The Check is in the mail?
by
For more than five months a metro dental clinic has been wrangling with insurance adjusters trying to get a simple $800 check.
After exhaustive efforts, the office manager decides enough all ready…it’s time to get Messed Up on the case.
It all begins on November 20, 2007.
“The whole truck was on its side,” effusive office manager Gail Harris says.
According to a metro police report: a semi truck made a left turn off of Murfreesboro Road, onto Fesslers Lane. For whatever reason, the truck tipped over.
“All this landscaping was knocked off its foundation,” Harris says pointing to a few rail road ties scattered about the parking lot of the Napier Sudekum Dental Office on the corner of these two roads.
According to the police report, the truck takes down an NES Power pole and hits a fire hydrant, and wrecks the Dental Office’s solid planter box.
“I jut want the property to look nice, I want it nice for the patients,” Harris says. “if they see something like this then they are going to say what are they doing in my mouth.”
I laugh out loud. An interesting question. I guess first impressions are important to every business.
Harris tells me the damage is $800.
“I called the adjuster Shane, and he said we’ll get someone on it. Well that went on and on. It was a total of 9 calls I made.”
After 4 months of haggling - Harris says the trucking company’s claims adjuster says, “the check is in the mail, so go ahead and get the damage repaired.”
“So the landscaper comes out and repairs it March 20th.”
Harris tells me the landscaper immediately begins calling asking where is the check. Harris says she calls adjuster who reportedly has one excuse after another.
Harris says she decides to hold off planting flowers in the repaired planter box till the check situation is corrected.
“It is very embarrassing,” Harris says with a fore long look on her face.
Another month goes by, some five months now since the November 20th accident, and Harris has had enough. She calls me.
I call the adjuster and start leaving messages with secretaries at insurance company’s saying that I want to know why a simple accident claim takes so long to pay.
I eventually bypass the man that Harris is working with and call the trucking company’s primary insurance firm. An agent with this national company tells me that in some cases, like this one, they used an outside agency to handle the dental office claim.
The agent for this national company tells me that he had no idea that all of this was going on and it was just a big misunderstanding. He tells me that the minute he heard about it, he made sure that the check was cut for the landscaper.
You know what’s crazy about this story, on April 30th…the same thing happened again. The same trucking company missed the same turn, hit the same power pole and again messed up the same planter.
No telling how long it will take to process this claim.
In the meantime, both the water company and NES tell me they plan on sending the insurance company a bill for the broken pole and the Messed Up fire hydrant ($1084).
Good luck everyone.
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There is no reason for not paying, thats why people carry insurance to cover there self. but insurance is a rip off to. if there is any way to getting out of it they will.
Why was this pole so cheap and the one where the lady died so much more expensive? That sounds messed up to me.