Dog and Pony show
Which brings us to the dog and pony show, the money story.
So let's see.
We'd just been flooded and everything we had to do or have done had a cash value. In practice this came to mean all of a sudden there were a multitude of interested and vested parties in every transaction, no matter how insignificant. Which meant the already very high stakes were now even higher because everything, it seemed, would need approval by some authority. By those with the purse strings. And then as if by default, things moved in inverse proportion to our sense of urgency.
The added insult to us particularly just in case we didn't get it the first time, (as the river came up) was that we were rendered for all practical purposes almost impotent. First of all because our common sense did not cover this sort of experience and second of all because we were no longer independent operators.
So, it starts right away.
Can we do anything before the insurance adjuster comes?
What?
Now in the face of everything that needed to be done you might think this is a stupid question, but believe me facing it all, it was at first virtually impossible to tease out, to cull from the overwhelming disarray and destruction, what to do. Where to start. How.
Perhaps it loses something in the translation, but the question remained. It was like, Holy Shit Man, now what!?!?
If we do start hauling stuff out of the house do we have so save it so he can see it? And of course every bloody body had an opinion on this, and horror stories.
At a certain point though, after going back and forth over decisions which are difficult enough in and of themselves,
never mind figuring out the vagaries and whims of the insurance company and its minions, you finally recoup some of your bearings. Which is simply to say that certain things need to be done, no matter who is going to pay, and certain things cannot wait.
What are they going to do send us to Viet Nam?! and whose house is this anyway.
For instance, we needed electricity and hot water right off the bat. No electricity no hot water no work. Bottom line=$3375.00
Now this was about ten days before the adjuster even came out for his first inspection...it took a while for the roads to open so that they could even get in. And we were lucky. We'd at least been able to use our cell phone to make the call to The Insurance Company (TIC) long before the land phones had been restored. Which is to say we were way ahead of the game.
And then, we needed to dry (whoever heard of such a thing) the house which was a whole other dilemma because they (TIC) said they wouldn't pay for that. But you know, as the days went by it wasn't getting any drier and, not dry no work. So this
was our first brush with to hell with them. It needs to be done and we know that. Bottom line=$4000.00
And in the mean time, in between everything else, we are spending 10 to 12 hours a day non stop, cleaning up, for which they will reimburse us at minimum wage.
Bottom line end of week one is $7335.00+sundries and clean up costs, so, let's call it just about $7400.00, which as it turns out would almost be covered by the advance released by The Insurance Company (TIC).
It goes downhill from here.
The Mortgage Company (TMC) which, obviously, has an insurable interest in our home was a co-payee, and to our horror and surprise took control absolute unequivocal control, impersonal cipher control, of all the monies. And following the black and white dictates of their policy they were, for the love of Christ, going to dole it (the $7000.00 advance) out in thirds. First third up front, got to give them that, the rest only with receipts.
So you see the problem:
From their point of view: no work no receipts no money.
From our point of view it looked more like, no money no work no receipts.
Big problem.
No grace of God here at all.
No grace, no God.
We've already spent approximately $7,400.00 in some anticipation of the advance money that we didn't yet have, and then were given, and then all of a sudden had to beg for. TMC was going to have us roll over and over and over before they'd issue the money. Our money to our way of thinking, and theirs obviously, to their way of thinking. (The things they leave out when you buy insurance and sign up with mortgage companies is perhaps criminal.) Anyway, the way it worked they said was, we send them the check so they can co-sign it and, they'll send it back, in thirds mind you, in about 10 days...la di da di da, (or so by the time you take into account proper channels and working days.) All said in this practiced metallic meant to be benign tone of voice dripping with disdain and stupidity. I mean, didn't they get it! This was our home, for God's sake. That we wanted to move back into. Before the millennium.
No, they didn't get it. Ciphers and unimaginative and impolite sycophants. Dogs and ponies.
We were outraged (infuriated incensed, and finally the thesaurus trail gets to, provoked) and so this was the first time we offered to give them (TMC) back the house. As fucking is. After all we pointed out, ever so sweetly, we at this point have nothing left to lose, and they are making it next to impossible to get anything done with any sort of ease, so perhaps they would just like to take it on, and maybe they could give us a call when it was done, or not...
So after a flurry of phone calls and a considerable fuss on our part which included our insurance agent (DG) writing a letter, which as it turned out TMC demanded he resubmit because he hadn't signed the letter with his last name, for God's sake (oh ciphers and sycophants) they finally released (in the lingo) the $7000.00 in total, and even agreed to send it 2nd Day Express mail. But alas, it took about five days (a work week gone here) to get to us, because it got hung up on someone's desk in the Insurance Claim Department (ICD) of TMC.
Those desks, those pesky mortgage company desks were like black holes we were going to come to discover.
Anyway by the time we got the money, it was long since spent, so we were still behind.
Dogs and ponies.
No work no receipts no money.
No money no work no receipts.
Actually, at this point we were now also at the mercy of The Insurance Company (TIC) who had not yet finished processing the claim. At the very least we still needed to arrange for a second site visit and in the mean time, they were still hemming and hawing about what they would and wouldn't cover and had yet to determine, for example, if the washing machine and dryer were structural or personal losses. And then, they phoned to say, oh by the way, we're sorry, we made a mistake, (oh Gawd) the laundry room and the garage/guest house are not covered because...well trust us they're not.
Now who's scamming who, how the hell would we have known those buildings were not covered, or were for that matter, unless someone, i.e. TIC had told us so. And had we known they were not, we certainly would have done what we needed to do to get them covered. After all, we know those buildings represent more than a modest portion of our property value and the guest house/garage, for Christ sake, is definitely the most likely to be flooded.
Anyway such were the loopholes and pitfalls of this money morass which to traverse always demanded absolute self control and the presence of wit, especially in the face of dwindling patience and good will, not to mention dwindling money. Even in its simplest form it always required negotiating and cajoling. And other times strategic and skillfully executed threats were the only way to effectively get something done.
We were told by those trying to pass accountability to anyone else, that all flood insurance was underwritten by FEMA and so the policy is federal. And the service curried by the local insurance minions is for our convenience, (this of course also was said in that thought to be benign metallic tone of voice) and was intended to say of course, it's not our fault. After all this had all been devised and was supervised on a federal level, which was intended to intimate that there wasn't a lot of leeway here. But let's get serious folks, headway is another matter, you've simply got to be willing to point high, you know, and not fall off at the slightest blow.
Dogs and ponies, ciphers and sycophants.
Anyway we're still spending money, because it all cost money, and
took time which cost money, and demanded skill expertise and materials which cost money which was not forthcoming because TIC hadn't finished the claim, which they said they were working on as quickly as possible. In fact they did work hard to expedite it because we had of course, raised a more than considerable ruckus after the oh by the way phone call. Which again involved an intervention by our insurance agent's office. His assistant had been so outraged that he carried out his own rampage and on his own initiative reamed the Insurance Adjuster (IA) a new orifice or two. What got him going was, well it's a long story, but the short of it is, we, Paul&I, the insurance adjuster (IA), our contractor (Carl) and a representative from Restorx, this mondo big time drying company were all walking through the place getting a bid for the drying, which TIC finally had decided in fact they would pay for. We were in the guest house and the IA says let's pull back part of this wall and see what's underneath it. Of course then we had to bicker about how high up they would replace the walls, (the guest house had taken just about 7.5 feet of water, and they said they would go 8 feet) and, to be quite sure, before Carl started peeling back the walls we went through the are you sure you're going to pay yes we'll pay tango, one last time, in front of God and his witnesses, mind you. So we pulled back the walls, drilled a hole or two in the bathroom and in the end dried the guest house, only to be told later oh by the way...and you know the rest. I must say actually in the initial phone call I was a little intransigent, if not impolite and insisted, actually demand is more like it, that they at the very least, cover what had been done at the direction of their IA. His mistake, their money. It had been this last bit that had sent our agent and his assistant into orbit. They couldn't believe it either.
Anyway all of this helped us in that matter of headway, and not falling off in the face of a blow, you know. There are blows and then there are counter blows, shall we say.
So where were we, oh yes, at least now we were generating receipts.
They (TIC) sent our personal property reimbursement first ($10,300, not representative of the actual loss, by any stretch of the imagination, but...) which thankfully bypassed TMC, and we were able to use that to continue with the structural repairs.
The house was, at this point, totally empty because everything that needed to be done and that we needed to do it with, required money up front. But it was clean and dry, just empty and waiting. And just as the money came Carl went to Hawaii (he had warned us right at the beginning that this was coming up), fishing and surfing and making love, you know. So we used this time to go get, with our personal property money, mind you, the cabinets and countertops and sinks and faucets and vanities, we're talking for three bathrooms here, you know, linoleum and carpet, (did you know that linoleum, at least the linoleum we chose, was twice as much per square yard as carpet, and we even got a Berber carpet, for God's sake,) anyway what else, oh yeah the sub flooring, which was not particle board, but code plywood, which costs an arm and at least two legs, and then the painting.
Anyway, this was quickly running us out of money, and thankfully, just about now, TIC had cut our final check for the structural losses, (an additional $17,900.00 or so) so we thought we were home free.
Well, far from it as it turned out.
Actually early on we had started to get nervous about running out of money before TIC settled, so we borrowed $5000.00 (leeway here) from my folks, up in Canada. And so opened another ring in the dog and pony show. We were going to have the funds transferred electronically, which anyone would have imagined could and should have been done quickly and with a fair amount of ease. Well, not.
First was the issue of foreign currency and exchange rates and then, it got lost, and what a bunch of nonsense that was. And again the lesson of those who do their jobs with compassion and interest and those that think they're doing you some sort of favor.
In one of many phone calls I had to make to the bank (TB), our bank, to track down where the money might have gone--which was a whole other thing because there of course was a specific department in TB that dealt with foreign wires but I needed to go through the main customer service switchboard to get to them and they, that is the people in the Wire Department of TB, had told me to feel free to call every day if I wanted, so I did--anyway I was making my daily call and this person, this woman, who is just the sort who gives women a faulty rap, answers the phone with her bla bla bla may I help you and then when she hears what I need, she says her supervisor says we don't do that and she can't put my call through, sorry. At least it wasn't that benign metallic tone of voice. This was twit talk, pure and simple. I didn't even waste time getting annoyed, I just called again and was pleased to have someone else answer the phone who of course hadn't heard that bit about not doing that and she put me through. Good Christ. Anyway, it finally took the head officer of the bank in Canada to find the money, and he did, and all of a sudden it took the few minutes it should have in the first place instead of 10 days.
But as I said, by this time TIC had cut our check and we knew the drill, so we had our receipts, our 8X10 glossies and everything in triplicate and we sent it registered overnight express to the ICD of TMC, and even phoned them to tell them to expect it. Great, they'd look for it and they said something about 48 hour turn around time. I must have missed something in the small print.
Well, it didn't come (Mon) and it didn't come (Tues) and it didn't come (Wed) and then I phoned and asked about it. Oh! she said in a pert voice, those funds were released days ago, you should have gotten it. But, she said as if remembering something and sounding a little downcast, they've been way behind in the Accounting Department (AD). I'm sure they've caught up by now, so let me give you the UPS tracking number, and you should be getting it...well by now it was late enough in the day that even overnight express it wouldn't come until Friday.
But never mind it didn't come (Fri). Saturday either. So on Monday I called again, and the lady in the ICD said in her surprised pert voice, she just didn't know what could have happened and could she put me on hold while she went right down to the AD to see what possibly could have happened. And sure enough, there it was sitting on someone's desk, so she grabbed it and walked back down the hall with the check hot in her hand and was just full of herself by the time she got back on the line, and she said, a little breathlessly...well you know the drill now, she said she'd send it right out. And here was another UPS tracking number.
Paul was pissed, and had little faith, we're talking little faith.
Now this is a man, who in large part earns his money and makes shit happen on the phone, and he'd had more than enough. Definitely more than enough.
The press was, the carpet folks were coming and we needed $6058.00, which, well we'd already paid out about $20,000 you know, and the barrel head was empty. We just didn't have any more and we needed the money. Now. And the check's in the mail clearly wasn't getting it.
So Paul got on the phone.
First thing he did was call the 800 customer service number of TMC and asked, well he asked the poor unsuspecting customer service representative for the name of the CEO of the company. She, as if she hadn't heard him, asked for his loan number. He said it was irrelevant and could he please have the name of the CEO. Well, wasn't too long before her supervisor got on the phone wondering if there wasn't something he could do to help. Paul ever so politely, yet again simply asked for the name of the CEO and when the guy started hemming and hawing Paul asked him his name and then asked ever so politely but very directly, if he was refusing to give him the name of the CEO. Well it wasn't too long before his supervisor got on the phone and gave Paul the name and a phone number. The phone number as it turned out was for an answering machine, would we like to leave a message. No.
But we had a name. So we decided to try the front door, since all this 800 number stuff was just routing us to the message heap, and you know how that goes.
Well, here was another little snafu, (you remember don't you, what that stands for, situation normal, all....). Anyway, we call the operator in the 669 area code and ask for the number of the president's office of TMC and she said, there was no such listing. Hmm, no such listing, and then she said, just a second and she looked in another area code listing (out of her jurisdiction no doubt, but she was intrigued, I guess) and damn...there it was. Hmm.
We're into this at least an hour by now, and easy about 10 phone calls, just to find the president of this company, mind you. Information I might add that should be public, and readily available. Hm.
Anyway, now the fun starts.
Paul calls and if you please, just as slick and as pretty as you please, asks to speak to Angelo, (the president). May I ask who's calling they of course want to know. Just someone interested in, he pauses, customer relations, he says with just the proper edge in his voice, so smooth, but with just the proper hint of big trouble, you know. You know what it feels like when you are talking to someone and for reasons you're not real clear about you start to feel a little tense, and maybe a little edgy. Well she got it and said ever so solicitouly, I'm sorry, Mr. M isn't here right now, but Chuck takes his calls perhaps you would you like to speak to him. That would be fine.
Well we run the drill by Chuck, including how arduous it was to get to him. Who did of course, take all of this seriously because first of all, it was no dimwitted crackpot who would have and could have hacked his way through the maze and second of all, this shit should have been taken care of long before it reached the office of the president. Yessir heads were going to bang if not roll. He was also a little unnerved to find out (that we knew too) the check had in fact been cut and was sitting on someone's desk a full week. And still hadn't been sent, and in the end would be 10 days before getting to us. (Now, how dumb do you suppose they think we are, I mean, what do you think they did with that money?! You'd think they could have at least split the return with us. After all the funds had been released and the check had been cut (in our names) and had been just sitting there. Not gathering only dust, I'm sure, so again I wonder, how dumb do you suppose they think we are.) Anyway, he got his best woman right on it and in short order she called wanting names and dates and by God she got them. And we got our money.
We were satisfied.
Still not home free though.
At this point it was TB (The Bank) again. They wouldn't cash the check, for 10 business days because, well it takes 10 days to clear checks over $10,000. Dogs and ponies, ciphers and sycophants. So I get on the phone and asked to speak to a manager please. A manager of what she wanted to know, they didn't really have managers. Anyone then who could authorize clearing the funds for the check, I said. Well that person is on vacation she said and won't be back until next week, as if that took care of that. Whoa, hold on, excuse me, I said, I need to speak to someone today who has the authority to clear the check. Oh OK, she said, you need to speak to the manager!
Holy Shit! Anyway, they cleared the check and deposited it in our account the next day.
Almost home free.
TMC, didn't send the final third of the money due us because, well, even though that $6000.00 for the carpets would have sent us over the top, it didn't count because we hadn't spent it yet. And, in any case they never disperse the last monies before a final inspection. Which we had to arrange.
We were amused to come home one day to find a strange car in our driveway. She was, she said, an inspector for TMC and she happened to be in the area and were we, she wondered near completion. Putting the carpets in this week I said. Good enough for me, she said, I'll close you out. Glory be to God. I guess TMC, just like TIC before them decided it would be best to expedite our claim and be rid of the nuisance we were becoming. Ha, takes one to know one.
Anyway, it was a while, given the second flood and all before we were able to amass the rest of the paperwork, which included a contractor's waiver of lien, for God's sake, (the language of which we amended to read after payment), and a notarized affidavit stating all repairs were complete. And of course the receipts. But we finally did. And without any class they sent it regular mail and it took oh, you got it, about 10 days to get here.
They never did get it you know, they just never got it.
But we did, insurable interest in our home, in a pig's ass, or at the very least not the whole story. I would guess they make a fair return on all the monies they do that way. Let's see, roughly $30,000 X N (the number of people whose insurance money they manage, ha!) X T (the number of days and ways they delay selling, I mean releasing the funds). Now go figure, so to speak.
Dogs and ponies, ciphers and sycophants.
The one bit of sanity in this otherwise sordid tale was our dealings with Signa, (this name has not been changed in the interest of the particular) a company that among other things sold mortgage protection plans. If all the rest has been a Grimm's Fairy Tale, this one is a little breezier, with happily ever after in the story line.
In December we had received a flyer in the mail by way of TMC advertising yet another way to protect our mortgage, this time in case of a disaster and other acts of God. For $18.00 a month which would be added to the monthly mortgage payment, Signa would, in the case of a disaster pay the mortgage for as long as you needed to be out of your house up to so many months, bla bla. Anyway, this being the rainy season, and it having already rained prodigiously, Paul called and signed us up effective immediately, (Dec. 22 or so), first payment to be added to January's mortgage payment.
It flooded January 8.
And without fuss or fume nor asking for our first born son, my mother's maiden name, or needing a pact signed in blood promising we would not fly to Hawaii or buy the de Lorean everyone else was so sure we wanted, they reimbursed us for our January mortgage payment, and paid for February and all of March. They also offered their switchboard as a message center for as long as we might need it, and then had the unmitigated gall to say how sorry they were for our loss.
Unbelievable.
Anyway the money, to the tune of $6000 or so, saved our ass and there were, thank God, no dogs or ponies to be seen. Which brings us back to the leprechaun and those things beyond thanks and the fair value exchange of human kindness.
