I would say no. Years ago my inlaws filed two claims in a year....one was for damage to a visiting car done by their large dog jumping up on it and scratching it. Then a few months later lighting struck the home and took out most of the electronics. They got dropped. It REALLY sucks that you pay for insurance, then when you genuinely need to use it, they drop you. It doesn't seem like it should even be legal.

You said the key word: tile. Tile, like brick, is hard to color match. The color differs from firing to firing. Usually, all the tile for one roof comes from one batch of kiln firing. Look into other tile makers to see if they can come close to matching the style and color of your tile. You'll need to take along a sample tile. One alternative would be to remove all the tiles from the roof section that will be rebuilt and mix the old tiles with the new tiles. The roof will have a shingled effect rather than a continous color. However, this is a lot of work and it appears that your insurance company will not cover the extra labor. You may have to hire a lawyer or offer to pay for the extra labor. There is an upside. From your description, your house may have been saved because it had fire resistant roofing material. Remind your insurer that they could have been paying for an entire house, not just a roof repair.

Well, this has definitely been a learning experience for us! We've not been happy with the level of responsiveness from our insurance company although it supposedly is ranked as one of the top companies in the country. In many ways they have screwed up from the get go. So, we've been feeling that we are definitely on our own on this one. After more than a month of hassling this, we are starting to think that perhaps we should have just hired a GC. But, at the start we didn't realize that the scope of the necessary repairs would keep expanding into the realm where a GC might be necessary. Our adjuster just told us to find some companies to bid on the heating and plumbing work (all that we initially thought was involved). As we get further into this, we are realizing all of the additional things that will need to be worked on. I guess we are lucky in that we have the funds in hand to pay for some of the initial expenses such as temporary lodging and initial diagnostic work on the house. A number of times we've talked about how in the world people who don't have the extra money would be able to handle making these payments and then waiting for reimbursement. Our insurance company didn't even step up and offer any assistance with finding temporary lodging until more than two weeks into this. And, then, they didn't have any better options than I'd managed to find after hours and hours of searching on my own. I think some of the issues we are having are due to our wanting to do things our own way to make sure they are done correctly and in a manner suitable to a 100 year old house. The insurance company has four approved contractors in our city, and if we had chosen to work through them all of the money would have gone directly to them through the insurance agency without us having to be involved at all. But, we started looking into reviews of those companies, and they weren't great. So, we opted out of using those approved contractors. We are ending up acting as our own GC, but it is a lot of work! We are lucky we have the time to do this. Yes, we have just considered paying off the rest of the mortgage and could do that. But, we live in a pretty pricey house and that is a good chunk of money that we might want to have available elsewhere in this entire process. So, we are sitting on that idea for a bit. And, when asking about pocketing some of the money by doing work on my own, my intent is not to defraud or raise rates. I just want to know why I could not do the painting myself since I am as capable as the professional that I know the insurance company will be paying a pretty penny to do the same work. So, are some of you suggesting that we just hire a GC, have the GC make a bid for the entire project, and then make our own arrangements with the GC on how we could save some of the total sum by doing the work ourselves? Thanks for all of the advice and personal experiences.

A ticket should be public record, but contact the officer who was at the scene. I imagine it could be that it's not public data until they either admit guilt and pay the fine or go to court. Did you get a copy of the police report yet? If so, it should have the insurance company and policy number of all drivers, including other info. Often it will say whether a ticket was issued but it's usually not a big deal to call the officer. It might take a few days to get back to you. Oh, wait, I see you did get the report. Whether a ticket was issued really won't make a lot of difference though as far as repairing the vehicle. Being on the road automatically makes the driver partly to blame. Just depends on how much. Around here, 20%-30% is pretty common. I don't keep an attorney on hand. I know of some I would use for certain things but they also charge $200-$600 or more per hour. I've represented myself in court 3 times and won every time. If you have a serious injury, yes, I'd say consult a lawyer, but if you're going to have one represent you on negotiating for a car repair... SHEESH! You *really* want to pay $400+ per hour to have him/her talk on the phone and write some letters, then relay to you? I sure wouldn't! LOL I highly doubt you'll stand a chance of being reimbursed for legal fees for negotiating a car repair! The insurance company is under no obligation to buy you a new car unless you have special coverage. They go by the insurance rate books for book value on a vehicle. And no, things like new tires, a new battery, etc will not increase the value as some people think it should. Low mileage will raise value and good condition but often an old car in excellent shape isn't going to be worth what the owners usually think it should be. And in fairness to the insurance company, it shouldn't unless everyone is ready to pay more for their insurance. So if book value is $10k and the damage approaches it, they'll probably total it and ink you a check. If it's under that, they'll pay for the repair. And if you choose to not repair the vehicle they can deduct a portion, something like 25%-30% as I recall. Now keep in mind laws vary from state to state so asking legal advice online is a precarious thing to do. You will need to do your homework. Also keep in mind that most of the adjusters have more than one person they're dealing with so they might not be available to you at every moment you want them. Questions and the like can be routed through your agent. That's what they get paid for. They certainly should be able to tell you a time frame for things and whether the delays are normal or not. Sometimes it can be a good thing to have it totaled, buy it back and fix it. However it depends on what they can get for salvage value too. And occasionally they have people lined up to get insurance recoveries so it can up the price of it. I negotiated my one settlement as $___ plus I keep the vehicle. Although that was an old car and they really didn't want it anyway. It's a stressful time. Keep your head. Keep calm. Things will work out. BTW, Great Northern Insurance Agency in Chicago is an insurance broker so they handle several companies. This is neither good nor bad. I used to be with a broker. I liked the idea of several options since my agent would regularly check which company had better rates for me and would switch me around. Now with a single company, I have to do the checking. Anyway, it should be easy enough to do a little homework from the info you have to determine if it's this agency or if there's an insurance company called Great Northern. If you want to do more legwork, then deal directly with the other insurance company. If you want to let your company do the work, let them. You might get a better settlement if you represent yourself but you'll trade off time and frustration, plus you'll be going up against a "professional" most likely so do you feel confident? As long as you understand the assignments of blame and the like and understand and research values, etc, you could do OK. There's truth to the statement that insurance companies want to settle for as little as they can, but there's another factor few people understand. The quicker they can settle it, the less it costs them in some ways too so if they spend a few more dollars to get a quick settlement, it's to their benefit. This is why insurance companies settle rather quickly with each other even taking a bit less. Close the file and move on. Have you had a chance to get an estimate on it yet? That should give you more info on deciding how you want to approach it. Naturally all caveats and disclaimers apply since my experiences are with Minnesota laws, not Illinois. Around here, replacement coverage only applies on Homeowners policies. With a new car, certainly it's going to be different and they'd be more amenable to totaling a 3 week old vehicle since the reclaim value on that car would be quite high. Fix it and sell it. I had an uncle in the auto parts business for a lot of years and he bought totals, fixed and sold them, among other things. Good luck. Try not to let it bug you too much. As long as nobody was seriously hurt, the car is a small thing in the grand scheme of life.