American Family Insurance - Homeowners Reviews

Mr. ** was simply helping himself to a healthy commission and leaving me in a bad situation with the mortgage company. Nice way to treat your veterans American Family! For all I know everything I’ve just described may earn him a pat on the back, or you can do everything in your power to correct an obvious wrong. And as I mentioned earlier, they gave him a pat on the back and suggested that I was the one who did something wrong. In my opinion Mr. ** should have his license suspended and the entire company should be investigated for their predatory and unethical practices.

I had recently been having issues with USPS (another failing entity) and had significant numbers of pieces of mail not show up even when they were on Informed Delivery. They should change that to; "YOU WILL NEVER EVER SEE THESE" as the title! Anyway, told the agent; "Look, just send the mortgage lender the cheque", and I contacted them to inform them they blew it and defield me even though I had informed them Insurance was paid through June 2025. Am Fam refused. Said they had to send me a cheque. Fine. I told them; "Send it FedEx or UPS!" So I know I'll get it...once again reminding them of my crappy USPS service. I said: "Just deduct the cost from the refund" (which was the total year's premium).

It's now early August. I sent a reminder to the person at AmFam; "Where is my refund at???" I told them I wouldn't sweat bullets until early this month about it, because over time you just will gaff it off. On the next e-mail, the agent, Mr. **, informed me after I sent his underling, Mr. **, the prior e-mail to the lady I had been corresponding with from their corporate office. He replies; "Uh, we have an issue with your roof, a whole row of shingles is missing..." (loose quote) I of course was pretty blindsided, so I went out and inspected my roof, and my neighbor's tree shed a branch, that hit the shingle, and dislodged it slightly. It was still in place, just slightly out of kilter with the rest. I had done roofing twice in my life before (whole roofs) helping friends re-roof houses they owned, so I knew the drill. Took me more time to get my ladder and tools and stuff than it took to reposition the shingle.

The agent said they had sent snail mail (which I never received) asking me to fix that. I told him I never saw that, nor was I aware of the out-of-place, single shingle panel. I informed the Customer Affairs persons in Wisconsin that the roof was fixed, and told him that he could send the inspector to re-inspect it. At the time I was informed by them that all they needed was that to be done and my coverage would be continued. Today I got the e-mail from them that they were 'cancelling' my coverage in a month (which is in fact not legal in my state, I should get 45 days notification, which I never got).

Their e-mail said; "The WHOLE ROOF MUST BE REPLACED" due to 'granulization' of the roof. The roof is 10 years old. I had demanded they send the report or I would get a court order for it, and in the report, it merely shows the 'sole' slightly out of position shingle. The roof doesn't need to be replaced. '2' Roofers nearby have seen the roof and said; "that's utter nonsense..."

The moral to the story is that if you bring up the fact they have failed to reimburse a sizeable chunk of your money due you, for no reason other than they are unwilling or incapable of following reasonable requests to avoid LOSS of the cheque, they will then just find an excuse to cancel the policy. My thoughts are that had I had a 'real' claim, they would have just 'denied it' and not paid. As it is, it's unethical to wait for two full months using; "We didn't look at the report till recently" excuse to deny coverage and cancel it.

It also contradicts their earlier: "Just fix this and we're good" e-mail. To this date I have received NO CHEQUE for refund, not one piece of mail from them, snail mail, requesting I take action. Matter of fact, had my roof 'leaked' for any reason and I found out they waited almost 2 full months to tell me they constructively knew a shingle was out of position, I would likely have sued them had they denied the repair claim resulting in the water damage.

Let this be a warning to all of you! Use this company and then ask for a refund, and then watch the sparks fly. No phone calls, no snail mails, not one word about my 'bad roof' until I wanted that refund from them. Not a peep. Not one peep. This company is the 'poster child' for UNETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES! Enough said. I kept it civil. But earlier today that may not have been possible albeit I smelled a rat when they raised the roof problem issue AFTER the inquiry about the missing refund cheque for nearly $700.00 that has been 'not delivered to me' ever. Thanks for reading. But honestly, these folks are skipper puppies to pull this, when asked just to refund the money to me they owed me.

Reading reviews for both Homesite Ins., and it's current owner American Family, it appears to be common practice to run policyholders in circles, and then deny their claim. Homesite Insurance must have bought their rating, because it does not reflect the way they do business. It appears that American Family is purchasing 2nd tier insurance companies to better their bottom line. I thought that when I purchased my renters policy from Geico, it was insured by Geico. It actually was just the opposite. They placed my renters policy with a second tiered company called Homesite Ins., which is owned by American Family Insurance. Homesite Insurance is a denial factory, bad faith insurance company, read their customer reviews, on rating services.

Here it is almost 5 month's later and I am without my personal property that was stolen. I have learned one thing from this whole situation, always check reviews on any and all Insurance Companies, before doing business with them. Homesite Insurance has 1000s of negative reviews from policyholders. I honestly believe their adjusters and so called investigators are paid bonuses to deny claims. Their so called investigator, who was an employee from American Family Insurance had me on the telephone for over an hour, threatening me several times, and trying to intimidate with most of her comments. You would very well served staying away from both Homesite Ins, and American Family. When you need them the most, they walk away from their obligations. Homesite Insurance is a perfect example of what to expect from doing business with a bad faith insurance company.

We recently received a notice from American Family that our policy was being “…nonrenewed due to claims experience on the effective date listed above.” In spite of the tortured English and lack of any date referenced by “effective date listed above”, I understood that after being a customer for 27 years and after paying American Family Insurance nearly $400,000, they were canceling my policy over a $37,000 roof replacement due to hail damage.

I contacted Amy **, my American Family Insurance Agent and met with her. Her answer was that there have been many losses due to hail in the area and lots of insurance companies are cutting back on policies in Colorado. I said I buy insurance to help me mitigate risk. It isn’t like hail is a new thing in Colorado, and if American Family Insurance isn’t any better at managing predictable risks like hail in Colorado than this, then they are incompetent at what they advertise they do.

I could understand them treating me this way if the loss was because I decided to get drunk and drive my truck through the front window and burn the building down. But, this was absolutely an act of Nature and a predictable event. Hail isn’t an “if” in Colorado. It is a “when”! Amy was cordial and was quick to point out that AmFam is happy to keep our home and auto policies in effect and we get “discounts” because we are claim-free and such low-risk, long-time customers.

I made it abundantly clear that I would never dream of treating my customers this way, and since apparently, loyalty and being a great customer means nothing to American Family Insurance, they can no longer have ANY of my business! Thankfully this is actually a blessing in disguise because a friend referred me to a wonderful insurance agent who not only matched or exceeded the coverage we had on all policies, she saved us about $2,000 per year in premiums! I should have shopped around years ago, but you know how life is and how much fun that is. Plus, I naively thought my loyalty mattered to American Family Insurance and they would step up when I needed them. Boy was I wrong!

So now I am shopping for new Homeowners & vehicle insurance for myself and my mother who lives with me for the first time since I was 17 years old. 37 years and I’ve never had a claim for an accident ever! Looking back I am ashamed of being an American Family Customer without question for as long as I have, even if American Family isn’t ashamed of how they treat their long-time multi-generational customers. I realize the only reason I was satisfied with American Family is because I never needed them to do anything for me, all I did was pay them. Sad Day.

I had two licensed roofers come to my home to bid on a roof repair and neither would attempt a repair because they said the roof would look worse by being repaired. I complained to my agent and was told, "roofs aren't a good deal for insurance companies." My roof is the only roof in my neighborhood that wasn't repaired by insurance.

A few weeks later I was in a rental car - 'thinking' I had great insurance and had a battery problem. Great! I had AmFam roadside assistance. It was 10:00 pm at night and I spent an hour trying to navigate the phone system to get me to get some 'roadside assistance'. Finally, it was easier to pay some local service $100 for a jump start than spend the night trying to get help from AmFam. The lesson I learned? Thinking I was insured by a great company and actual reality were two different things. Think twice before buying this insurance.

The damage to the inside of the house continued while we waited for another adjustor to come give a second opinion. They finally decided not to send an adjustor, and completely denied the claim. We paid extra for roof coverage. I am disgusted with this company and their blatant theft. If you have any other option for insurance, choose that. Even no insurance would be cheaper than throwing your money away with this company.