Insurance Companies Use Public Media To

Insurance Companies Use Public Media To Deface Disaster Recovery Agencies

PALOS VERDES, CA – In this tough economy everyone is watching their spending, trying to make that buck stretch just a little further, and insurance companies are no different. If you have ever had to make a claim, you may already be aware of the problems associated with getting what is fair. The people effected in some of the recent disasters, Hurricane Katrina and Rita and the California wildfires, know all too well what it is like to not receive a fair claim payment from their insurance companies, you're better off believing a poker player than a insurance claims adjuster. It's never a bad idea to hire a water and fire damage restoration company to complete an independent assessment and cost estimate. Hopefully, you won't need it, but if legal action becomes necessary, it's a handy document to have in your corner. So when people like Steve Slepcevic and his team of experts arrive on the scene to try to make a difference, sometimes the insurance companies fight back with lawsuits and media slander. Steve Slepcevic has focused his construction business on restoring and reconstructing homes and businesses directly and exclusively for the property owners after natural disasters.

For those that don't know him, Steve Slepcevic has more than 25 year’s experience in the disaster reconstruction industry that can be first traced back to his younger years when he worked for uncles that were in the industry, everything from cabinetmakers to large-scale developers.

Since 1989 Steve Slepcevic has completed several thousand projects with the goal of getting their clients fully restored and rebuilt through the client’s insurance companies. As for his passion in helping natural disaster victims Slepcevic says, “At a young age I was always troubled watching the floods and fires on TV and seeing peoples lives and homes destroyed, my thought always went to who is going to help these people rebuild their homes,businesses and restore their lives”.

Insurance companies are in a business of collecting premiums, not paying claims, and to do so they tend to undercut their policyholders claims. Thousands of complaints with state insurance departments and civil court cases show that insurance companies often pay 30-60 percent of the cost of rebuilding a damaged home. Paying less to victims of natural disasters has helped produce record profits. Even after the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies reported their highest ever profit of $73 billion.

"Money managers have taken over this whole industry. Their eyes are not on people who are hurt but on the bottom line for the next quarter" says Robert Hunter insurance director at the Washington-based Consumer Federation of America, who was Texas insurance commissioner from 1993 to 1995.

In order to keep stockholders happy by continuing to make those record breaking profits insurance companies implement numerous delay tactics, from transferring claims to several adjusters to try to lower claim amounts, to using a list of "preferred" engineers, consultants, and industrial hygienists who will not perform proper testing on contaminated areas. In the end the insurance company’s adjuster has the leverage to deny or lowball the claim value.

As hard as it is for victims of natural disasters to work with the insurance companies it is even harder for those people, such as Slepcevic, that are trying to help victims outside of the insurance companies influence. It hasn’t been an easy road for Slepcevic and his team of experts, but their passion to help out homeowners that are trying to rebuild their lives after a natural disaster outweighs any shady tactics the insurance companies try to use to discredit them.

“I know it may be a rough road working through the trenches hand in hand with my clients, but this is why I got in the business as a small boy sitting in his living room watching the people suffered in the disaster devastated areas and thinking I'm going to grow up and help these people rebuild their lives, I had no idea that it would be a huge price to pay in the form of slander and lies” says Steve Slepcevic, “the insurance carriers spend a lot of money in an attempt to keep me from teaching people what they need to do to avoid being victimized by unscrupulous contractors and insurance adjusters. Sometimes when you have something really important for people to know that somebody, somewhere in power doesn't want them to know, you're going to eventually pay a price for it.”

Steve Slepcevic and his team of certified and licensed contractors are just one of many groups out their trying to make a difference. Every time there is a win for their clients whether through one of the law cases, complete reconstruction, such that the client receives the full value of the claim, the insurance companies just fight back harder with lawsuits, fraud complaints, slanderous articles and posts.

Unfortunately not all disaster recovery agencies are as forthcoming and upfront as Steve Slepcevic. Like any industry when there is an opportunity to exploit people to make money there are some bad apples that take advantage of people in need, usually ruining the reputation for the actual good ones out there.

Slepcevic says his final piece of advice if all else fails is to contact a lawyer, “We recommend one of the large law firms such as Myers, Widders, Gibson, Jones and Snyder, Girardi and Keese, Kabateck Brown Kellner, Stone, Rosenblatt & Cha, Thornhill Law Partners, Steven Zelig or others that take bad faith actions on for the consumer”.