Richardson, TX -  A public adjuster introduced me to one of his customers. Her house was damaged by a tornado that devastated her entire neighborhood.
    Several of her neighbors were having problems with their insurance company and neighbors were talking. Fearing a potential claim dispute, the homeowner hired the public adjuster before the insurance company's adjuster ever set foot on her property.
    The homeowner hired me directly and paid my fee, so the public adjuster made no financial investment into settling the claim, which is fairly common in the industry. What is uncommon is that the insurance adjuster agreed to pay policy limits ($240K) without any sort of argument. In fact, he even explained to the public adjuster how the insurance policy had a special "inflation" endorsement that would pay an additional 20% ($48K) if the contractor could prove the additional money was necessary.    
    This should be a happy story right? The headline should read "Insurance Company Does Right Thing & Pays Policy Limits to Tornado Victim", because that is exactly what happened.
    The reason this is a sad story, and a valuable lesson, is that I discovered a few months later that the insurance adjuster printed the $240K claim check on the day before the public adjuster submitted my estimate package. The public adjuster could have gone on vacation & never turned in my reports, and the homeowner would still have been paid policy limits. She made a huge mistake by hiring the Pubic Adjuster before knowing what her insurance adjuster was going to do. 
     I found out about the check when the public adjuster asked me to consult with the homeowner's contractor to acquire the additional $48K available for construction inflation costs. He gave me a copy of his entire file & I saw the check. I also saw that he never created a proof of loss, or even submitted my estimate to the insurance company. 
    The public adjuster literally did nothing to earn his $24K commission, and the the homeowner never figured it out.  What's worse is the greedy bastard forced her to pay him 10% commission on the construction inflation money also.
                                                            Don Foreman
                                                            PDCAT_Senior Advocate