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Mon 6 Apr, 2015 08:34 am
So after all the snow piled on our deck and asking a few people, they said not to worry about shoveling the snow off as decks are made to hold many people and the snow should not cause problems on the deck.
OK now the snow is melting…one side of the deck, the snow is melting much quicker (as it gets more sun) than the other half. One day, we noticed that part of our deck near our door had colapsed. My question – should we/can we make an insurance claim on our homeowners? Is it worth it? Would our rates go up so much that it isn’t worth it? It is a pretty big deck so I have no idea how expensive a new deck would be.
@Linkat,
Make the claim - at least use it as a means of burning through your deductible if nothing else.
@Linkat,
Look into the cost of repair before doing anything else. How does the repair cost compare to your deductible?
There is a good chance the claim will be denied as you could have prevented the loss. Do you have any evidence of attempting to prevent or mitigate the loss?
Even if it is denied it will show up in your claims reporting history and that can have an impact on future premium increases.
@jespah,
Each claim is separate from a deductible stand point so that does not help. So if we make a claim now we will get whatever we are entitiled to minus the deductible.
If we have a claim for something else say in a month from know - we still have the same deductible. Happened to us in our previous home -- we had the dumb neighbor causing a flood in our unit and then later in the year we had our jewerly stolen. So we had received our jewerly claim minus the $500 deductible even though we had a deductible from the previous claim.
@ehBeth,
I happen to be reading an article recently in the newspaper about all the claims due to the bad winter. It warned about making claims because then your deductible will increase for the next so many years so often times you could end up spending more. I just am not sure if the claims are worth it or not and when.
The items we had previously (at our previous home) were worth making. In part as months and months later it was deemed the crazy neighbor was at fault so it was only our theft was counted against us.
@Linkat,
I'd recommend getting a couple of repair quotes and then making a decision.
Do not tell the contractors that you are thinking of making an insurance claim when you ask for the quote.
Definitely do whatever you can to prevent further damage - and document those efforts with photos.
@Linkat,
I always listen to ehBeth when it comes to anything related to insurance.
@Linkat,
Then definitely go with what ehBeth is saying. If it isn't going to help with an overall deductible then it's only the issue of this one claim.
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