Originally Posted by wahoonc
... FWIW I lost about $4000 worth of tools in Hurricane Katrina. The insurance did pay for them but they weren't too happy about it. I suspect that they will try and write an exclusion into my next policy...
Most companies have standard forms, and changing them is quite difficult to do for personal policies. If they weren't happy about it and don't want to cover the potential tool loss again they will just non-renew you, not modify your form.
Originally Posted by wahoonc
Insurance is a racket, and several times I have considered just taking out catastrophic loss insurance and sucking up the difference. Besides it is just stuff
The insurance industry makes the odds in Vegas look pretty good sometimes.
As someone who works in the insurance industry, I just cringe when I hear this kind of comment.
[soapbox]Insurance is not a gamble, it is a transfer of risk. You (a general you, not you wahoonc) can handle most types of losses that occur, but a 100k - 200k total loss to your home or due to liability in a car accident could wipe you out. Most years you have no losses, but when you do have a loss....it has the potential to be very ugly. The insurance company on the other hand is insuring many people with independent risk of loss...So you don't have a loss this year, but someone else does. By grouping all of those independent losses together, the total amount of loss becomes fairly stable (at least for auto and non-storm property coverages). So what is insurance? You trade the uncertainty of a very large loss for consistent, small, known "loss" amounts in the form of premiums. You end up (eventually) paying your fair share of the loss, plus the expenses and profit to the company. Without insurance you don't have to pay the expenses and profit to the company, but you have to bear the uncertainty of the when and how much of a loss.[/soapbox]
Okay, I feel better