AAA Homeowners Insurance Reviews

Before this visit we got a letter stating that "the following payment has been made," it's for $3,350.94 for "dry cleaning". Our fabrics, that had primary contamination of mold spores, were taken from the house and had been transported over 100 miles away to a warehouse (another Direct Network of AAA). This did not make sense to us. These were items that should be disposed of and given replacement value, as our policy states. It's not cost effective to dry clean.

Meanwhile, the adjuster showed up almost a month later, never checked to see if we have contracts with any contractors, didn't give us the choice of our own contractor (they state these substandard contractors will rebuild our house); our house was gutted and later I found out without county permits. I'm concerned because there are health and safety issues involved here. Most of it went into the dumpster(s) and they put contaminated items in our garage which had no damage at all. Our 275-gallon tank of diesel fuel lock is combo'ed open and it's gone. AAA adjuster stated to get it refilled, fax them the receipt and they'd reimburse us.

That never happened and we faxed it several times. We should have called the sheriff and filed a report for over $500 of stolen property. My keys to the house and fence and shed were never found. We had to cut locks off. I hired a Public Adjuster who received 10% of any check AAA wrote except when AAA found out we had a county building inspector find there were no permits, they forked over a large check to the Public Adjuster only for almost $25k (apparently later we find out they never paid the contractors who gutted our house and told them to go after us for their money. They couldn't sue us because we have no contract, so they sold their debt to a collection agency who then sued us for almost $40k).

Next, we got a mold clearance report from one of their Certified Industrial Hygienist. But when I went to see the house, I could physically see mold still. They stuck by the clearance report. I did not trust them. So, I hired my own CIH, paid out of pocket (they reimbursed us out of $10k mold limit money), and it showed that it should not have cleared. They gave us a check for the rest of the mold limit money. Next, their electrician (another Direct Network Contractor), again traveled many miles, cleared our house and stated that it was ready for all drywall. When I flipped the breakers back on to the house, smoke started coming out of one of the attic vents. Again, you can't trust them. I hired my own electrician who found safety issues, voltage lines not capped off... AAA's electrician sent us his resume and stated he didn't have a ladder. Our house could have caught fire!

I filed complaints with the CA Department of Insurance (they sent AAA my letter and AAA gave me another year for statute of limitations to sue them because they never gave me proper paperwork. Usually, you only have one year statute of limitations to sue from date of loss), CA Contractors Board and tried contacting several lawyers in the state of CA. No lawyer would take it on contingency.

I got very ill. I had just had a baby when this loss happened, and my immune system was not very strong. I had salivary gland infections in both glands, stiff neck with meningitis-like symptoms that I was hospitalized and given Vancomycin Antibiotic IV and other antibiotics for (had to stop nursing my baby), shingles, and I'm in my 30's.

It's been three years and my fabrics are still at the dry cleaning warehouse. Knowing that these items very well could still have contamination, I recently showed up to take photos and have the fabrics tested by a CIH. I paid to find priceless, disturbing facts. The items continue to be contaminated with toxic "active" mold growth. These are items that were to be delivered back to the house and used on a daily basis. We were never given replacement costs for these fabrics.

This has been a journey of pure injustice that affects the health and safety of my family, others and me. Throughout this claim, we were promised that AAA would get us back to "Pre-Loss Conditions" as our policy promises. I have done and learned that you have to be your own advocate and do not trust that what you are told to be the truth. You have to fight for and sometimes die for the truth because it is your family and your home.

AAA is telling us that the damage is due to the mortar used to install the tile flooring becoming de-bonded from the concrete slab and that the tile was installed adjacent to the hard stops (i.e. walls). No final deliberation has been made, but they have weaseled out of paying for anything thus far. Obviously, tiles lifting up following a bad slab leak are related to the leak. We signed on with AAA because of their excellent record with car service. Unfortunately, their insurance business is sorely lacking in integrity and honesty. If they will not come to bat for us in such an obvious and minor instance of damage, heaven help us if a hurricane hits! No one has given us an ounce of support or real listening. I discourage anyone from signing on with this inferior and despicable company.

I had Farmers Insurance previously (who I will gladly go back to) and reported a similar problem (both AC issues). Farmers deployed an adjuster who gave me the option to pursue action. AAA is a call center and lets you deal it! I received a $317 bill from the water restoration co. for doing nothing but locating the leak. Even they said that they've never had an insurance company put the bill on the client. I paid an AC company to repair the leak and no serious damage was done ($150). Lucas was condescending, loud and direct on the phone, defensive and quite unprofessional. I was not angry when I called but furious when I hung up. Absolute disappointment and will not refer anyone to this company. They should stick to roadside assistance. Farmers will appreciate my business again.

I called AAA and they refused to remove it stating that they don't remove any claims. They stated that anytime you call a claims department to see about coverage, it is considered a claim because they have no way of determining our coverage without filing a claim. It was a horrible experience with multiple people. I was planning on going back to AAA in March when we completed a new home construction (currently renting). Now, I will never ever go back to AAA. They lost a customer for life and I will let as many people as possible know about my experience.

Well, how come my rates never decreased when I had perfect credit? But like so many others, circumstances arose and I had to make that painful decision. I have never missed a payment or was late since it is automatically deducted from my account. My agent won't even return my calls. I feel that it is ridiculous that your credit score should have any effect on my rates considering my past record. I have contacted another insurance company and will be switching next week. As I stated above, loyalty doesn't mean anything anymore. I hope this makes others aware and realize that they aren't alone.

My next contact will be the department of consumer protection. This has been going on for more than a year. Recently, I also had a tree limb fall during a storm, and damage a recreational vehicle on my property, which they claim should be covered by other insurance. It's a terrible company. Believe me if this happened to me, how many others are misled?

We have only been with AAA for a year, but after our experience with them for this unfortunate accident, I would have to say that we are really happy with not only our rates, but the services we received. This is not a complaint. Under the circumstances, we feel very fortunate about the way we were treated by AAA of South Florida.

So on the day that my policy was supposed to start, they withdrew the agreed upon amount out of my account, for the first three months of the policy coverage. The agent told me that within 10 days, I would get all of the paperwork on my policy. Last Friday, I got those papers and was outraged when I read them. No one ever came out to look at my home. They just required that I take a picture of the front and back of my house and send it to them. Evidently, some underwriter decided that by those pictures, my house was suddenly raised to $274,000 for the dwelling and added on an additional $27,403 for other structures on my property, which do not exist, as I have no other structures on my property. So I have no clue what pictures they were looking at.

They also upped the contents to $164,000. It all added up to my premium now being upped to $979 a year, with a $1,000 deductible, which is more than three times what my house is worth. I immediately called this so-called agent, and tried telling him about the bill that I just received, and how totally wrong it was. I couldn't even get a sentence out before he cut me off and told me to shut up. I was appalled to be talked to this way, when I had every right to be angry and questioning this man as to what was going on. I tried telling him that this was unacceptable, and he hung up on me. I then tried calling the company headquarters, and was told by them that I had to handle this problem through my agent, which of course I knew by then was going to be impossible, since he was such a rude and unprofessional person.

I tried calling him back, and got his voicemail, so I left a message telling him that I, or anyone else in my position, had every right to be upset; and that since they had my bank account number, I was upset that they could just deduct the added amount they now said that I owed, even though the underwriter had clearly screwed up so badly; and that I was advising him that I did not give my consent for them to deduct one more dime from my account, as I would be looking for insurance elsewhere. A while later, I got a call back from this rude, boorish man stating that he refused to listen to my entire message, and that I should just call him when I had other insurance and he would cancel my account with AAA, and then he hung up on me again.

I am 55 years old, and have been a homeowner for 30 years, and have never been treated so badly, or so unprofessionally with any other insurance company or its so-called agents in my life. This so-called agent, whose name is James **, and is based in Lee's Summit, Missouri, was as nice and sweet as he could be to get my business, but once he had it, and his company clearly screwed up royally on my policy, he became nothing but rude and condescending to me. He basically told me that I had no right to question what was going on. He is the epitome of the smarmy used car salesman, who sells you a lemon and knows it, and then laughs in your face when it breaks down, and tells you that he will do nothing about it.

I guess I am lucky that I found out how bad this company is before I had to make a claim with them on damage to my home. But I am still angry that I wasted all this time on this horrible and unprofessional company. They should stick to being an auto club membership company, and get out of the insurance business, as they totally suck. Stay as far away from this company as you can get, and if you do get scammed by them, as I did, then check your state insurance dept. about making a complaint against them. I did here in Missouri, and was told by the woman that I talked to that there was definitely something wrong with how I was treated by this unscrupulous company.

They will now have 20 days to respond to my formal complaint with the state, but I am sure that they will lie and find some way to blame me for it, even though I was the one who did everything that was requested of me, and they got my money, only to then try and get away with what I see is fraud - plain and simple.

It also mentioned the bracing standards in approved building codes, and water heater secured to building frame. How vague is "approved building codes?" That is an escape of responsibility. AAA knows your address and these codes should be defined in accordance with or citation of a particular State, and/or any other applicable building code.

AAA is scamming homeowners. This document is extremely vague. It isn't informing the insurance-holder of anything specifically, but states an undefined "requirement." This looks more like the sales staff concocted it, particularly with the ad for the AAA-recommended building companies. The language is not legal language. What can be done? Has anyone else received a removal of their $1,000 deductible and replaced with 15% of damages deductible with various surprising disclaimers?

AAA wrote to me to fill out an itemized list of my missing belongings and damages to my property. AAA stated they would be able to obtain the police report even months later, and failed to do so. I repeatedly called AAA to get this resolved. They changed agents, and gave me the runaround. I turned the other cheek, and I in turn, notified the court’s hall of records in Redwood City, CA. The clerk told me the Sheriff’s Dept. would issue a new report. They sent me to pick it up, and the Sheriff became uncooperative, and refused. AAA stated they cannot honor my claim, without the police report stating my property was stolen.

They wanted pictures. I sent in pictures of my horse trailer, the damages, and pictures of more than 11 horses I raised, and showed on the equestrian circuit. Thus, to prove I had equipment and farm/ranch supplies/horses for the past 40 years. I also have proof of my horse registration papers, equestrian club papers, family and friends who will verify my past/ownership of my property.

AAA stated they would be able to get the Police report, and thereafter failed to follow through. I went to the court filings of police reports records. They told me if they can't find the police report, they will make a new report for the insurance company and me. They sent me to the sheriff’s dept., and they refused and gave me the runaround, wasting my time. They also stated that I might be doing insurance fraud, and they are not giving me a police report. I told them to arrest me for it then, and investigate the perpetrators, and search their property for my stolen items.

I went back to the court house records, and she gave me proof of incident, and AAA refused to pay my claim for loss and damages on my home/renter's owner’s insurance claim. I attempted every way possible to get the police to do their job, but they refused. Now, AAA wants to interpret the unofficial incident report I retrieved from court records the way they want, and refused payment.

AAA is contradictive, and sent me on a wild goose chase to jump through their hoops, with no intentions of ever paying my claim. I have paid into my renter's insurance for approximately a half of a decade, or more. If you have attorneys that could help, I am in Palo Alto, CA. Please connect me to an attorney in my area to get this resolved with the Sheriff's Dept. and AAA insurance.

The AAA agent who handled my policy change said he was sympathetic, but it was out of his hands, so I subsequently asked if I could at least get an extension to have the chimney rebuilt, until the outside temperature was high enough to allow the mortar to set. The agent ignored my request, and because the expiration date that AAA had given me (1/06/2012) was so close, I found another insurer. My suspicion is that this was an instance of redlining by AAA, since I was willing to comply with their demand, and only requested additional time to do so.

I found another insurer, who agreed with my assessment of my chimney, and did not require any repair to it. Still, since I hope to sell the house this year, and because the cost to rebuild it was less than $500.00, I paid to have it rebuilt within 2 weeks of the expiration date AAA had given me. I can't understand where this could be anything other than redlining.

I spoke with an AAA rep Phil ** at AAA San Bernardino office, and gave him the appropriate papers to confirm the installation of the system, including the fire monitoring feature, and was told I would be receiving a check refund to my year-long prepaid premium. I expected around $200. The check was for $38.00, and I'm more than a little disappointed. I thought I'd just let you know.

Now, we are halfway done and we are still begging for the rest of the money. We have been lied about when the money was mailed and sent out. We are still waiting for a response from him on that. He never called us back about anything, we are so disappointed. We are never going to recommend this company to anyone.

Then, AAA started stalling, repeatedly claiming not to have received required forms (a number of which I had personally hand delivered to the AAA office!). They stalled for two years then denied the claim. When I tried to hire a lawyer to sue for damages, I was told that AAA had too much legal power to bother going after no matter how much proof there was. I have not been able to find an attorney willing to challenge AAA. It really gripes me that AAA can cheat me out of thousands of dollars just by intimidation. I want to warn everyone not to expect honesty or responsibility from AAA.

I have a letter from AAA acknowledging they owe me this amount but now they don't want to pay. This numerous delays in the repair due to lack of payment of the deductible has cause emotional and financial distress over trying to get a resolution/payment from AAA so that my condo could be restored to a livable and safe conditions, still no resolution. I've opted not to renew my policy with them.

We checked with some local contractors on the projected sq. ft cost to rebuild our home, and there is a $25 - $30/sq. ft difference in their estimates versus what AAA says it would cost. Their estimate is $258/sq ft. We feel as if we are being gouged in order to help AAA rebuild their reserves.

We're a great customer and have all our insurance coverage with AAA (cars, home, earthquake and umbrella policy), take excellent care of our property so low risk and have had no claims. We asked for a re-survey with a chance to see what they thought was so incredibly different, but they denied it. The impact of this value re-assessment affects both our homeowners and earthquake coverage.

For homeowners, it is a 32.5% increase and for earthquake, it is a 28.5% increase. In these economic times, that kind of increase is a significant hardship and appears arbitrary on who gets it and who doesn't. While expected increases (eg. our car insurance with AAA went up 4.7% yty, which we find reasonable), increases in this range do not track to current market conditions, not the least of which is the cost of available labor, which is plentiful.

We hired a contractor to repair the damage. However, Kathy ** was giving us road blocks every step of the way. One big issue was the heating (A/C unit). We submitted 4 different contractor quotes for each one stating that the HVAC unit needed to be cleaned and/or replaced, as well as the duct system. Kathy ** refused to take this into consideration during the claim process. She made us take the HVAC system cleaning and duct out of the quote as she would not reimburse us for this. Kathy ** felt it was not necessary. We argued this point for over five weeks. We finally gave up and moved on, because after 6 weeks, we needed to get our house repaired.

8 months later, our HVAC system has failed. We called a repair service Air Repair, and they found grease, dirt, and smoke residue on the inside of the system causing the failure due to the fire in March. We called AAA. Kathy ** explained the situation on December 10, 2009. She sent one of her own A/C repair service people out to inspect as well on December 16, 2009. The tech agreed that the unit was indeed dirty, greasy, and in need of cleaning or replaced due to the fire.

Today is January 4. We still have a heating system that is not functioning properly. 30 days have passed, and the weather is not getting warm anytime soon! We were told today by Kathy ** they would not be fixing the AC heating unit, just as she did 8 months ago. She said our AC Heating unit was in the attic and not affected.

Now, if Kathy ** from AAA had done her job as an agent and inspected our damage, she would have seen our unit is not in the attic but next to the kitchen with one intake vent in the kitchen.

The unit has smoke, grease, and fire damage; and AAA continues to refuse to fix it. I have been paying on my home insurance policy for 10 years. We are entitled to all damage be repaired. Since Kathy ** never stepped foot in our house to inspect the damage, how can she determine what did not need to be repaired? AAA did not do their job neither did Kathy **. They used unfair business practices and processes in handling this claim.

We argued the following facts: 1) The night of the leaking, we called an emergency service out to place a tarp on the roof to prevent leaking. They observed proper drainage without obstruction of the gutters; 2) There was no rain on the day of the inspections, and the roof inspector did not test the gutters; 3) Significant wind occurred with the first rain storm, and we have experienced no leakage from any rainstorms prior to the most recent storm when wind had preceded the event. It now has been 3 weeks, and we still are trying to get an answer while our walls continue to maintain humidity, facilitate mold growth, and propogate further structural damage. We have to call AAA daily and get shuffled around without any resolution. Brian has neglected to provide us with any definitive answer as to whether our damage will be covered by AAA and no direction in how to go about resolving the problem. He states that he still is waiting for the roof inspector report...

The consequences economically and structurally remain undetermined.

The insurance company denied access to my wife when we were trying to inventory the contents of our house. She arrived at the storage warehouse to finish the inventory and Class A Cleaners (the warehouse operators) told her the insurance company had closed it to her because they were going to do their own inventory.

The insurance company hired people to do the inventory and they mixed up the boxes to the point where we could not do a complete inventory without doing the whole job over. The insurance company has never provided us with a complete inventory from thier records.

The adjustor delivered a final check to the contractor without my authorization. After I had specifically told them in person and in writing that no check was to be issued without my express authorization. They did this with both the contractor and the storage firm.

Our policy has a clause that says I can sue them according to state law. I filed a complaint against them with the Oklahoma State Department of Insurance. I have since found that according to insurance law, I had to sue them within one year of the date of the loss instead of within three years of the date of the loss. The insurer never told me about the provision. Because they issued payment to the builder, I had no leverage to force him to repair items that were poorly done.

The builder's subcontractors installed warped doors, painted hardware on the doors, drew pictures on the wall in the garage, made holes in the walls and ceiieling in the garge to run wiring, left the cold air return vent out of the heating system for the downstairs (which starved my heating system and made our heating and cooling bill go up approximately 20%), installed drywall so poorly that you can see the outline of the ceiling drywall joints and on the walls in several places. I had to sue the builder to recover the cost of repairing the damage. If the insurer had not been so unprofessional, I could have had the work repaired by withholding final payment until it was satisfactory. The heating and air conditioning part will require another law suit to recoup cost of repairing their poor work.

The adjustor come to our house to try to finalize the loss. He insulted my wife, and left without finishing the adjusting because she reacted to him immediately. He then sent a check for the amount he arbitrarily set. Several items were not agreed to by me, and some were not discussed at all. He is offering a final settlement of about $3500. There is about $11,000 to $13,000 left to be settled.

His people estimated a cost of $1 each for Kodak slide tray boxes (the actual cost was between $5 and $6 per box. We feel there were at least twenty boxes of contents that we never inventoried due to the insurance company's interference. They have refused to pay for replacement of items such as drum rack clamps that were custom built to my son's specifications, they have refused to pay for replacement of a custom-built weight lifting rack (they call it homemade). They have refused to pay for electronic equipment that has never been returned to us, or has been damaged by water and smoke. We now have estimates for the repair and replacement. We intend to make one more try before going to arbitration.

The claim is not settled yet. And it has been over two years.

If we had been poor people without funds to weather this situation, I am confident the adjustor would have forced us to lose money on everything and that he would have been a very happy individual. He appears to enjoy making people feel uncomfortable and taking advantage of them. He seems to be very upset because I would not capitulate.