What To Do If There Is An Underpayment Of Claims Issue With Your Insurance

Paying your premiums on insurance policies that you hold is something you probably do religiously. You have to pay them on time each month or else run the risk of having them lapse on you. This is all very clear and laid out in plan sight. However, the insurance company itself is not always so generous with its handling of these claims.

In certain situations, the insurance companies will act out of turn to delay the payment of a valid claim or in some cases even underpay the claim.

Insurance companies are obviously for profit businesses. Sometimes it seems that they take that label very seriously. They will often put their profits ahead of taking care of their customers as they should. That leaves customers in the lurch as they are not receiving the agreed upon benefits that they had been expecting this whole time.

The insurance companies will deploy whatever tactics they can to try to stall or under pay the claims they receive. That is a huge problem for policyholders not getting what they agreed to in the first place. At the same time, the insurance companies often point to Wall Street and the expectations of their shareholders as reasons why they are not paying out their claims as scheduled.

In the event that the type of insurance under discussion here is accident insurance you might notice the habit of insurance companies to offer a quick but very low settlement for your claim. They are trying to get you to accept that offer and therefore not necessarily receive all of the funds that you really need to treat your injuries. It is a tactic that sadly does work on some people. They are so desperate to have those funds that they will accept the offer.

While this can be a troubling turn of events, it is something that insurance companies may try to pull on you. Another thing that they sometimes do is delay the payment for as long as possible in the hopes that you will get more financially desperate and then take them up on a lower offer that they present to you.

Either of these tactics is very demeaning and disturbing. They are also completely unnecessary and might involve getting a lawyer called in to help resolve them. You don’t necessarily want to have to turn to that as your first answer, but the insurance companies may push you in that direction due to the actions they have been taking themselves.

Keep something in mind about all of this. The insurance company has a legal obligation to you just as much as you have an obligation to them to pay your premiums on time. They expect you to do just that as instructed each and every month. If you fail to do so, you are running the risk of lapsing insurance. When they fail to keep up their end of the bargain they ought to face consequences as well. That is why you need an attorney.

Stop even responding to insurance companies trying to give you a low ball offer at a settlement. They are just trying to test the waters to see how little they can get off the hook paying you. When you respond in any way to these offers, you are giving them some indication of which way you are leaning on things. Don’t give them the luxury of having that information to operate with. You can tell them the next time they contact you that all future contact will have to go through your attorney. You will be surprised by how quickly this causes some of them to straighten up their act and start treating you differently.

An attorney jumping into the case means that you will now have someone who is always in your corner. You can call upon that attorney as needed during different junctures of the legal process. They will help you with the complicated mess that the law sometimes is. They will also negotiate directly with the insurance company to make sure they understand who they are dealing with. You can typically see a change in demeanor with these companies when they realize that there is an attorney involved.

Consider how the insurance company has been treating you and if that treatment should be allowed to go on without challenge. For most people the answer to that question is a very obvious “no”. That is the moment when you realize that you need an attorney in order to work through this thing in ways that only you could. Make sure you get in touch with them right away and figure this thing out. It is the only way to get what you need out of this situation. It is not a pretty one to be in, but that is what lawyers are there to help you with.