My employer, in their infinite wisdom, recommended Dan Lawrie Insurance Brokers. After 30 years with another broker, I bought a new Home Owners policy through these incompetents & paid the years premium. Big mistake.
Soon after signing, my mother had a heart attack in Florida. After spending 6 months there until she was fit to travel, we arrived home Feb 2nd 2006, to find a check and a note "Home Owners Policy cancelled Dec 19th 2005", no other information or reason was provided. The home was uninsured for 2 months.
After a number of frustrating phone calls to the agent Cathy Philmister, she finally bothered to contact me.
She informed me that I was cancelled for non-compliance... because they could not reach me by phone or mail, but she could not explain why they needed to contact me and a friend of mine & his family were living in the home providing access if the Insurance Company or anyone else required it... meanwhile, Dan Lawrie sends their advertising updates via email which I received in Florida & responded to but did not receive a reply.
Regardless of the situation with my mother and the fact that I could be reached via email she simply suggested it was too late & that I should go into a high-risk pool or find another agency. The latter is a catch 22 because once you have been cancelled no one else will touch you no matter how insignificant the reason. The high-risk pool she offered doubles the premium. I contacted the actual insurance company that held the policy, they were sympathetic about the cancellation but informed me that it was in fact Ms. Philmister, of Dan Lawrie who initiated the cancellation and they could not do anything about it.
I have written to a number of people in the company and have not had the decency of a SINGLE reply. I even used their respective email addresses but again not one reply. We have significant real estate holdings and have never experienced such incredible incompetence before, live and learn. At the time Ms. Philmister signed me for the home-owners policy she also wanted the insurance for my vehicles but I declined. Thank God as she would have cancelled those as well.
Unfortunately, there is no recourse for the consumer for this type of rip off/incompetence. However, I intend to notify every friend, colleague, mortgage and real estate broker about this Insurance brokers appalling customer service via the pre-eminent for of communication E-MAIL no less.
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