State Farm has started, at least on a few claims, to deny paying for ridge cap or hip & ridge on 30 year Dimensional roof replacements. They and others, such as Farmers, have not paid for ridge cap on 3 tab roof replacements for quite some time. They claim it is covered in the waste yet they still only want to pay 10% waste for gable, 15% for hip.
Have other people been seeing this? How have you dealt with it?
Don’t forget starters. They claim you don’t need them either. Just leave the starters, hip and ridge off.
Yea…lately I have been supplementing them…but before we use to just eat the money but now it adds up.
State Farm will pay for hip and ridge shingles on 30 year shingle and up IF and only IF they are currently installed. (They owe for what is damaged)
A large percentage of 30 year shingled roofs that I have seen have 20 or 25 year 3 tab installed on the hip and ridge.
You are 100% correct!
[quote=“828br”]State Farm will pay for hip and ridge shingles on 30 year shingle and up IF and only IF they are currently installed. (They owe for what is damaged)
A large percentage of 30 year shingled roofs that I have seen have 20 or 25 year 3 tab installed on the hip and ridge.[/quote]
[quote=“828br”]State Farm will pay for hip and ridge shingles on 30 year shingle and up IF and only IF they are currently installed. (They owe for what is damaged)
A large percentage of 30 year shingled roofs that I have seen have 20 or 25 year 3 tab installed on the hip and ridge.[/quote]
That is true. Do you have somewhere you get your 3 Tab shingles for free? If you are installing a dimensional roof and installing 3 Tab shingles for the hip & ridge, do you not charge for that?
There is an Xactimate line item for high profile hip & ridge to cover specialty hip & ridge. The regular line item is to cover 20 Yr or 25 Yr 3 tab used as hip & ridge.
My point is, what difference does it make? If you take a typical gable roof (or perhaps I should say, a typical gable roof we do), the cost of purchasing and installing the ridge cap is in no way covered by the 10% waste.
I just did the math for an Adjuster yesterday for a 3500 square foot roof we just got approved. It is essentially 5 gables, a large flat roof dormer in the back and a small cupola. According to the adjuster, waste is supposed to cover scrap, starter and cap. This roof required 5.77 bundles of 3 tab for starter and 5.04 bundles for cap. So you essentially have 11 bundles needed for starter and cap. Now if you take 10% of 3500, you get 3.5 squares which is … just shy of 11 bundles. So what covers the scrap?
I have this arguement with adjusters on a daily basis. They NEVER give you enough squares to cover what you actually install.
Something else that pisses me off, is when they pay for “33.15 squares”. I’m sorry… but can anyone order “0.15” of a square? I cant. So what do I do here? pay my crew for .15 of a square and try to return the rest of the unopened bundle? I round up to .33, or .66, or .00 and try to tell them thats what I need. I try to show them my invoice from the supply house where on the 3,370 sq ft roof, I used 38.6 squares of 3 tabs, and I want paid for 38.6, not 37.07 freakin squares. But 90% of the time, i get that BS “its our policy” crap. “we only have to pay for whats there” line gets them out of it most of the time, but if i argue enough, 10% (sometimes more) gets me the extra money I want. and when its a rainy day like today, its worth the extra time it takes!!
[quote=“Agape”]I have this arguement with adjusters on a daily basis. They NEVER give you enough squares to cover what you actually install.
Something else that pisses me off, is when they pay for “33.15 squares”. I’m sorry… but can anyone order “0.15” of a square? I cant. So what do I do here? pay my crew for .15 of a square and try to return the rest of the unopened bundle? I round up to .33, or .66, or .00 and try to tell them thats what I need. I try to show them my invoice from the supply house where on the 3,370 sq ft roof, I used 38.6 squares of 3 tabs, and I want paid for 38.6, not 37.07 freakin squares. But 90% of the time, i get that BS “its our policy” crap. “we only have to pay for whats there” line gets them out of it most of the time, but if i argue enough, 10% (sometimes more) gets me the extra money I want. and when its a rainy day like today, its worth the extra time it takes!![/quote]
Jason, the latest version of Xactimate (V27) automatically rounds up the Replace Quantity to the nearest bundle.
We’re to the point where we pretty much supplement every single claim. If it is drastic, I send in the supplement the day we get the scope of loss. If it is minor, I include it in the final invoice.
The chintzy crap some of them are trying to pull now is really frustrating. Many are starting to use the “on” number only for steep and high charges. I’ve seen a number that (speculation) purposefully don’t update their Xactimate pricing but leave it at the lowest month among the last six. Or they pick a city in the state where the rates are lower. They will pay for skylight flashing but not the remove & replace where the amount for the flash kit in Xactimate doesn’t even cover the cost, much less the labor.
The other tough one is getting high charges. In some cases, we’ve had 70+ square cut up hip roofs and if there is single story access in one spot, they maintain all the shingles will be loaded from there.
One thing we’re doing is to set the Homeowner’s expectations differently. We’re bluntly telling them it will be a bit of a battle to get everything paid for and we need them to be firm with the Adjuster when they get the inevitable call telling them to get 3 bids. I’ve found that when they stand firm, telling the Adjuster they have a contract with us, they’ve selected their contractor and they know we use fair market value pricing, it really helps with our negotiations.
On the sad side, I’m sure a lot of naive Homeowners end up getting brow beaten into accepting a 2nd rate crew without any liability or workman’s comp in order to meet the pricing in the scope of loss. I expect we’re not too far from the point where a savvy attorney will file a class action suit for bad faith claim practices.
Since I’m on a rant here, I might as well include the frustration with Xactimate. It seems like from their monthly price list downloads they are unaware of the material price increases that have occurred this year. Further, they keep adding in ambiguous wording in the line item descriptions that allow the insurance company to hang their hat on a lot of the crap that is going on.
I stopped charging in my Xactimate estimates for ridge on a three tab roof.
Been seeing more and more insurance carriers who don’t want to pay for ridge on a 30 year laminate. Then you get that one client who they pay your estimate no questions asked, sort of odd ah?
Country decided to stop paying for ridge back a couple years ago.
My bids are always rounded up sq on to either .33 or .25 depending on the shingle.
What about ice and water? You can’t buy a partial roll.
What about felt? You can’t buy a partial roll. Even ridge IF they pay it. You can’t buy a partial bundle.
We could go onto valley, step flashing, dormer flashing, ect…
[quote=“Authentic_Dad”]State Farm has started, at least on a few claims, to deny paying for ridge cap or hip & ridge on 30 year Dimensional roof replacements. They and others, such as Farmers, have not paid for ridge cap on 3 tab roof replacements for quite some time. They claim it is covered in the waste yet they still only want to pay 10% waste for gable, 15% for hip.
Have other people been seeing this? How have you dealt with it?[/quote]
Insurance companies will get away with anything we let them get away with. Just look at the latest Xactimate prices, Laminate prices have gone down while material cost have gone up? Tear off labor has gone down, YA RIGHT. I also see a lot of claims that are not evaluated right. I turn $1500.00 claims into $15000.00 claims all the time. We (the roofing community) need to stick to our prices and not let a third party tell us what we charge. If we do it for their price, the next thing we know, the price goes down for everyone. I stick to my guns on any (all) my estimates. They try to say “that’s what we’ll pay for”. I call BS.They WILL pay my prices and DO every time. However they are only obligated to replace with equal materials.
I’ve been in business for 27 years and have seen this day in day out.
I’m after all the professional roofer here and I let them (the adjusters) know that I do know what a damaged roof looks like and will be more then happy to give them a lesson if need be… Just my 2 cents worth.
STICK TO YOUR GUNS OR YOU HURT US ALL.
Ken