SANDY SPRINGS, GA — Out of nowhere, insurance companies cancer people’s homeowners’ insurance.
Consumer Investigator Justin Gray talked with some homeowners. Companies sent people letters stating that the cancellations ranged from old roofs to dangerous trees.
Seamons received the letter from Travelers Insurance out of the blue. However, “the letter didn’t say if you take the trees down, we’re going to renew your policy,” he said.
The letter said his insurance policy was canceled because of the trees around his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia. There was no option to fix it.
“We live in Atlanta. I don’t think there’s a house in Atlanta that doesn’t have a tree hanging over it,” Seamons said.
We flew over the roof of Lillie Echols’ southwest Atlanta home. The letter she received from Nationwide contained no pictures or other evidence. The letter just said that her roof, chimney, and driveway needed to be replaced or risk her policy be cancelled.
“They are talking about $30,000 and they wanted it done within a three-to-four-week period.
Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King said his office is seeing an increase in cancellation letters.
“When I’m having these negotiations with the insurance companies the insurance companies feel that they’re overextended and they’re trying to pull back.
Kings said homeowners should be given a chance to make repairs.
“We’re putting notices out to insurance companies that you have to let the consumer take action to deal with the risk mitigation,” King said.
Even though Travelers gave Seamons no option in writing or on the phone to keep his coverage. He spent $3,000 to prune and trim trees away and sent the evidence to the company.
He reached out to Clark Howard’s team for help.
“I told them you were coming out to do this story and about two hours later, they sent me a text saying they had reinstated my police,” Seamons said,
A spokesperson from Travelers Insurance said, “The renewal decision was based solely on the customer’s remediation of the risk exposure that was identified during our underwriting review.”
The reinstatement came just days before his policy was set to expire.
As for Lillie Echols, roofers recently inspected her roof and said it did not need to be replaced, but Nationwide said otherwise.
“I wanted to cry, but I knew if I cried, it wasn’t going to help,” Echols said.
Nationwide Insurance said that the letter came after an in-person inspection and that they “continually assess and balance our portfolio based on the level of risk in our books of business.”
So, Echols is working to gather the money to make the repairs.
“It puts you in a bind, especially as a retiree because you can’t make up for that bill that’s going to be coming, but you got to do something,” she said.
Travelers Insurance said that while customer retention is always their goal, they routinely evaluate their risk exposure and make quote adjustments when necessary.
Homeowners insurance doesn’t work like that anymore. They are using a scale going down to what they assess to be the risk on an individual, but not every company evaluates you the same.
Clark Howard said the key is to shop around and if they’ve said there is something wrong with your house, you fix it before you shop around because other companies may object the same way, but it’s always a good idea to shop your hometown insurance even if your company hasn’t put you on the chopping block.