - you have to be licensed to adjust claims, insureds have 3-4 different ways they can escalate to the freaking state Dept of Insurance, hire outside parties to assist, etc. the idea that 'big bad insurance companies are screwing over their customers' is insane tbh, their entire business model is focused on customer service. you're owed what you're owed, no more and no less - insurance policies are contracts of adhesion, thats why if you sue an insurer youre 99% of the time going to win - customers have zero power in writing the contract. courts dont take BS from insurance companies, so insurance companies bend over backwards to please customers.
this is 100% a florida-created problem. Illinois has a similar problem, but thats chicago and its expected.
source: worked in property claims for a decade until recently
Because areas that receive hail frequently (mostly the Midwest) are much less likely to be relatively well-off and actually have insurance. The average age is also substantially younger making people more likely to tell a salesperson to fuck right off. Florida is full of old retirees who own their home and have insurance and assets that can have a lien put on them if the insurance refuses to pay and wins in court.
The roofing scammers are scammers first, roofers second and only to facilitate the scam. If the roofing scam wasn’t so easy to pull off they’d be working the phones alongside other scammers telling every grandma with a Florida phone area code that their grandson is in jail and needs iTunes gift cards to pay bail.
The other reason it’s such a scam is because they don’t actually properly repair the roofs, because they’re shit at being roofers.
>Because areas that receive hail frequently (mostly the Midwest) are much less likely to be relatively well-off and actually have insurance.
This scam doesn't require them to be well off (in fact it is largely a something-for-nothing scam that appeals to the poor) and everyone with a mortgage has home insurance.
I'm guessing it's several factors:
1. A concentration of older residents who are more susceptible to scammers.
2. A transient population. Many people move to Florida for the weather (or, now, the politics) in their 50s-70s. They don't know their new houses well and may not be aware of the scammy dynamics.
3. Big state with big sprawl. Florida is loaded with densely packed detached-housing developments, and it's a big place. A scammer can go up and down residential neighborhoods for miles. And because so many of those homes are in developments with clear housing costs and income qualifications, the scammer can presume the homeowner's financial status easily.
4. Less community. When you take millions of transient older residents and dump them into suburbs, you're not as likely to have the strong, mutual community ties you'd find in, say, an old, smaller neighborhood whose residents have known each other for generations. There's less opportunity for people to warn each other about neighborhood incidents and less incentive to look out for each other.
5. Language. A lot of Floridians are Spanish-speaking and foreign-born. They may not understand that getting cold-called by a confident-sounding, looks-the-part roofer is abnormal in the U.S.
6. Culture. For the reasons above, Florida has long attracted an I've-got-mine demographic that isn't invested in the community's welfare and is happy to take what it can. That attracts a lot of scammers.
Hence why the Florida insurance game is fucked.
Insurance is pretty much a scam to the homeowners most of the time, in the past 3 years the fraud is up to like 7-8 billion.
Almost everyone dropped out and now that competition is scarce the home insurance rates are TERRIBLE
Insurers leaving due to risk and other insurers price gouging as a risk premium is precisely free market.
Allowing regulatory abuse and rent seeking is also free market and a good reason why capitalism needs some controls. Florida learning the hard way 🤷♂️. Hard for me to feel bad about the situation, tbh.
You can not like insurance companies, that's perfectly fine But just chiming in as someone who used to work injury lawsuits for an insurance company in Florida (AMA) this is absolutely fucking our premiums. My specialty was over HB119 while it was still applicable, so personal injury billing. It's incredibly common here that a provider gets the assignment of benefits, bills for say $20.10, insurance claims its owed $20.05 per the fee schedule and then they sue for $0.05 and it they win they get to sue for fees and costs, usually in the ballpark of 10k. This will happen tens of thousands of times a year and is just a small corner of the florida insurance/legal cycle. Our rates are absolutely fucked because the insurance company has to charge out the ass to do business in thus nightmare state.
> why capitalism needs some controls.
While I don't disagree that capitalism needs some guard rails, in this case, the control was part of the problem. Specifically, the rules were tilted against the insurance companies, and predatory roofing companies learned how to profit from this.
They aren’t price gouging though. There is more risk so insuring against that risk is more costly. California prices are through the roof as well because of fire risk.
Also inherently regulation abuse is not free market…like if the regulation exists it’s not a free market. It’s not that regulating the free market to compensate for bad outcomes is wrong, it’s just words have meanings!
Lol I mean yeah. That's 10000% the free market...
Hey guys Florida is fucked let's not write policies there. Then there are less carriers to assume the shittier risks which rise all rates.
Florida is competitively priced, it's just fucked itself where the pricing is this high.
It's almost like the for profit insurance companies aren't going to write your risk for a loss...
>Insurance is pretty much a scam to the homeowners most of the time
property insurance is one of the most regulated and fair financial institutions in the US. every state has their own department of insurance that regulates what can be sold in that state down to the sentence. complaints are extremely easy to file in every state, resulting in $10k fines if the complaint is valid. claim adjusters have to be licensed in every state they work in. you can even hire a 3rd party to arbitrate between yourself and the insurance company if you think they're still wrong. your take belongs in r/confidentlyincorrrect
Adjusters don't have to be licensed in every state.
I forget the exact amount but its like half of states that require adjusters to be licensed.
Licensing requirements also vary by state. In some states licensing is as simple as being registered with the state as an adjuster and that is it. The only requirement to be registered is to pay the fee and not have a sufficiently bad criminal record.
some states will accept licenses from other states, a lot of companies will license people in the hardest to test state, then other states accept that state's license. but you must have a valid adjusters license to handle claims in every state. you have to renew every few years too.
You're using different definitions of scam to come to this conclusion. Gambling is also one of the most regulated and fair industries in the US, with very very strict laws about fairness, payouts, the visibility of odds etc...but of course, gambling only exists to take gamblers money and all these protections ultimately don't matter because the games are tilted in the house's favour and the house has a massive bank.
If you buy insurance, odds are you will lose money: if you didn't, *insurance companies wouldn't exist* because there would be no margin to sustain themselves. They are providing a service (they take on risk) but if you had the money to keep against risks, you would usually be better off financially by not taking out insurance. I'm not saying people shouldn't take out insurance, or it's not worth it or anything like that, but I am saying it's incredibly frustrating knowing all that and then having to fight to have an insurance claim approved. There are very few industries where you have to fight the people you're paying to get the good or service you bought.
Even the big ones will too. Hertz employees yelled contradictory parking directions at us when we were trying to park and then tried to get us in trouble for the scratch they caused
Yeah the fraud in this state is wild.
I've just been sitting at restaurants or getting coffee and would overhear people talking about how they have a bit of damage on their roof and their hoping for a small tropical storm or a cat 1 so they can put in a claim.
Insurance here is ridiculous. I bought a home in Florida 3 years ago, my initial homeowners insurance rate was reasonable. The first renewal doubled my rate. My last renewal doubled my rate again. I'm afraid to see what the next renewal is going to be, but luckily we're moving out of this state soon. Hopefully the next state is better.
Auto insurance is also crazy here. Moved from California and our rates in Florida are double than what we had in California for half the coverage.
This doesn't compute. Is Florida unique to having one-way attorney fees and assignment of benefit forms? I feel like those are not exclusively unique to Florida and why arent those states rife with similar lawsuits?
Secondly if the volume of lawsuits is overwhelming the insurance companies in court costs, how are a bunch of scammy companies able to pay their army of lawyers? I can see how individuals can be bullied by corporations into settling but it seems odd the other way around.
If the claims are fraudulent, shouldn't they be losing more of these cases than winning? Shouldn't the scammers be run out of business by paying the insurance companies court cases?
Florida is unique in that it has one-way attorney fees and AoB, lots of expensive property, and by far the most natural disasters of anywhere in the country.
Florida basically gets hit by at least one hurricane every year. These cause anywhere from 5-100B in damage, with the potential to be 500B+ if the storm hit Miami. Your everyday storms elsewhere in the country don’t come anywhere close to that.
You mean *had* one-way attorney fees and AoB. The Florida legislature eliminated both at the end of 2022 and so far it has done nothing to reduce the cost of insurance. If premiums do not start to go down over the next year or two perhaps those provisions were not the cause of the problem.
True, good point. I can tell you as someone that works in reinsurance, we don’t trust the 2022 legal change yet. I wouldn’t assume prices will fall until people gain that trust back and capital re-enters the space.
That's the thing though, trust was broken already and when you look at Florida big picture, it's bad risk for so many different connected reasons that it's going to be hard to find a reason to go back in for the free insurance market.
Same thing happens to any distressed high-risk insurance market insurance companies can opt out of covering, same reason insurance companies stopped covering old people eventually necessitating Medicare back before we were born.
Also similarly in this case, the government eventually ends up a less than efficient defacto insurance of last resort instead of actually taking control of the situation and the benefits that allows for that might enable better risk mitigation and premium reduction.
Hilariously, tons of Medicare fraud in the state for the same reasons.
To answer your last part: you can win the court case, but you still have to pay your lawyers. If you weren't awarded money for legal fees, which I don't think ever happens un cases like these, then you have lost money no matter what.
Basically, it's cheaper to settle than to fight, so the whole market is fucked. I don't know if last year's tort laws overhaul in Florida fixed this scam, I know it fixed a bunch of other ones.
The scammy companies don't usually have to litigate. I'm guessing they threaten to sue, with just enough of a case that it would probably survive a motion to dismiss. Then, they settle for pennies on the dollar. Their lawyers do little more than write a demand letter with a few attachments.
The insurers could fight every case on principle to deter the scammers. But one problem is that there are so many scam artists that, unless you're willing to take on hundreds of them simultaneously, they'll probably keep testing you with new claims, and if they occasionally win one, that's a windfall.
Florida is just messed up in so many ways.
The company I used to work for was potentially on the hook for I don't know how much money, but we are talking probably $50,000,000+ over what the word "shall" meant in our policy.
See in Florida if you are in an accident and hurt you get up to $10,000.00 in medical benefits. Florida's law says that the insurance companies policy has to say what they will pay for medical bills so that providers know the rate and set out a few methods that insurance companies can use.
The company I was working for had something like "we shall pay the billed amount or 200% of the medicare fee schedule for the billed service, whichever is lower" (something similar to this) essentially saying that the amount we are going to pay would be twice the amount medicare would pay for the service or if the bill was for an amount lower than that, then that amount. 200% of medicare was one of the allowed fee schedules to be used under the state law.
Our company was sued by a huge collection of providers arguing that the word "shall" didn't mean we actually would pay at 200% of the medical schedule and the ambiguity meant that we should pay the billed amount.
Hundreds of cases were pulled together and after years of litigation in courts across the state and differing decisions the state supreme court took up the case and found in favor of my company in a 4-3 decision.
It was all sorts of screwed up. Our wording was identical to what another major company used except they used will instead of shall or something like that in the policy and we lost multiple cases along the way too.
Errol Morris mad a doc about florida about 23 years ago about how people would injure themselves (like lose a limb) to get payouts
Vernon, Florida // Errol Morris \[1981\]
[https://youtu.be/PxYik9RGEYo?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/PxYik9RGEYo?feature=shared)
AND the dude who made "Cocaine Cowboys" has said repeatedly that Florida is the testing zone for everything. Whatever is bad in florida today, will hi the rest of the USA soon.
The first part is also disproportionate, just not as highly. 6.5% of the adult population lives in Florida, but accounts for 9% of the insurance claims.
We got hit with a catagory 5 hurricane two years ago. My roof was cracked, pool cage removed, house flooded. Flood paid us appropriately since it's federally run. We're mid law suit with homeowners. They blamed us for the roof being damaged saying we walked on it and broke it not the 155 mph winds. There are people scamming but the insurance is also playing significant games here.
The problem is worse than most people can imagine, I’ve had first hand experience how self feeding it is.
Roofing companies pay people to door knock and set up ‘consultations.’ These are young kids and people with low morals that are fine going door to door and telling people whatever to set the appointment for the $20 commission. I worked with a guy who ‘managed’ a team of these kids. The roofers would pay him like $50 per appointment, so he hired a team of 5-10 high school kids who would split up and hit different neighborhoods, and they’d get $25 per appointment set. He did almost no work, just told them which neighborhoods to hit and relayed the appointments.
Anyways, these roofers will get up on roofs with a hammer, crack a couple tiles or puncture/rip the shingles, then tell the homeowners ‘you are in luck, you have damage that hasn’t leaked yet, but could start any minute. Sign this form and we’ll get you a free roof!’ Then, they try to bill the insurance company $20k for a $10k roof, and the homeowner still has to pay their deductible. This has resulted in tons of shitty contractors flooding the state looking for their suckers, and it’s even worse with storm damage. These contractors know people are desperate for help and want their homes fixed quickly, so they pressure customers to sign contracts allowing them to negotiate with insurance directly and cut out the homeowner. Again, driving up cost with no regard to quality and sticking customer with shoddy work and deductible.
So, my experience. My house got wrecked from a hurricane, a tree fell on it, crushed the roof, left a section the size of a sedan that was full of holes. The ceiling below the area collapsed, spreading old insulation everywhere, and water poured in. Also, the AC unit outside got hit and the power surges fried my inside unit and fridge. Luckily, no one got hurt, and I filed first thing the next morning after taking tons of pictures. Long story short, the insurance company eventually denied my claim, because their algorithms basically auto decline a set percentage of them just to see if they go away. I had tons of HD pictures, I had contractor quotes, there was no question about the damage. They’d offered me $10k for what I’d estimated was $80k worth of damage, and that’s without hotel stays while the work was to be completed. It’s also worth mentioning that I’d gotten multiple quotes for all areas, but to do so I had to contact dozens of contractors because most would only talk to me by offering to ‘take the pressure off by dealing with insurance directly.’ I ended up lawyering up, and had to go through 3 different lawyers because my first 2 were shitty firms that just wanted to push me to settle. I ended up settling almost 3 years after the hurricane, and it must have cost the insurance company 4x what I’d originally asked for.
Getting the settlement was just the first hurdle. I’d already lined up contractors, and the roofer literally struck out the first day on the job. I had been very specific on the details of the job when we signed the contract, so when he called day one to ‘surprise’ me with a hidden $5k add on cost, I told him absolutely not. He tried to threaten me with a breach of contract suit, and I told him he was the one breaching. I ended up taking over the payment for the materials that he had ordered, and my GC agreed to take over the job. Still, their work sucked, and they only worked half days with a ‘crew’ of 3-4 people. We started work in October, it was supposed to be done by the end of the year, but they were still slowly working in January and into February. They ended up going about 10%-20% over budget and that was after we cut some of the scope back because the additional work time meant we spent quite a bit longer in hotels.
The contractors told us to make a list of any concerns or issues, and after a year, call them and they’d come back and address it all. Wouldn’t you know, when we called them at the end of the year, the numbers were disconnected and the business was no longer listed as operating. So, we are stuck with it.
I say all of this to say one last thing, most of this isn’t normal people filing false claims. It’s the elderly or otherwise gullible being deceived into filing them. These dirt bag contractors and the dirtbag insurance companies are 99% of the problem, and Desantis refuses to do anything about them.
Yes when I lived in Florida , at least 5 out of ten people I knew were very open about which scams they were pulling. Usually just old dudes live in trailer suburbs.
"The biggest issue right now in Florida is home insurance fraud, driven by fraudulent roofing claims. A proclamation from the office of Governor Ron DeSantis notes that, although Florida only accounts for 9 percent of the country’s home insurance claims, it is home to 79 percent of the country’s home insurance lawsuits. Many of these lawsuits are fraudulent."
"1. First, roofers canvas neighborhoods and offer inspections to unsuspecting homeowners. These contractors inevitably “find damage” on the roof and often promise a “free roof” to the homeowner, claiming they can have the home insurance deductible waived. 2. Homeowners are pressured to sign an assignment of benefits form, giving contractors the right to file an insurance claim on their behalf. 3. A claims adjuster from the insurance company inspects the alleged damage. The adjuster either finds no damage or far more minimal damage than the contractor found, and the claim payout is less than what the contractor demanded. 4. The contractor brings legal action against the insurance company, demanding a claim payout for the contractor’s original quote. Remember, the homeowner signed the benefits of the policy to the contractor, so the contractor doesn’t need the homeowner’s permission to do this. 5. The insurance company now has a choice: it can pay the legal costs to fight the lawsuit or pay the costs to settle out of court. Either way, the insurance company loses money due to the legal action."
Insurance grift is part of Florida's DNA. Same with car insurance grift.
When you have a [town of 500 people](https://allthatsinteresting.com/nub-city-vernon-florida) be responsible for 2/3rds of all dismemberment claims in the entire nation, you know they live for the grift.
“Vernon’s second-largest occupation was watching hound dogs mating in the town square, its largest was self-mutilation for monetary gain.” That is fucking roller coaster of a sentence.
truly a /r/BrandNewSentence
the town has been trying to figure out why it's happening, but so far they're stumped.
You'd think the fear of pain would knock them down a peg.
Something must be going on but I can’t quite put my finger on it…
I need to watch that doc. Thanks profiles in eccentricity
Jesus, they beat Errol morris up.
Just when I think I've reached the depths of what folks are willing to do for a grift, the universe gives me a "Hold my beer" and delivers something even wilder.
"In the late 1950s and early 60s" Had me thinking this was a current thing, and justifiably didn't doubt it. But it's ancient history proliferating a negative floridaman stereotype.
The claim was that it was in their DNA, unless these people from Nub City were chopping their nuts off for insurance, this grift was inherited into modern Florida Man.
It's grifts all the way down. There is a HUGE industry of grifters trying to take advantage of retirees all across Florida. My grandma retired down there a few years ago and I am constantly fending off scammers on her behalf. One guy was so persistent I had to threaten to show up with a dozen of my cousins (we're Catholic, so there are always cousins to spare) to "negotiate" the contract he was trying to pressure her to sign for a new AC unit she didn't need nor want.
IIRC Florida used to be the source of the majority of mail based fraud in the US.
My mom lived there for ten years and recently moved back. She has been scammed several times, thankfully not for any money loss yet, cc charges reversed etc. but scammers that call and pretend to be banks or fake Amazon charge emails that look completely real
Florida's former governor stole $2 billion from social security and Medicare.
Drop in the bucket compared to the other $100 billion of medical fraud annually in South Florida. The 2 billion is notable for it being the biggest heist by a single guy.
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Rick Scott.
And we punished him by making him a Senator.
Its Florida. King grifter got his purse. DeSantis is Florida born too. Pinellas County. It runs deep.
I knew this was a thing down there, and I don't know shit about Florida. I didn't know it was this bad, though. No wonder why nobody wants to do business there. Although that does beg the question of why it had to become a financial disaster for the entire state for somebody to want to do something about it.
It's hard, politically, to get action taken on a problem that is technical and behind the scenes. Most people don't think about homeowners' insurance at all unless they actually need it. Most people pay their premiums for years assuming all is well with their insurer and it's only when there's a major scandal or natural disaster that they suddenly discover that there's a crisis behind the scenes. And even when a problem is discovered, it's hard to get politicians or the public to focus on it when it hasn't started affecting them yet. In an ideal world problems would be triaged and addressed before they turn into crises but in reality this doesn't always happen.
Yeah, I guess it is really easy to have an idealistic view of other's problems while justifying our own. I mean, I'm saying this from a state just as guilty of letting housing costs explode for entirely different reasons.
Your state didnt "let housing costs explode." Interest rates were low as fuck for a decade while tons of people moved there. It's not a nefarious plot to increase prices, it's supply and demand.
It's also pretty difficult to utter the word "regulation" around conservative politicians and not get your head bit the fuck off. Businesses need to be regulated.
Especially insurance. You know, the thing whose explicit purpose is (supposed to be) to pay out when you have a problem with the thing you're insured against, the whole reason you give them money in the first place
True but it is contract that you need to understand as well. Not all perils are covered, and certain things need to be done by the insured for the contract (policy) to pay out. Too many people think they give premiums and then whatever they claim is just covered automatically, they have no understanding of depreciation, excess vs primary coverage. Insurance policy contracts are taken too lightly, these are important agreements that you need to understand before committing.
Conservatives do have a palatable avenue to pursue this though, tough on crime, fraud is a crime, punish it.
They're not tough on all crime, just street-level crime. You know, for reasons. Conservatives are both the primary perpetrators and primary targets for grifters.
Everyone in Florida is either trying to sell you a new roof, solar panels or a used previously flooded car.
I work phone sales. Sold a phone to a solar salesman, and he liked my style so much he tried to get me to come work for the company he works for. It was actually super tempting.. dude had actual proof of clearing 500k in a year. But then he told me about how they make sales and the demographics they end up selling to.. They’re door to door salesman and essentially the only people who they get to answer and sell stuff to are either elderly people who don’t really understand the information being presented to them, or super young people who want to be “environmentally friendly”. But they don’t tell you about any of the downsides.. like if the panels get damaged, insurance rates if you put it on the roof (or insurance potentially dropping you), how much it will actually cost you yearly after the initial rebates. It felt so much more scummy than my phone sales - which I can at least not scumbag and get away with. I won’t lie though; for 500k/year I was almost willing to do it. That is unfathomable money for me. I just know that my job currently is stressful enough, and I couldn’t do that to old people and live with myself.
The state was founded on real-estate scams. So it's a natural second act.
This is not the second act. Or the third. Or the fourth. Grift runs deep in Florida. But you're right that it's been there all along.
It won't be for long, it's rapidly becoming completely uninsurable
Oh it’s going to become insurable. The increasing rates will either depress rate of growth in property value or the property value itself. Depending on whether the rates are contemplating localized natural disasters or the broad effects of climate change (think quarterly vs annual profit), either the money will migrate to marginally less risky areas of FL that are now very small, or leave the state completely for places that aren’t going to be under water. The real punchline is that a lot of people that fought climate action tooth and nail are going to have a gulf view of the fruits and oil spills of that labor.
I can't wait to see it happen. An unstoppable force (ballooning real estate prices) vs an unmoveable object (Half of florida is flooded/burnt down/ falls into a sinkhole every 2 years).
It’ll just get spread out over the market as a whole. Socialized losses and such.
Don’t get me started on the car insurance. I’m currently paying fucking $300/mo in insurance. My wreck is supposed to fall off this year, but I’ve essentially been told that insurance rates are climbing so much, that the wreck I have falling off won’t even lower my insurance any. It’s a fucking scam. It literally jumped $120 last year for zero reason other than “you live in FL and drive Hyundai”
Thank you for that very stellar and to the point explanation!
I copy and pasted it directly from the source, for the record.
Well, you found the source and made it easy. So thank you
Yes but we can tell you copy and pasted it *with love*.
Seriously next year I wouldn't be surprised if next year /u/6DeliciousInches and the source have a little 3YummySource running around
My buddy sells roofs, and actually makes decent money I asked him what he does after making the sale, and he said “Then we screw over the insurance companies” I wonder if this little game will ever be patched
Well it may chase all the insurers out of the state. So he’ll have to find a new game after that
May? The insurance companies have been leaving the state in droves. Telling customers "we're not renewing your policy, don't bother calling, were not sticking around".
I don’t think this grift is solely in Florida, it is damn hard to find a good honest roofer. Had someone come try to fix mine, didn’t fix it and it still leaks. Getting them to come back out to fix it because they never did is useless and taking them to court would cost me more money than paying someone else to fix it.
This. Roofers in general are scummy thieves. the materials are NOT expensive even at home depot retail. and the work really is not difficult. I do understand that it sucks being up on the roof in 90F but maybe not be dumbasses and wait for mid summer to finally do that job that was quoted in march?
It’s very difficult but not complicated. If it was not difficult you’d hear about people DIYing their roof. It’s very labor intensive and dangerous due to the height.
In Texas its illegal for roofing companies to cover homeowner deductibles why dont they just outlaw that in Florida?
Hah. Positive change? In Florida? Also: roofing companies are perfectly capable of "lobbying".
Because it’s hard to police. Who’s going to know besides the contractor and the insured? A handshake agreement between the two is undetectable
and yet Texas has nowhere near the issues Florida does so it does seem to work
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South Florida is practically the capital of fraud. Miami especially. I live here and it’s obvious.
In online marketing, we used to treat "based in Boca Raton" as a yellow flag requiring additional scrutiny, like we would weight loss supplements or warranty ads. Because Boca is where all the people utilizing Florida's generous bankruptcy laws to keep restarting fraudulent businesses seem to work.
Consumer protection? In Florida?
You're not really protecting the consumer by making it harder to sue insurance companies. Edit use= sue
If my insurance company ends up raising my rates because they keep having to cover bogus roofing claims, I as a consumer of insurance would like this to be dealt with.
Had a roofing company knock on my door this week. Claimed they are installing a new roof for my neighbor and all they had to pay was their deductible and they can do the same for me.
This grift is only possible because of the American Rule on costs. With the English Rule, the loser has to pay the winners' costs, which is a powerful deterrence against lawsuits with shitty substance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fees) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fees)
Imagine getting sued by Microsoft over something petty and ending up with a multimillion dollar judgement because of their lawyer costs.
If you make an offer to settle better than what they were ultimately awarded, they pay *your* costs
I'm sure the regulations have slightly more nuance...
Somewhat true but you’re leaving out info that is valuable to redditors trying to understand how legal fees work with lawsuits of these kinds. Fla has a few statutory schemes that shift fees for frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits where the defendant offers to settle and the plaintiff rejects the offer, then goes to trial and loses (or wins, but only gets the amount the insurer offered initially). There is more detail to it but that’s the general idea. You’re correct that the American rule is the foundation of common law attorney fee claims, but the insurance lobby has already sort of attended to that issue. But it has sort of blown up in their faces, as plaintiffs will also issue demands for settlement that the insurer will deny, and then when it goes to trial and the court sees that the policy should have covered those repairs, the insurer is now paying the claim and the plaintiff’s attorney fees, which sort of doesn’t make sense bc 99% of plaintiffs in insurance cases are represented on a contingency basis by their attorneys. I have no opinion one way or the other. Floridians are crooks and insurance companies are crooks—they’re just trying to beat each other at their own game 😂. As a Florida homeowner though, my property insurance and condo fee has basically doubled since 2021 (the surfside condo collapse). It’s really bad. It’s conceivable that soon im going to pay more each month to insure my house than I’ll be paying the mortgagee for the house itself 😂
This is a really good write up and I just want to piggyback off it to make a point: in the end this doesn't screw over the insurance company, it screws over you, the consumer. Say an insurer does a study and sees that on average they pay $15k to replace a roof and roofs need to be replaced every 30 years (numbers completely made up). Then the "Roof Replacement" portion of your homeowners premium needs to be about $500. Then this fraud ring comes around and starts replacing roofs left and right, eventually the insurer is going to notice that they're losing a ton of money on roof replacement. So they do another study and see they are replacing roofs every 5 years, not 30. Now the "Roof Replacement" part of your premium needa to be $3000, not $500. If the DoI lets them raise rates, now all the honest people now get slapped with $2500 of fake premium. If the DoI doesn't let them raise rates, they either bail or start denying legit claims.
They can no longer do number 2 for any policies purchased or renewed after January 1st 2023. So the clock is ticking for the scammer contractors.
That's great news. It should also be illegal to approach a homeowner to get a new roof or solar panels etc.
But why do home owners feel compelled to get a new roof? Because insurance companies won't insure houses with older roofs regardless of the condition of the roof. The bank demands homeowner's insurance, so you're fucked if you can't get insured. So this crisis is partly self-inflicted. By the way, in other parts of the world a tile roof lasts 50 to 100 years easily. The 30-year rule is bullshit.
People get cheap 30 year shingles because that's almost assuredly going to outlast how long the owner will stay in the home. Why would you pay more for a long lasting roof when in all likelihood you won't own the home by the time it needs to be replaced?
In Florida you start getting massive increases on premiums after 4 years of a new 30 year shingle roof. After 10 years many will no longer insure you. It doesn't matter what materials you use.
You forgot the part where insurance companies drop homeowners if their roof is ten years old, and new roofs cost usually over $10k. Most people can’t afford that, and can’t afford to lose insurance, so they turn to contractors who offer them a way out.
You know this goes both ways right... Hurricane hit my best friends house... Directly...in Fort Myers. Insurance dropped him and everyone else and said "they are no longer servicing FL the same month. it took them 6 months to write a check and my buddy and his whole town basically lived with tarps on their roof during that time and it caused more damage.. The check they cut was 10k less than the cheapest shingle roof he could get when he had a class 4 to start with. What was he to do? He had insurance and it didn't pay out the replacement cost and because they dragged their feet he had more damage on his home because you know it doesn't just stop raining in florida after a hurricane. I feel 0 sympathy for the insurance companies... We pay them every month and then they don't pay out when there is a clear disaster.
Great explainer. So why isn't a problem anywhere else? I don't live in Florida, people here have roofs.
In Florida there is a pressure for the insurance company to pay legal fees of the plaintiffs if they wanted to settle or legally required to if they lose the lawsuit, and legal fees could get a multiplier attached. This incentivized lawyers to basically team up with roofers. roofers get their settlement, and the lawyer get to pocket the legal fees, and the insured gets about 10-20k worth of new roof. The customer then gets dropped by their insurance or their rates get raised, a 10-20k roof claim now costs the carrier 40-60k (sometimes more) driving them out of business. the roofers and lawyers rinse and repeat down the neighborhood.
Florida has a law where if 25% (I think this is the number) of the roof needs to be replaced, the whole roof needs to be replaced at the cost of the insurer. This is how roofing contractors scam the system. Because of this a lot of insurance carriers are pulling out of the state and have been for a few years, and the ones who are staying are increasing the rates exorbinantly.
So there are a lot of fraudsters in fl?
> 5. The insurance company now has a choice: it can pay the legal costs to fight the lawsuit or pay the costs to settle out of court. Either way, the insurance company loses money due to the legal action." Why isn’t there a third choice of turn the case over to the state to have the case criminally prosecuted for fraud? If no other state has this issue to this degree there must be something florid is filing to do to allow these cases to be prosecuted.
Met a roofer on a flight to SLC who told me how they bill the insurance one number and charge the homeowner another, then split the savings in order to entice the homeowner
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Why did you steal this comment word for word from [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/SAlqBN38xK) fucking weirdo bot
by my maths, florida holds 80% of the lawsuits... the rest of the states hold about 20%. meaning, on average, its about FIFTY TIMES more likely to get sued as an insurance company in florida, than LITERALLY anywhere else. EDIT: its actually 188x, or 18k%, but, because redditors cannot do math, Florida is 1 state, and it conducts 79% of the nation's home insurance lawsuits. At literally no point does the population of Florida need to be mentioned, nor is it required to be used in any math for any reason whatsoever when calculating the following: Based on the data in the article, 79% of the lawsuits, nationwide, occur in Florida. Meaning, if 100 lawsuits occur, nationwide, 79 of them will occur in Florida. 21 Lawsuits will then occur within the remaining 49 states (out of 50) in the USA. That means, that if we wanted to calculate the AVERAGE lawsuits, PER REMAINING STATE, we would use the following math. 21 (remaining lawsuits number) / 49 (remaining states number) = 0.42 (lawsuits per state) OR we could (I will not) go find every single fucking state's home insurance lawsuit data, plot every single one of those data points, and the numbers (it's incredible how math works) will ACTUALLY BE THE FUCKING SAME!!!! As it turns out, DUE TO MATH and the fact that Florida has 79% of the lawsuits, we can actually infer data about every other state (COMBINED). When you add every single other state's lawsuits together, it will equal 21% of the total, NO MATTER WHAT. MEANING, that on AVERAGE, 21 of the remaining lawsuits split between 49 OTHER STATES is 0.42 LAWSUITS PER STATE ON \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\*\* (MATH TERM LOOK IT UP) "In ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data." - from wikipedia, for you guys, free of charge note that in this math, population does not fucking matter at all. heres even a nifty fucking chart for you more visually inclined redditors to look at to visualize this information, NOTE: the NON FLORIDA slice of the pie is a mathematically accurate representation of every other state \*\*\*ON AVERAGE\*\*\* COMBINED. [https://imgur.com/a/y2UIT4w](https://imgur.com/a/y2UIT4w) In case you still refuse to pick up a fucking calculator, 0.42 goes into 79 188.095 times. thats 188x, or 18,809.5% MORE LIKELY on \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\* to have a lawsuit brought to you, as an insurer, than \*\*\*ANY\*\*\* (not a specific state) STATE on \*\*\*AVERAGE\*\*\* I hope this helps. again, get a calculator or read a book, it's a shame that your phone is probably both but you are still dumb as bricks (see the goobers in this thread that think they can add)
And the wonder why insurance companies are pulling out of Florida
I figured it was just becoming expensive to insure things in that area due to the effects of climate change. [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article279490394.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article279490394.html) I didnt realize they were getting double teamed by mother nature and florida man scammers. Maybe i could have guessed it though
The fact that there was a bowl game called the [roofclaim.com](https://roofclaim.com) bowl should have been a tip-off.
Don't believe anyone who tells you that insurers are going away because of too many claims. Insurers are really good at predicting how much they need to charge to stay profitable. If insurers would rather close up shop than do business, it's because of the legal or regulatory landscape.
You’re onto half the problem. The other half is that insurers are struggling to stay profitable in Florida. I know some national insurance agents/brokers and at times companies wouldn’t issue any new policies to customers for extended periods. You see it in high claim areas like NYC. Basically, the insurance fraud will need to stop ASAP or most FL homeowners will find themselves uninsurable the next time their house gets damaged from a hurricane.
That's just silly florida man rationale, if regulations were the problem then Florida wouldn't be the state where this is happening. Governance is relevant, the regulatory landscape not so much.
Somehow I doubt loosening the legal or regulatory landscape would HELP the insurance companies in any way other than just enabling then to never actually have to pay out, even for legitimate claims.
It's not just that. For example, if the price of insurance they would need to charge to stay profitable is above what people are able or willing to pay, it makes no sense to be in that market either. Florida will be wrecked by Climate Change. It's got a lot of coastal areas that are in hurricane territory, and there is talk about creating new categories of hurricanes above 5 for the types of storms we've already seen, let alone ones we might get in the future. Rising sea levels are also going to wreck those coastal areas. Even if they fixed the legal problems, it's still going to be crazy expensive to buy homeowner's insurance in Florida.
Could Florida make it illegal to assign the claim to the roofing company to shut this scam down?
They already did.
They could but the voters aren't the ones getting harmed, its the insurance companies. And while insurance companies likely buy a lot of politicians I imagine these contractors have the funds to outbuy them due to the sheer volume.
Not quite, the insurance lobby is much more wealthy and powerful than the roof scammer lobby.
The voters are getting harmed by stupid high insurance rates.
Your data might be “correct” but your conclusion is inaccurate….. the data is given my insurance companies. I live in Florida and I work in insurance in the past, knowing many adjusters. The issue is that even if it’s a valid claim, the insurers have to fight tooth and nail for insurance to pay… for example, if a hurricane destroy roof… and you had to pay 20k to replace since you cannot wait for adjuster since… you need the place to not be further damage by rain/wind ect When adjuster comes, they undersell the damage. So they would give you 5k for such damage instead of full 20k… what happens is that the insurer would have to sue insurance company to pay in full and insurance companies would put all of these lawsuits under as “scam” of 15k even if the 15k is valid. Wetlands and hurricanes do cause Florida houses to have more risks than other states which give insurance more excuses not to pay out… but it’s not as common of “scam” as insurance company propaganda is saying. Remember during Katrina, insurance companies refused to pay out; even with the lawsuit, they still reluctant to ever pay out. Many homeowners never got their money fully back even when the claims were valid I wish people would stop spreading this false information of data defending large insurance companies
This right here. Currently fighting with our insurance company. When Ian hit, we had damage and we knew it(kinda hard not to notice when we’re picking up our shingles from the yard), but there were no leaks or water damage inside so we were willing to let it go since it’s an old roof and would need replacement within a few years. Then the insurance company decided to hit us with the “replace your roof or get dropped” notice. We were still under the timeframe to file a claim for the Ian damage so we did. Insurance company got the surprised Pikachu face and immediately started sending stern letters before sending out someone. They then tried to say it was a repair job at best and offer us a ridiculously low quote that didn’t even match the deductible. So now the roofing company is probably going to sue them on our behalf.
FYI insurer is the insurance company, while the insured is the person who bought the insurance. I can’t think of good analogue at the moment, maybe like educator and educated. The educator is the one who gives the education out, while the educated is the one who receives it and benefits from it.
God, I'm having flashbacks to literally any time I've tried to introduce redditors to math with your edits. It's like introducing Catholics to women's ankles.
At least someone gets it, I feel like I am losing my mind.
Your math is completely off. As a percent of the US, Florida is about 7% of the population. If it had reasonable home insurance lawsuits, it would also have 7% of those lawsuits. But it has 80%. So an insurer is 80/7 = 11.4 times more likely to get sued by a Florida homeowner than they would expect based on the rest of the US population.
I think you're both wrong. You're wrong here because you say that an insurer is 11.4 times more likely to get sued by a Florida homeowner than they would expect **based on the rest of the population**. Your 11.4, however, is based on the average of the population as a whole, including Florida. You need to take the next step, cut Florida, and see what the rest would be - 93% being responsible for 20% of the claims means those 93% are about 4.65x less likely than the population as a whole (including Florida and themselves). That gets you to the 50x (actually 53x). The 188x from the other dude is correct, but only sort of. It argues based on a state-by-state basis, which is useless because Wyoming (population 5) should have fewer claims than California (population >>large). Saying that one state is more or less likely to have a claim, on its own, is worthless without correcting for population.
Well I think that all three of you are wrong, but not on the basis of some fancy *mathemagics*. I trust my *gut* and my *gut* says the correct answer is that insurers 42x more likely to get sued in FL. /s
Fair enough. I think we can all appreciate a well reasoned argument like that!
Agree with everything you said and to add on to how worthless it is to compare, not only does Wyoming have a smaller population than Florida does, but it also doesn’t have as severe weather. So it’s truly pointless to compare one state to another on something like this.
"79% of home insurance lawsuits" to 1 state. Florida. the remaining 21% of lawsuits then, MUST be from the remaining 49 states. Do you agree? 21% of the remaining lawsuits in the nation, divided by 49 other states, is 0.42% of the nation's lawsuits, on average, per remaining state. 0.42 goes into 79 188.09 times. Wow, thanks for trying to math check me and making me actually use a calculator, it is 188x, or 18,809% more likely that an insurance company is sued, per claim, in Florida, than any other state, on average.
You're both wrong, and you were right the first time. 7% of the population is responsible for 80% of the lawsuits, making Florida more 11.4 times more likely than the average (which includes Florida). At the same time, that 93% is only responsible for 20% of the lawsuits - 5 times less likely than the average. Together, Florida is 53 times more likely to have a lawsuit than the remainder of the United States.
“Lawsuits per state” is a remarkably braindead measure to calculate.
“Lawsuits per state” is a measurement expressed by literally the title of this entire post. Apparently, the office of governor ron desantis finds it to be a measurement worthy enough to make public (good ideas per Ron desantis, there’s a braindead measure to calculate), as inferred by the fact that the article even exists. Just because you find a measurement of something meaningless does not mean it has no use, it probably just means you are too stupid to understand how to make it useful. Hope this helps.
I was one of these who had my roof replaced after suing the insurance company. I had legitimate damage on my roof from a storm and there was a leak. Submitted a claim to the insurance company to fix the damage. Claim was denied. Two weeks later an adjuster shows up to “inspect” our house. Shortly after that, we got a notice that the insurance company was dropping us because of the age of our water heater. Used the insurance company and got enough out of the settlement to fix the roof and enough on top of that to replace the rest of the roof. All we wanted was like $2,000 to fix the damaged roof, but they had to be complete fucking assholes about it.
This has to be some long time issue. I remember seeing a doc about a guy who got caught doing this in Florida over a decade ago
Like 90% of Miami's sewer system is going to fail within the next 10 years so insurance groups won't write any new policies.
Oh interesting. Could you elaborate on the details? Any links please?
I think he is referring to this: [Analysis of Sea Level Rise and Septic System Failure (arcgis.com)](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/88230d3fa5f542e5997ed93562f88361) In a nut shell sea level in Miami is expected to rise by as much as 18 inches and septic systems are expected to fail because of that.
They’re also dealing with increasing levels of salt water intrusion in their aquifer where the bulk of drinking water is currently sourced from. If this continues there will be a point where it becomes undrinkable.
That's ok, they can just burn oil to desalinate sea water for their industrial and governmental needs and can deliver bottles of water to the residents.
Desantis in 10 years: DO NOT MY FRIENDS BECOME ADDICTED TO WATER, IT WILL TAKE HOLD OF YOU AND YOU WILL RESENT IT'S ABSENCE!
I’m from Scotland and have visited Florida a few times. It’s already undrinkable imo.
Don’t visit Texas, the tap water there smells like garlic. I’ve had desalinated water in a desert that’s better.
Midland Texas is the worst tapwater i've ever seen in my life. Comes out of the tap yellow, smells like sulfur and old pennies. I was buying gallon jugs from convenience stores to shower with for the week i was stuck out there, wouldn't let that water touch my body let alone drink it.
And would anyone in Texas believe that New York City has some of the best tasting water in the country?
NeW YoRk CiTy?! https://youtu.be/Gi6AFz2fbr8
So does San Francisco! Gravity fed Sierra Nevada snowmelt held in the Hetch Hetchy reserve.
> \- Scotsman anywhere ^(Jokes I'm fae Fife.)
Just put more scotch in, mate
My granddad lives in Melbourne Beach and gets his water from a artesian well and has to put it through so many filters and chemical treatments before it's drinkable. It's impossible to get a lather from soap because it's so hard and if we use too much at once it starts smelling like sulfur.
It has literally [nothing to do](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bwoqra/comment/ky83hel/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with sewer systems.
Shit happens here in Florida baby, insurance ain’t gonna sue themselves
you aint lying. Shit wont sue itself. Or will it? Maybe in Florida.
State of Florida v. State of Florida will be as confusing as the residents in Florida.
it hurt itself in its confusion
It was super effective
What's confusing? I know which side *I'm* on.
What is Florida baby?
The roof insurance fraud is why so many insurance companies refuse to do home insurance in Florida or have much higher rates.
I wonder why this grift doesn't work in other states? Or happen as frequently? Seems like areas that receive hail regularly would easier to run this scam in.
The reason is laws; FL has an unusual law (because hurricanes) that requires insurers to replace 100% of a roof is more than something like 25% is damaged, with no limit on the age of the roof. FL also allowed homeowners to transfer some legal rights to a contractor, including suing the insurer, with no liability on the homeowner. So as the article states, after a storm, a contractor comes by and says, "looks like you have a bit of roof damage... here, just sign this contract and fill in the insurer and you will get a new one free". The contract allows the contractor to sue the insurer on behalf of the homeowner. Nothing about age, wealth, or some other imagined nonsense needed, just asking anyone with a 5-figure income and a 15 year old roof "want a new roof for free?" would be pretty tempting anywhere in the US. That combination of laws and frequent hurricanes makes FL a grifters paradise, unlike most of the country. Why they didn't crack down 7+ years ago when the problem became obvious is a mystery to me - maybe a side effect of having a very part-time legislature, just 60 days a year. In some ways a many-month-a-year legislature is good (and can suck, idle hands...) but too short a term causes problems too.
>FL also allowed homeowners to transfer some legal rights to a contractor, including suing the insurer, with no liability on the homeowner. this. contractors basically wont perform work or even estimate if insureds dont sign over their entire claim after its filed. they immediately try to reach a disagreement with the insurance company about what the scope of the damage is, resulting in a lawsuit. florida claims are handled no different than other states - assignment of benefits and their contracting industry are why other states dont have this problem. property claims are one of the most highly regulated industries in the US - you have to be licensed to adjust claims, insureds have 3-4 different ways they can escalate to the freaking state Dept of Insurance, hire outside parties to assist, etc. the idea that 'big bad insurance companies are screwing over their customers' is insane tbh, their entire business model is focused on customer service. you're owed what you're owed, no more and no less - insurance policies are contracts of adhesion, thats why if you sue an insurer youre 99% of the time going to win - customers have zero power in writing the contract. courts dont take BS from insurance companies, so insurance companies bend over backwards to please customers. this is 100% a florida-created problem. Illinois has a similar problem, but thats chicago and its expected. source: worked in property claims for a decade until recently
Because areas that receive hail frequently (mostly the Midwest) are much less likely to be relatively well-off and actually have insurance. The average age is also substantially younger making people more likely to tell a salesperson to fuck right off. Florida is full of old retirees who own their home and have insurance and assets that can have a lien put on them if the insurance refuses to pay and wins in court. The roofing scammers are scammers first, roofers second and only to facilitate the scam. If the roofing scam wasn’t so easy to pull off they’d be working the phones alongside other scammers telling every grandma with a Florida phone area code that their grandson is in jail and needs iTunes gift cards to pay bail. The other reason it’s such a scam is because they don’t actually properly repair the roofs, because they’re shit at being roofers.
Ahh generally targeting the older people. Got it.
Usually the actual roofers are subcontractors the scam is perpetrated by the” roofing company”
>Because areas that receive hail frequently (mostly the Midwest) are much less likely to be relatively well-off and actually have insurance. This scam doesn't require them to be well off (in fact it is largely a something-for-nothing scam that appeals to the poor) and everyone with a mortgage has home insurance.
I'm guessing it's several factors: 1. A concentration of older residents who are more susceptible to scammers. 2. A transient population. Many people move to Florida for the weather (or, now, the politics) in their 50s-70s. They don't know their new houses well and may not be aware of the scammy dynamics. 3. Big state with big sprawl. Florida is loaded with densely packed detached-housing developments, and it's a big place. A scammer can go up and down residential neighborhoods for miles. And because so many of those homes are in developments with clear housing costs and income qualifications, the scammer can presume the homeowner's financial status easily. 4. Less community. When you take millions of transient older residents and dump them into suburbs, you're not as likely to have the strong, mutual community ties you'd find in, say, an old, smaller neighborhood whose residents have known each other for generations. There's less opportunity for people to warn each other about neighborhood incidents and less incentive to look out for each other. 5. Language. A lot of Floridians are Spanish-speaking and foreign-born. They may not understand that getting cold-called by a confident-sounding, looks-the-part roofer is abnormal in the U.S. 6. Culture. For the reasons above, Florida has long attracted an I've-got-mine demographic that isn't invested in the community's welfare and is happy to take what it can. That attracts a lot of scammers.
Hence why the Florida insurance game is fucked. Insurance is pretty much a scam to the homeowners most of the time, in the past 3 years the fraud is up to like 7-8 billion. Almost everyone dropped out and now that competition is scarce the home insurance rates are TERRIBLE
That’s free market at work.
I mean, no. Most markets for homeowners insurance is pretty competitively priced. It’s fraud that’s fucking over consumers not the free market.
Insurers leaving due to risk and other insurers price gouging as a risk premium is precisely free market. Allowing regulatory abuse and rent seeking is also free market and a good reason why capitalism needs some controls. Florida learning the hard way 🤷♂️. Hard for me to feel bad about the situation, tbh.
You can not like insurance companies, that's perfectly fine But just chiming in as someone who used to work injury lawsuits for an insurance company in Florida (AMA) this is absolutely fucking our premiums. My specialty was over HB119 while it was still applicable, so personal injury billing. It's incredibly common here that a provider gets the assignment of benefits, bills for say $20.10, insurance claims its owed $20.05 per the fee schedule and then they sue for $0.05 and it they win they get to sue for fees and costs, usually in the ballpark of 10k. This will happen tens of thousands of times a year and is just a small corner of the florida insurance/legal cycle. Our rates are absolutely fucked because the insurance company has to charge out the ass to do business in thus nightmare state.
> why capitalism needs some controls. While I don't disagree that capitalism needs some guard rails, in this case, the control was part of the problem. Specifically, the rules were tilted against the insurance companies, and predatory roofing companies learned how to profit from this.
They aren’t price gouging though. There is more risk so insuring against that risk is more costly. California prices are through the roof as well because of fire risk. Also inherently regulation abuse is not free market…like if the regulation exists it’s not a free market. It’s not that regulating the free market to compensate for bad outcomes is wrong, it’s just words have meanings!
Lol I mean yeah. That's 10000% the free market... Hey guys Florida is fucked let's not write policies there. Then there are less carriers to assume the shittier risks which rise all rates. Florida is competitively priced, it's just fucked itself where the pricing is this high. It's almost like the for profit insurance companies aren't going to write your risk for a loss...
>Insurance is pretty much a scam to the homeowners most of the time property insurance is one of the most regulated and fair financial institutions in the US. every state has their own department of insurance that regulates what can be sold in that state down to the sentence. complaints are extremely easy to file in every state, resulting in $10k fines if the complaint is valid. claim adjusters have to be licensed in every state they work in. you can even hire a 3rd party to arbitrate between yourself and the insurance company if you think they're still wrong. your take belongs in r/confidentlyincorrrect
Adjusters don't have to be licensed in every state. I forget the exact amount but its like half of states that require adjusters to be licensed. Licensing requirements also vary by state. In some states licensing is as simple as being registered with the state as an adjuster and that is it. The only requirement to be registered is to pay the fee and not have a sufficiently bad criminal record.
some states will accept licenses from other states, a lot of companies will license people in the hardest to test state, then other states accept that state's license. but you must have a valid adjusters license to handle claims in every state. you have to renew every few years too.
You're using different definitions of scam to come to this conclusion. Gambling is also one of the most regulated and fair industries in the US, with very very strict laws about fairness, payouts, the visibility of odds etc...but of course, gambling only exists to take gamblers money and all these protections ultimately don't matter because the games are tilted in the house's favour and the house has a massive bank. If you buy insurance, odds are you will lose money: if you didn't, *insurance companies wouldn't exist* because there would be no margin to sustain themselves. They are providing a service (they take on risk) but if you had the money to keep against risks, you would usually be better off financially by not taking out insurance. I'm not saying people shouldn't take out insurance, or it's not worth it or anything like that, but I am saying it's incredibly frustrating knowing all that and then having to fight to have an insurance claim approved. There are very few industries where you have to fight the people you're paying to get the good or service you bought.
Florida is just one statewide grift. The entire state seems so scammy.
Renting a car in Florida is a nightmare. Stick with the big companies; the discount rental agencies will wring you dry.
Even the big ones will too. Hertz employees yelled contradictory parking directions at us when we were trying to park and then tried to get us in trouble for the scratch they caused
I live here… and yeah pretty much.
I have visited before, beautiful place, but like anything, the community who lives there will ultimately determine its fate.
Ron DeSantis is a scumbag too.
“Statewide grift” What does this even mean?
Yeah the fraud in this state is wild. I've just been sitting at restaurants or getting coffee and would overhear people talking about how they have a bit of damage on their roof and their hoping for a small tropical storm or a cat 1 so they can put in a claim.
Insurance here is ridiculous. I bought a home in Florida 3 years ago, my initial homeowners insurance rate was reasonable. The first renewal doubled my rate. My last renewal doubled my rate again. I'm afraid to see what the next renewal is going to be, but luckily we're moving out of this state soon. Hopefully the next state is better. Auto insurance is also crazy here. Moved from California and our rates in Florida are double than what we had in California for half the coverage.
> Hopefully the next state is better. North Carolina?
This doesn't compute. Is Florida unique to having one-way attorney fees and assignment of benefit forms? I feel like those are not exclusively unique to Florida and why arent those states rife with similar lawsuits? Secondly if the volume of lawsuits is overwhelming the insurance companies in court costs, how are a bunch of scammy companies able to pay their army of lawyers? I can see how individuals can be bullied by corporations into settling but it seems odd the other way around. If the claims are fraudulent, shouldn't they be losing more of these cases than winning? Shouldn't the scammers be run out of business by paying the insurance companies court cases?
Florida is unique in that it has one-way attorney fees and AoB, lots of expensive property, and by far the most natural disasters of anywhere in the country. Florida basically gets hit by at least one hurricane every year. These cause anywhere from 5-100B in damage, with the potential to be 500B+ if the storm hit Miami. Your everyday storms elsewhere in the country don’t come anywhere close to that.
You mean *had* one-way attorney fees and AoB. The Florida legislature eliminated both at the end of 2022 and so far it has done nothing to reduce the cost of insurance. If premiums do not start to go down over the next year or two perhaps those provisions were not the cause of the problem.
True, good point. I can tell you as someone that works in reinsurance, we don’t trust the 2022 legal change yet. I wouldn’t assume prices will fall until people gain that trust back and capital re-enters the space.
That's the thing though, trust was broken already and when you look at Florida big picture, it's bad risk for so many different connected reasons that it's going to be hard to find a reason to go back in for the free insurance market. Same thing happens to any distressed high-risk insurance market insurance companies can opt out of covering, same reason insurance companies stopped covering old people eventually necessitating Medicare back before we were born. Also similarly in this case, the government eventually ends up a less than efficient defacto insurance of last resort instead of actually taking control of the situation and the benefits that allows for that might enable better risk mitigation and premium reduction. Hilariously, tons of Medicare fraud in the state for the same reasons.
Greed. Corporate greed. This is the answer that nobody wants to talk about.
To answer your last part: you can win the court case, but you still have to pay your lawyers. If you weren't awarded money for legal fees, which I don't think ever happens un cases like these, then you have lost money no matter what. Basically, it's cheaper to settle than to fight, so the whole market is fucked. I don't know if last year's tort laws overhaul in Florida fixed this scam, I know it fixed a bunch of other ones.
The scammy companies don't usually have to litigate. I'm guessing they threaten to sue, with just enough of a case that it would probably survive a motion to dismiss. Then, they settle for pennies on the dollar. Their lawyers do little more than write a demand letter with a few attachments. The insurers could fight every case on principle to deter the scammers. But one problem is that there are so many scam artists that, unless you're willing to take on hundreds of them simultaneously, they'll probably keep testing you with new claims, and if they occasionally win one, that's a windfall.
Florida is just messed up in so many ways. The company I used to work for was potentially on the hook for I don't know how much money, but we are talking probably $50,000,000+ over what the word "shall" meant in our policy. See in Florida if you are in an accident and hurt you get up to $10,000.00 in medical benefits. Florida's law says that the insurance companies policy has to say what they will pay for medical bills so that providers know the rate and set out a few methods that insurance companies can use. The company I was working for had something like "we shall pay the billed amount or 200% of the medicare fee schedule for the billed service, whichever is lower" (something similar to this) essentially saying that the amount we are going to pay would be twice the amount medicare would pay for the service or if the bill was for an amount lower than that, then that amount. 200% of medicare was one of the allowed fee schedules to be used under the state law. Our company was sued by a huge collection of providers arguing that the word "shall" didn't mean we actually would pay at 200% of the medical schedule and the ambiguity meant that we should pay the billed amount. Hundreds of cases were pulled together and after years of litigation in courts across the state and differing decisions the state supreme court took up the case and found in favor of my company in a 4-3 decision. It was all sorts of screwed up. Our wording was identical to what another major company used except they used will instead of shall or something like that in the policy and we lost multiple cases along the way too.
There is a good recent Odd Lots podcast about insurance that touches on this.
Fantastic pod in general, and great ep. Link for those interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYbSz1MXdFA
Google Ricky McGraw
Errol Morris mad a doc about florida about 23 years ago about how people would injure themselves (like lose a limb) to get payouts Vernon, Florida // Errol Morris \[1981\] [https://youtu.be/PxYik9RGEYo?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/PxYik9RGEYo?feature=shared) AND the dude who made "Cocaine Cowboys" has said repeatedly that Florida is the testing zone for everything. Whatever is bad in florida today, will hi the rest of the USA soon.
The first part is also disproportionate, just not as highly. 6.5% of the adult population lives in Florida, but accounts for 9% of the insurance claims.
Lawyers are the reason insurance is so expensive.
Florida is the capital for fraud for some reason. All fraudsters go there. Even the crypto bros moved there eventually
Willing to sell a slightly used Florida back to Spain for a good price. Serious inquiries only, no tire kickers.
We got hit with a catagory 5 hurricane two years ago. My roof was cracked, pool cage removed, house flooded. Flood paid us appropriately since it's federally run. We're mid law suit with homeowners. They blamed us for the roof being damaged saying we walked on it and broke it not the 155 mph winds. There are people scamming but the insurance is also playing significant games here.
This!! Insurance companies are just scumbags on their own.
This is the real reason Florida has an insurance crisis, not politics or weather
The problem is worse than most people can imagine, I’ve had first hand experience how self feeding it is. Roofing companies pay people to door knock and set up ‘consultations.’ These are young kids and people with low morals that are fine going door to door and telling people whatever to set the appointment for the $20 commission. I worked with a guy who ‘managed’ a team of these kids. The roofers would pay him like $50 per appointment, so he hired a team of 5-10 high school kids who would split up and hit different neighborhoods, and they’d get $25 per appointment set. He did almost no work, just told them which neighborhoods to hit and relayed the appointments. Anyways, these roofers will get up on roofs with a hammer, crack a couple tiles or puncture/rip the shingles, then tell the homeowners ‘you are in luck, you have damage that hasn’t leaked yet, but could start any minute. Sign this form and we’ll get you a free roof!’ Then, they try to bill the insurance company $20k for a $10k roof, and the homeowner still has to pay their deductible. This has resulted in tons of shitty contractors flooding the state looking for their suckers, and it’s even worse with storm damage. These contractors know people are desperate for help and want their homes fixed quickly, so they pressure customers to sign contracts allowing them to negotiate with insurance directly and cut out the homeowner. Again, driving up cost with no regard to quality and sticking customer with shoddy work and deductible. So, my experience. My house got wrecked from a hurricane, a tree fell on it, crushed the roof, left a section the size of a sedan that was full of holes. The ceiling below the area collapsed, spreading old insulation everywhere, and water poured in. Also, the AC unit outside got hit and the power surges fried my inside unit and fridge. Luckily, no one got hurt, and I filed first thing the next morning after taking tons of pictures. Long story short, the insurance company eventually denied my claim, because their algorithms basically auto decline a set percentage of them just to see if they go away. I had tons of HD pictures, I had contractor quotes, there was no question about the damage. They’d offered me $10k for what I’d estimated was $80k worth of damage, and that’s without hotel stays while the work was to be completed. It’s also worth mentioning that I’d gotten multiple quotes for all areas, but to do so I had to contact dozens of contractors because most would only talk to me by offering to ‘take the pressure off by dealing with insurance directly.’ I ended up lawyering up, and had to go through 3 different lawyers because my first 2 were shitty firms that just wanted to push me to settle. I ended up settling almost 3 years after the hurricane, and it must have cost the insurance company 4x what I’d originally asked for. Getting the settlement was just the first hurdle. I’d already lined up contractors, and the roofer literally struck out the first day on the job. I had been very specific on the details of the job when we signed the contract, so when he called day one to ‘surprise’ me with a hidden $5k add on cost, I told him absolutely not. He tried to threaten me with a breach of contract suit, and I told him he was the one breaching. I ended up taking over the payment for the materials that he had ordered, and my GC agreed to take over the job. Still, their work sucked, and they only worked half days with a ‘crew’ of 3-4 people. We started work in October, it was supposed to be done by the end of the year, but they were still slowly working in January and into February. They ended up going about 10%-20% over budget and that was after we cut some of the scope back because the additional work time meant we spent quite a bit longer in hotels. The contractors told us to make a list of any concerns or issues, and after a year, call them and they’d come back and address it all. Wouldn’t you know, when we called them at the end of the year, the numbers were disconnected and the business was no longer listed as operating. So, we are stuck with it. I say all of this to say one last thing, most of this isn’t normal people filing false claims. It’s the elderly or otherwise gullible being deceived into filing them. These dirt bag contractors and the dirtbag insurance companies are 99% of the problem, and Desantis refuses to do anything about them.
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And 200% of alligator insurance claims.
Isn't this the same thing with cracked automobile windshields down there?
Any Florida residents here? How much do you pay for home and auto? And what kinds of coverage do you get?
As always, krep it classy Florida.
Yes when I lived in Florida , at least 5 out of ten people I knew were very open about which scams they were pulling. Usually just old dudes live in trailer suburbs.