Do contractors fake hail damage? Contractor Dirty Tricks
As an independent adjuster, you're going to be dealing with restoration contractors - whether on cat or daily. And some of those guys and gals, well, they'll do ANYTHING to sell a job.
I know what you're thinking:
all roofers and contractors are angels with motives as pure as wind driven snow. It's really those dreadful insurance companies out to cheat their customers out of THEIR MONEY!
I know that some of my friends in the property restoration business are going to watch this video... and just let me say to you up front: I've already done several videos about how poorly adjusters can sometimes treat roofers and other contractors, especially in cat situations.
…And I’m constantly preaching that adjusters need to be treating any contractor they meet with dignity, friendliness, and respect. Even in my speaking engagements and livestreams. IAs being rude to contractors is a big problem on our side and it needs to change.
But understand that it's because of the things I'm going to talk about in this video, that a lot of adjusters will not always give you a warm reception. So just understand where we're coming from. Cool?
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Contractor Dirty Tricks
talking trash
One of the biggest things that contractors, and in particular storm restoration contractors and roofers, will do is this.. Long before we, the adjuster, ever show up to the house, they will fill the insured's head with all kinds of negative baloney about their insurance company.
“your insurance company won't way to pay for the whole thing so we'll help you fight them so you can get the work done”
“your insurance company is going to drag out the process so much that you'll just want to drop your claim and forget about it”
“most adjusters don't know what they're talking about and we will probably have to fight this in court - but dont' worry, we've got a lot of experience doing this”
“be warned: your adjuster will try to overlook everything so we will have to show him all the damage”
Now in fairness, it's possible that there is some kernel of truth in some of those things and as a person who's owned a home, I would personally have my contractor present when any adjuster shows up - if for nothing else to be sure that they're in agreement on the damage and the repairs.
But in general, contractors who try to poison the well so that the insured is "on their side" are really doing more harm than good. Why create strife and division?
not having your back with the insured after they agree with you on the lack of damage.
This is one of my favorite ones and thankfully it doesn't happen often.
It goes like this: I jump up on the roof with the roof salesperson or canvasser and we don't really find much. And the roofer agrees. "yeah, man, we thought this one was borderline too, but we wanted you to come out and look to be sure. I agree, there's no damage to this roof."
Okay, cool. This'll be an easy one - the roofer agrees that the roof is fine, we can move on down the road. Well, as I start to explain all this to the insured, the roofer cuts me off with this little gem:
"yeah, so there's definitely some serious damage to your roof and your adjuster, Matt here, disagreed that you need a new roof. So we're going to take your claim to the next level and get an adjuster out here who knows what they're doing."
Hello, I'm right here. I'm not a violent man and my last fistfight was in high school. But oh boy. I did verbally tear this guy a new one on the spot. Likely a mistake since the insured was standing right there but..
Apparently in some alternate universe this is an effective sales technique.
intimidation
This is probably the most common thing that roofers will do on cat. You'll have an appointment at 10am with the insured. You may or may not know that you'll be meeting with the contractor. So you're a little bit ahead of schedule and you get there around 9:45 or so. When you pull up, there are four fully lifted diesel dually pickup trucks parked in out front and in the driveway, making you have to park half a block away. And there's a bunch of tanned bodybuilder types wearing their little sister's shirts all standing around, with a couple of muscleheads up on the roof chalking it up for good measure. One guy is already pushing their "another satisfied customer - insurance claims specialists" roofing sign into the yard.
You grab your stuff and walk up and they all scowl at you with their waxed eyebrows and square jaws. Intimidation.
But that's the name of the game.
The only real way to battle this is to just smile and be cool. Find out who's sale this actually is and talk only to him or her. Once they see that you're not shaking in your boots, the rest of those guys will fade away - they've got to make their truck payments, too, so they're not going to hang out for the entire inspection.
straight up lying
Here are a couple of my favorite roofer fibs:
If you make up a fake hail damage map over the customer's neighborhood and have all your sales guys run around telling insureds that they have hail damage - then might be a cheating liar.
If you tell a homeowner - or an adjuster - that you got "that roof and that roof and that roof and that roof" already approved and replaced, when they actually didn't, then you might be a cheating liar.
I mean, there's a good chance that this same adjuster has already looked at some or all of those roofs and didn't find any damage. Plus there's no roofer alive who won't put their sign in the yard of an approved and sold job (let's be honest - they'll put their signs in any yard they can, approved or not).
As the adjuster, I just drove through that neighborhood and if I didn't see any signs in yards, I'm going to be even more skeptical of the "we got all these roofs paid for already" claim.
Look, I get it. Coming up with an effective sales pitch isn't easy.
But let's keep it truthful - lying to make sales, even if it seems like a small white lie that you think you can't get caught in, is bad business.
secretly recording your conversation with an adjuster
I was frankly shocked by this one. And if you think about how it could play out, I don't understand how semi-intelligent beings - beings capable of projecting the consequences of their actions into the near future - could have come up with this one and put it into continuous practice with the same adjusters from the same insurance company.
It goes a little something like this:
meet with the adjuster in a neighborhood that hasn't seen a hail storm in twenty years and be super cool.
The adjuster says no to everything you're asking for...
but then you - the roofer - say, "come on, you at least have to agree that there is SOME damage, right?"
Strangely, you move uncomfortably close to the adjuster with your right hip jutting out.
The adjuster (hopefully) says, "I think I just answered that question. Why would I agree that there's hail damage when I just said I don't agree that there's hail damage?"
you ask again (hip a little closer), "you've got to admit, there is a little here, right?"
"I definitely said no. There's not even any spattering anywhere."
The first time this happened to me as an adjuster I thought it was a little weird. Well, a week of this goes by and then my manager calls me and says this:
Manager: "hey matt, have you heard of so-and-so restoration?"
Me: "Geez, have I! I've been meeting those guys in the same no-damage neighborhood for over a week."
Manager: "Well, just a heads up: Some of our insureds are getting pretty upset because after the adjuster leaves, the guy from that company pulls out a digital recorder from his pocket and plays back the adjuster agreeing that there actually is damage, even when we're denying it. None of your claims have come up, but just be cautious around those guys. We're getting SIU involved."
The next several times I ran into those guys and they pulled that with me I just ignored them. What else can I do?
I'm here to tell you, if you think that your little small-time roofing company you and your buddies thought up over beers one afternoon is going to win in any way - especially in court - especially against a multi-billion dollar company - a company that likely has an entire building filled with expensive attorneys and a whole other building filled up with eager fraud investigators - I question your sanity.
In their defense, the guys who were doing this were all in their early 20's. Nothing against young folks, but it's a known fact that young men and bad ideas kinda go hand-in-hand. And if a guy comes up with a really bad idea - an idea so bad that everybody will know your trick after the FIRST insured calls to say what happened - and hasn't thought THAT part through?
Incidentally, these guys also used just about every other dirty trick on this list as well.
I'll be the first to say that the vast majority of restoration contractors - yes even the storm chasers - while they may be aggressive, they're also not crooks.
Take note IA: Aggressive does not equal crook.
Fluffing up the hail hits "so the adjuster can see them better"
This next one is a borderline behavior that many well-meaning roofing sales people will do, not really thinking about it for the most part.
See here's the thing: one of the fundamental characteristics that we look for when we're looking at hail on a composition shingle roof is - is there a bruise? What's a bruise? It's an actual soft spot - not necessarily a black mark. If you touch the shingle and you can tell that the shingle itself has been crushed or damaged - you may even lift the shingle and see a bump on the bottom, indicating that it was hit - then that's going to be a key identifier of hail damage. In many cases you kinda have to touch the roof to feel that. Unless it's massive - no questions hail damage, it's hard to see that bruising.
Where the problem comes in is that enthusiastic roofers will take their meaty thumb and start rubbing spots on the roof that they think are hail damage. In fairness, they may have - at one time - seen an adjuster do this, circle that spot, and call it a hit.
Roofers: Let me just give you a very big and very helpful piece of advice - do not touch the roof under any circumstances.
When you rub on a shingle in any way, you change that spot from an observable hail hit that an adjuster can identify, to something else. It's now a spot that's been rubbed and while you may think that you're helping the adjuster see the hits better, you're walking a fine line. Technically, what you're doing is mechanical damage. And that's not covered.
Many times, I'll see a test square done by a roofer in the middle of a slope that has dark marks.. but nothing outside of it. I mean, do you really think I'm going to re-use your test square?
Bottom line: stay out of trouble and just don't touch the roof.
If there's hail damage there, a trained and experienced hail adjuster will find it and everybody can go home happy.
actual fraud
I'll start here by saying that it's not that common to see actual real fraud - you know, "hammer hail." Which is why, when you DO see it, it really sticks out. If you're an experienced cat adjuster who's been on the road for years looking at real hail damage - remember, most of the claims a cat adjuster goes on are going to be ones with legit damage we can pay for - who then all of the sudden sees a weird repeating pattern across the shingles... all the marks are right in the middle of the shingles, none are anywhere near the edge of the roof.. there's no soft metal damage.... I mean come on.
If I go to an insured's house and I find what is clearly hammer hail, I'm still going to scope that roof and everything else for actual hail damage.
The ironic part of this is that often unscrupulous - and in this case, let me be frank: stupid - contractors will create fake damage on houses that actually have legit damage. So what do I do in those cases? Well, if the contractor went over the roof with a golf shoe, or quarters in the soles of cougar paws or just straight up with a hammer - if there is ALSO real hail damage the insurance company still owes for it.
But I'm going to tell you right now that this is my green light to mess with the contractor. If I'm meeting the guy out there and I see both real hail damage and clear hammer hail, my first question: "this your first time on this roof?" Ninety point nine percent of the time the answer is, "uh no, this is my buddy's job but he had to go home for the weekend." It's also probably a lie. no matter how the guy answers, I'll start asking really pointed questions and making lots of eye contact (they won't be).
"So what do you think did this?"
"The hail in this neighborhood was only about an inch and a half.. These marks are like orange sized. How do you explain that?"
"I'm not sure what this is, but it doesn't look like the hail damage I've been seeing in this neighborhood - or outside of your test square. I'm sorry.. your "friend's" test square. Why do you think that is?"
I take a LOT of photos. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to have some other folks at the insurance company take a look at these photos and get their opinion on what they think caused this."
And so on. By this time the guy is stammering and stuttering and sweating. I try to stand up above him on the slope. I want him to sweat and have to look into the sun in order to see me. I'll be honest, I'm mad. It may seem cruel of me to twist a guy like this, but this is fraud. Hey, ever wonder why homeowner's insurance and auto insurance and other insurance is as expensive as it is?
One of the reasons is FRAUD.
Fraud costs you and me - and ironically the dumbass who's doing this since he's a homeowner and a car owner too - billions every single year. If there is already hail damage on this roof and I'm totaling it anyway and the guy seems to be more misled than malicious, I'll often let him off the hook by saying, "listen, dude. This isn't hail damage. There is actual hail damage on this roof and we're going to pay for it. But if I ever see this again with you or your company associated with it, I'll have to send it up the chain."
Call me a softy, whatever.
Fraud is a hard thing to prove and it requires resources. I'm being truthful though. If I do see it again, then all bets are off and SIU will be on it.
If there is no other damage and I'm seeing faked damage, I definitely report it the first time without saying anything to the guy or the insured. If the insured asks, I just say, "I've got everything I need, I'll be in touch!" Then I call my manager as I'm getting into my truck for guidance from her on what I should do from this point. Because the carrier may end up paying for that roof anyway under a vandalism claim, SIU may get involved, etc.
I leave it in the carrier’s court because they may want to go back out and look at it themselves to verify what they saw in my photos for themselves and make their own decision about how to go forward with the claim. If I open my mouth I might end up putting my foot in it as well as limit the options the carrier has.
And to you contractors who don't know what SIU is.. It's the carrier Special Investigations Unit. And they LOVE to catch contractors in fraud. Love it. I know some SIU people and they will chase you to the ends of the earth if they even THINK you might be up to no good. And once they catch you in the act? They'll come after you with not only their own team of attorneys, but the state insurance commissioner AND in some cases the FBI.
They will mess you up and if you're lucky enough to escape jail time, your business will be dismantled and you'll probably never be able to get a business license or a job other than washing cars for the rest of your life. Is it worth it?
Notice that I didn't include any roofer theory science claims in this video - what's roofer theory? The strenuous reaching for explanations of how this roof actually is damaged, but not by normal storm action. I'm going to do another video on this topic later because it's a fun one..
I also didn't include astonishing overcharging. I've had several claims where I write something like a $5500 estimate to replace an insured's 1 year old fourteen square roof. I start going over the totals with the insured and they start losing their mind on me. "I just replaced that roof and it was $16,000!!!!" I'm like, "did they do any other work?" "No, we just had that roof done what kind of cheating SOB are you anyway blah blah blah!!" What do you do? I don't say, "hey, you've been cheated by your roofer." I say, "Okay, no problem, we can get to the bottom of this. Please get three estimates from different, local, reputable contractors and let's see how they come in." This is not an easy sell and the guy is still going to be unhappy after I say that.. But it's really the only option... However, a week or two later I get a very apologetic phone call from this poor insured with the news that he did get three estimates to do this work and they were all about $5-6000.
So to you adjusters out there, write your claims as high as you can in accordance with the carrier's estimating guidelines and the policy. But no more. Write a good estimate and the vast majority of reputable and well-run restoration contractors will nod and smile when they see your bottom number.
