I’ve mentioned several times that we need to replace our roof. We had planned to do it ourselves, but the more we thought about it, the more we decided that might not be such a great idea. One of the slopes of our roof is steep and two stories up, with nothing but the glass of our greenhouse and our picket fence under it. The other three sections of our roof aren’t bad, but that one is pretty rough. So we started talking about hiring a roofer.
We talked with a neighbor who had his roof replaced last fall, and he mentioned that his homeowners insurance paid for it. We were surprised, because his roof had been in even worse shape than ours – we assumed that insurance would only pay to replace a roof that was in relatively good shape when it was damaged.
We called our American Family agent, and he confirmed that they would send an adjuster out look at our roof, and noted that there had been a major windstorm here last December, and a huge hailstorm four years ago (I remember that our garden got flattened in that storm). They came out twice in the last week, once to evaluate damage from the windstorm, and then yesterday to check for hail damage. They ran their numbers, subtracted depreciation (to account for the fact that the roof was old to begin with) and are sending us a check. For $2200!!
We got estimates from two roofers, both of whom have been in business for quite a while and have A+ ratings with the BBB. The less expensive estimate is $5300, which includes new 5 inch seamless gutters and downspouts. With the $2200 from American Family, we will be able to pay for the new roof without dipping into our emergency fund, which is a huge plus.
Since I’ve been known to rant about companies that have annoyed me, I wanted to balance that out by giving a big shout out to American Family. I never expected them to give us such a big amount, considering how old our roof was to begin with. Obviously we’re thrilled with the payout. But beyond that, everyone we talked with at American Family was fantastic. Our agent explained that we would not lose our claim-free discount if we filed a claim because of wind or hail, and got everything going for us. The claims reps and adjusters we worked with bent over backwards to make the process easy and fast. We have our cars, home, and liability umbrella with American Family, and have been with them ever since we bought our house. This is the first time we’ve ever had any interaction beyond basic additions and subtractions to the policies, and we are thoroughly impressed.
We’ll be scheduling the roof replacement very soon, and are excited to finally be getting it done. We’ve been doing all sorts of other (much smaller!) home improvement projects over the last couple weeks – update coming soon.
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