Damage Billing Audits
Rarely does an insurance company have the staff expertise to audit utility company damage billing. The adjuster is faced with asking the Claimant to support the reasonableness of their own bill. In the words of Mitch McNair, Claims Manager of USF&G, "While our adjusters realized that many utility bills were out of line, they were not capable of determining the legitimate charges from those that were not legitimate. Since engaging your services, we have been able to drastically cut our loss costs on utility repair claims." (a copy of Mr. McNair's letter is available upon request) (set Per Incident fee - no hourly build up of costs) 1. Evaluate the liability aspect of the case. A. Receive selected portions of the adjuster's file and provide a summary of our opinion of the case. 2. Evaluate the damage aspect of the case. A. Draft for your use (or we will contact the claimant directly) a letter requesting supporting documentation regarding their loss. (1) Most utilities will not send sufficient data the first time - we will continue until all issues are resolved. We recommend that you assign UBS the file for this purpose. (2) Verify that the loss claimed is the actual loss experienced. 3. Recommend a settlement figure based on our evaluation of liability and damages. 4. Continually assist the Claims Adjuster (telephone contact, additional letters, whatever is required until the case is concluded. There are no additional fees. 1. Be available to discuss small utility damage cases with your adjusters. If you have a quick question or just want to run a problem by us - fine, give us a call and we'll be happy to assist in any way we can. 2. Answer your "One-Call" law questions. We are in the process of enhancing our "web site" to include all state One-Call laws that are available. (the southeastern states are available now. We also intend to analyze each one on these laws with snapshots of common areas (who has to call, when, who's exempt, etc.). While at BellSouth, our president was their Subject Matter Expert relative to One-Call and provided commentary to the company lobbyists for each state as new laws or changes to existing laws were brought before the state legislative bodies. |