Like many trades, doing insurance quotes is part of our business, and I can’t for the life of me understand how so many cars fall off the road in the places that they do.
Things have ramped up considerably over recent months, and I’m sure many fencers have been inundated with requests to prepare quotes for insurance companies after each weather bomb that has slammed through, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
I have given up counting how many we have done, be assured, there has been a lot and still they keep coming in.
Going to see the client, measuring up and preparing a quote, and quite often a report for the insurance, comes at a cost.
If you are a fencer that has done a lot of insurance quotes, I challenge you to work out the actual cost of running your vehicle to the site and your whole time spent on working on that quote at your hourly rate. You might be shocked.
Out of all the recent weather-related quotes we have done, our success rate is only around ten percent. And there are a few reasons for such a dismal success rate.
Obviously, it may be that we are too expensive. Insurance companies are looking for the best price, given what they are facing. To counter that, we add a report detailing what we are going to do and why.
We had one that was a paling fence where all the posts had snapped at ground level. The fence itself was ok and not that old. The two other fencers had proposed to cut the fence into panels and screw on to new posts. I said it would be a full replacement and explained my methodology to the insurance company and sent them my significantly more expensive quote through. We won that job.
There was a lot where the fence was already stuffed, and it was quite obvious that the person just wanted a free fence. Insurance assessors are not stupid, so most of those jobs we walked away from, or sent a report through saying that more investigation was required and that we wouldn’t quote it. A total waste of money and time for us.
Then there were the ones that thought they had insurance, got me out there, then delightfully informed me that they may not be insured. I am open to suggestions on what to do with those people.
The next lot were the devious ones. They were the ones that pocketed the cash or rebuilt the fence themselves. They just needed a quote from a fencer to get the money. Not a care in the world about how much it cost us and the wasted time, and no intention to pay for the quote. As insurance companies generally want two or three quotes, that means two or three fencers are out of pocket for nothing.
Then we had some that were downright bizarre.
One that we visited, was a boundary between two farms, an older fence, still in good condition, what was left of it. A 300-metre row of trees had been blown over the fence from one side.
A quote was sent to clean up the trees and reinstate the fence. You would think that would be straightforward, but no. The insurance company of the guy with the trees, came back and wanted the poor neighbour who was not responsible, to pay for half the fence as it is a boundary fence. We sent an email back to the insurance company pointing out that there is no fault from the farmer that didn’t have the trees, so why do they want him to pay half? Last I heard, was the farmer with the trees was still fighting with his insurance company over it.
We also had a few requests from insurance companies to pull apart our fixed price quotes. We refused of course. The insurance company is just a client, why would you give away commercially sensitive item pricing so they could knock the next guy down in price?
I understand that we are likely to see more weather destruction, in the future. My advice is to treat insurance as another client. Talk to the assessor. You are more likely to get the job if you explain what you are proposing in simple language. Some of these repair jobs can be complicated and you will most likely have to try and match up with what was there before. They also want you to tell them how you will future-proof the fence from being destroyed again, if you can. We found assessors more than happy to pay a little more for a stronger fence if it would withstand more extreme weather conditions.
And if the client seems a bit dodgy, ask them if they will pay for the quote and you can credit it back when you do the job.
Oh, and if you were wondering, our car versus fence quote success rate is 100%.
Article written by Shane Beets
www.a1fenceworx.co.nz
Published in the After the Storm Feature in WIRED Issue70 / September 2023 by Fencing Contractors NZ
