For those of you that have been following the saga of the repairs to our house, well, it’s almost over finally. As I wrote in the last post, we had a meeting scheduled with Delta Disaster about the finalization of our repairs. Their rep showed up and tried to present us with a check for just over $50 to pay us back for the repairs that we did that they didn’t do. This was of course discounting our $500 deductible that we worked off by emptying the contents of our dining room. It was set to cost $518 to move our dining table, six chairs and empty a closet that was supposed to tek three hours and take two men. We did it in a lot less and had those charges placed against our deductible l no problem.
We advised their rep that we had done far more the the $50 they wanted to pay us. Far more! She said she would have to look into it and get back with us as well as call our insurance company. Tracy and I sat down that evening and went through their list of what they were billing our insurance company and what we had done. In the end, we had done $1033 of what they had billed our insurance so less the $500 deductible, they owed us $533. I emailed the estimate sheets we had worked off to the company rep and contacted our insurance company and emailed copies to them as well. Well, the repair company had to look into it and just again call the insurance company. They really dragged their feet and finally last Tuesday called us and said there was a problem. Three of the items we had claimed, “labor minimums” that they add to the bill for painting the baseboard moulding, final cleanup,and the labor to install the baseboards( we did all of these thing, not them) they couldn’t pay us for them as “their computer system” wouldn’t allow them to take them off the estimate. Total fees involved were over $203 if the $533 they owed us! I told their rep that that wasn’t our problem. We expected to be paid for our work since we had done it and they hadn’t. She was a bit surprised that we wouldn’t accept that scheme of defrauding us of what we were owed. She wa svoing to have to have her supervisor call us and “explain” the problem. An hour or so later, we got the call. He was the “general manager”. He again explained that their system wouldn’t allow deleting these “labor minimums” and there was nothing he could do. My response was that was fine, cut us two checks, one for the $230 for the work we did and a second check as a straight refund for the $203. No problem, right? Well he had to talk to the owner to see what could be done about this. Gee what a surprise! Ever since this job started back in early August, they have dragged their feet. As long as our insurance was paying for the first part of the claim they were fine but once they screwed up and caused lots more damage to our house they have dragged their feet. This could all have been done in about ten days, not the five months it has dragged on. On Thursday, we got an email that they were cutting us a check for the full $533 on Friday and we should have it on Monday. This debacle may soon actually be over! I’ll believe it when the check clears.