So, How Do You Get an Insurance Company to Apologize?

Dawned on us this week, reading the yearly escrow report for our mortgage, that our homeowner’s insurance is going up by $430 a year. That’s about a 37% increase.

That’s a wallop.

Yes, we did have a claim for the Great April Hail Storm of 2018. Our only claim in more than 20 years of home ownership. I guess we take this as a sign not to make any insurance claims.

But that begs the question: If we can’t make insurance claims, why have insurance in the first place? Legally, it’s not required. We have enough equity in the home they can’t make us insure it. But going without insurance seems like complete folly. As does paying insurance and making claims and seeing the price go up.

I guess this is where you have to sit down and do the math.

The hail damage to roof and siding clocked in at over $10,000. So in another 23 and ¼ years of home ownership – barring any other rate increases or additional claims – we’ll have paid the company back for the money they gave us.

I’ll be 70 years old. A little old corporal, probably having gone in in my puberty and come out in my adultery several times by then, if Radar is any indication. So I guess, playing the long game, maybe this isn’t all that bad.

Of course, the rate increase stings now. With an additional 23 or so years under my belt, maybe I’ll be worried less about paying for homeowners’ insurance and worried much more about drooling all over myself.

But that’s not now. That’s not getting texts from Michelle saying she wants the insurance company to apologize, at the end of all things.

So that brings up the question posed: How do you get an insurance company to apologize?

And, having secured said apology through whatever Herculean means necessary, how do you not hear the hollow, evil laughter afterward?