vs. 

If it's broken, why don't you fix it?

My name is Staci Jackson and I have two daughters: Cayla 10, and Courtney 11. I am a single parent and recently earned my MA in Psychology--which isn't doing much to help me cope with my family's present distress.

You see, our home burned down September 9, 1999, and it was not insured at the time.

It should have been insured. I trusted my agent with all of my insurance needs. I thought I was in good hands with Allstate. For years, Allstate took my payments for auto and home coverage with not a word of complaint.

I bought my present home in June of 1998. The sale did not go through a mortgage company because the home was seller financed.

I paid the policy in full for the year two months after the closing date. Normally, homeowners insurance is paid at closing, but that did not happen for reasons known only to Allstate.

I knew I had another bill coming in 1999, and I was expecting it in August.

Instead, the bill was sent to the seller and it arrived in June. Under ordinary circumstances, that would not be a problem, because a quick phone call from the seller to me would take care of things. What happened, instead, was the seller died on June 2, and I did not hear from her son until the end of June. Those were extraordinary circumstances I can understand very well.

What I can't understand is why I didn't hear from the agent, who received a copy of the statement sent to me. He takes a commission from every premium I pay and he does have a responsibility for keeping his records straight. Allstate agents that I have talked to in the following months have told me they were aware of a recurring problem of an Allstate property policy "magically" changing from insured pay to lender pay. It's the agent's responsibility to catch those errors. Obviously, that did not happen.

More importantly, it is Allstate's responsibility to correct the computer glitch that has been causing these billing errors. However, I have been told that Allstate management feels it's less expensive for them to waste the agent's time and money year after year than to have a software programmer write a correction to their flawed computer software.

In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. I had already sent several change of address forms to Allstate over the previous year and they STILL kept sending mail to the wrong address. Apparently, Allstate has no compunction about wasting their policyholders' time and money either.

The agent didn't call me and Allstate's customer service seemed to be hopeless. So, when I got a call from the seller's son on July 2, I called my agent to let him know about the mistake and asked him to send the bill to me. He apologized and assured me he'd take care of things. A week or two later, instead of the bill, I got a cancellation notice!

I spent another month trying to straighten out the billing problem with my agent's office. By this time he was no longer available to take my calls, so I talked to his wife. While she was trying to help me with my problem, she told me all about theirs. Her husband was leaving the agency and had taken another job out of town. They were moving a household of nine, were very pressed for time, couldn't get to everything, etc., etc., etc.

I paid the amount I was told to pay and before the date I was told to pay it. Allstate sent it back!

The only information I got from the agent was the underwriting department said Allstate was going to an automated system and was not reinstating any policies. By that time I understood my problems were not his concern, because he had already made plans to leave.

In desperation, I spoke with a supervisor in customer service at Allstate's California call center at the beginning of September. She said she would send a message to the agent's office in the morning and he should be in touch with me the next day. Even if he didn't have the authority to reinstate THAT policy, he could have written another one. "Why didn't he write another policy?" was her question. As if I knew!

While I was trying to figure out the answer, my uninsured house burnt down to the ground.

Now I understand that agents carry a blanket policy covering errors and omissions and I have a good legal case against this former agent and Allstate. While I made some mistakes myself, I think this whole situation could have been resolved eventually. What no one could have anticipated was a fire destroying my daughters' and my home while we were wrangling over a computer glitch.

Allstate's claims department has been equally unhelpful. "Claim denied!", said the adjuster, and quite nastily after she turned off her recorder. As luck would have it, I kept mine on.

But that still doesn't help me with a current pressing problem of being homeless, out of money, and about to have the city tear down what's left of my home because it is a "public nuisance"

I think it's time Allstate took some responsibility for their own mistakes!

Staci Jackson

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