2004-05-10 - 9:26 p.m.

people suck

Broker.

The dictionary definition: One that acts as an agent for others, as in negotiating contracts, purchases, or sales in return for a fee or commission.

The true definition: One that takes money from others, refuses to communicate voluntarily, lies when forced to communicate, negotiates with no one's interest in mind but his own, screws his customers and walks away.

The use of the pronoun "his" above does not imply that all the crappy brokers are male. Don't get me started on the lack of truly globally usable gender neutral pronouns right now on top of everything else.

With my apologies to the rare, rare exceptions that make true every rule: brokers suck.

Real estate brokers. Mortgage brokers. Ticket brokers. Insurance brokers. I would say stock brokers but I don't have the kind of money to have ever needed to deal with one. I worked for a commodities broker once. I don't really know how he dealt with his customers, but I know I left because I was underpaid, lied to, and otherwise treated like a disposable object.

And yet I would tell you today that he was a nice guy, and I let him call me dear. That is charisma.

But I digress. To my mind, a broker is someone you go to because either you can't get what you want directly from the source, or you want someone to help you get what you want from that source. Generally, I think, you are looking for someone with expertise or contacts in a business in which you have neither. Even if you could perform the task yourself, you are looking for someone you can trust to save you time and/or money.

So why is it when I deal with one, it ends up costing me MORE time, MORE money and MORE frustration than if I had just done it myself?

Several months ago, the insurance company where we had our home and car insurance policies decided not to write policies for our state anymore. Our insurance agent told us and said don't worry, we have a few months, we'll find something else for you. A couple months go by, and a few weeks before the deadline, I call and say so what's the deal, oh yeah, we're just getting ready to send out an application to you. Fine. It comes in a couple days and we fill it out.

Week or so later the agent calls me back with a quote, it sounds fine, and less than a week to go before the old insurance expires, we get the policies in the mail to sign. Good half dozen or so errors in the information. We're not talking spelling typos. Things like our address is wrong (kind of important on a homeowner's policy I would think), primary driver is wrong on the cars, the one accident I had two years ago in my car is attributed to my husband in my car... and also a few minor things.

I call and say there are some corrections and since the deadline is so close, I'll just drive out instead of mail them since I work down the street from the agent's office. So three days in a row I drive out there. Once to drop off the corrections, next day to pick up the corrected policies, next day to drop them off signed. Get everything to the agent three days before the old policy expires.

Oh, did I mention that the company we were getting the insurance from wasn't the company whose application we originally filled out? Whatever.

Two weeks later, call from our mortgage company notifying us that our homeowner's insurance expired two weeks ago and we need to have some. They got no paperwork. Call the agent. Oh, should be all taken care of, we'll call them.

Two days later we call the mortgage company. Nope, no calls, no information, you still have no insurance as far as we've been told, and get some or we'll get it for you.

Call the agent. Wtf? Bla bla bla bla bla. We'll fax it today, promise. Call the mortgage company the next day. Yes they got the paperwork finally.

It took a month to get the insurance cards for the car insurance. I don't want to think about whether we were covered during that month. Our agent said we were, and that if anything happened before we got the cards, we could show the policy, because it said on the back that it also doubled as temporary insurance verification. Um, I looked. The back was BLANK. And it said nothing like that on the front.

But anyway. Two days after we get the homeowner's insurance straight with the mortgage company, we receive a call from the agent saying that we're going to receive a notification in the mail that our policy is cancelled, but not to worry, we'll also receive some new paperwork to sign from the exact same company. Problem being, they set up the policy to bill us, when our mortgage has the insurance rolled into it. Well, why on earth would I expect that to have been done right just because we've been using this same agent for five years? Why would I expect them to know that we'd want the new policy to work the same way as the old one did - the old one which they have in their files and which they brokered for us in the first place?

I will say at least I'm glad they told us about that in advance... but it wasn't an isolated accident as you can see. More like part of a huge wondrous clusterfuck.

So Friday afternoon while I was out of town, got a call on the answering machine at home and my voicemail at work, saying there were "some concerns" with the homeowner's policy and could we call. So today I call.

Turns out when the insurance company did their inspection, they found this and this and this and they won't cover us. So therefore they've given us until Friday to do something else. One of the issues he thinks may be an issue for other companies too but he's going to look and he thinks he has one company that doesn't do inspections but he's not sure.

So I'm like, scuse me... when was this inspection about which I knew nothing? Um, he says, well, the date of this letter from the insurance company is April 27. Okay, so ten days later you're calling... but whatever. Perhaps the carrier pigeon was old and slow. Let that one go. So my next question, which I did not mean to be accusatory at all, and which I think was phrased politely, was, "Is there some reason we weren't told in advance about this inspection?"

All defensive. Well insurance companies have a right to inspect the properties they're going to insure. Never said they didn't, dude (although - do they? I will be reading the application to see if it includes permission for them to be on my property without notification). All I asked was if it was supposed to be a surprise. So I said, look - I know the fact that the previous company stopped writing policies in this state had nothing to do with you, but I have to tell you I have not been happy with the level of communication in this whole process of changing over.

Another defensive response, or actually, no, it was the SAME defensive response. Insurance companies have the right to inspect, just like we have the right to photograph your house for our files. And I said, "I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that the communication has been lacking. If we had known in advance there was going to be an inspection, perhaps some of these problems would not have been issues at all, because we could have taken care of them. I feel like we've been told things after the fact that we would have been better off knowing in advance." I would like to point out that that I did not go all Adam Sandler Wedding Singer on him and say, "these are things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!"

The guy says AGAIN - insurance companies have the right to inspect properties. We're just the middleman. Me - "I know that. Which is why I feel the communication should have been your job. You are the one who knows insurance, not me. If I had any idea there might have been an inspection, maybe we could have fixed some of these things."

Him - same song AGAIN. Okay, could we illustrate any more perfectly that he and I have serious communication problems?? This time though, the song did have the added verse that if I want to look elsewhere, that's certainly my right. So I said, look, I'd rather not. I just want to get this taken care of with as few surprises as possible. So he said he'd look for another quote and get back to me, and he took my phone number which he already had.

I'm going to see if I can get my husband to call him and take the tack of seeing if we can get a copy of the inspection, or at least get details of what was wrong so we can fix it. One of the items was mold on the siding. You know what, it's not mold - it's deck wash. Okay, so we should clean that up. But it's not mold. One of the other items was that we have a tree house - that's the one he thinks may be an issue for other companies too. It was there when we moved in and it's just there in the way back of the yard where no one ever goes (not that we have 500 acres of land but it's way in the back) and it is getting decrepit and does need to come down. My husband and I are not equipped to do that ourselves without killing ourselves but we really do need to see what we can do to get that down. The third item? Peeling trim paint. Peeling fucking trim paint. Since when do you get turned down for insurance for peeling trim paint? I looked ALL around the house when I got home. The only place the paint is peeling is on the front porch railing. Good grief, I guess we should just tear the whole place down.

But when did this happen, that you're not allowed to tell someone that you are not satisfied with their service? When did it become the procedure that when a customer says, nicely and not all up in your face, "I am unhappy with how this has been handled," that you respond with anger? What happened to wanting to help solve your customer's problem? And God forbid you should apologize. Even the non-apology "I'm sorry you feel that way" would have been better than just trying to prove to me how wrong I was.

Oh, final cherry on top? Our insurance agent is our next door neighbor's brother-in-law. Hopefully they won't come over and break our windows.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -