I have great news! On November 17th, our credit card company, Citibank notified us that the dispute has been officially settled in our favor and the entire amount of our insurance premium has been permanently credited back to our account. Yippeee! For us, the hard part was following through with the documentation. I guess that our insurance company is so disorganized at this point that they could not file a case against us (plus, what they did was wrong as well). In short, thank heaven that I used a credit card to pay the premium. And speaking of credit cards, I wanted to say that several months ago I bought an item on eBay that the seller never mailed to me, nor would the seller communicate with me, even though I paid in full when the auction ended. I reported the transaction via Pay Pal (which is the only avenue eBay would let me take other than leaving negative feedback), which has a very mediocre, no, pitiful, disputes process. After a few weeks of waiting on Pay Pal to get somewhere, I finally told Pay Pal that I wanted my money back from the deadbeat seller. Here's the bad part: Pay Pal wanted to charge me $25 to pursue a claim (that's really about the amount I spent on the item), even though I'm the victim of a fraudulent seller. In fact, I believe the seller resold the item I bought in another auction. Well, if I had paid for the auction via Pay Pal's instant bank transfer method, I would have been stuck. But thanks again to my credit card (which I always use on Pay Pal, never, ever the instant bank account transfer because you don't have the same level of protection, obviously) I am disputing that charge as well. Moreover, disputing the charge via Citibank got eBays attention and they sent me a questionnaire about the transaction (what that will do, I have no idea). I'm very disappointed in eBay and in Pay Pal for the lack of support in the face of a very bad transaction, in fact, a criminal one. I am not the only one, the seller now has several negative feedback listing the same complaints as this one. In any case, thanks for helping on this homeowners insurance dispute. What a great outcome.

Hi, Cynthia. Coverage amounts seem fine. I'd ask about an endorsement that I put on all my Travelers homeowners policies. In Virginia it's Endorsement 58065 VA - Value Added Package Plus. It may already be on there, but if it's not, it's a valuable addition and is very inexpensive. It includes the Ordinance or Law Coverage as well as other valuable coverages. I prefer the PLUS level of the endorsement, but at a minimum I'd get Endorsement - 58064 VA Value Added Package. The additional cost of the PLUS over the basic VAP endorsement should only be about $30. In addition, the ACE (Additional Coverage Endorsement) is part of every policy I sell. Last change I'd make is the Personal Liability. Even though you have $300,000 limit, that's the minimum I recommend. Raising that to $500,000 is an inexpensive way to better protect yourself and your assets. You may already have all this coverage in your policy. Your agent in Virginia is the one best equipped to answer your questions. I'm not licensed in Virginia so this is not an attempt to offer counsel on your particular policy. I'm just letting you know what I do for my clients in NY. (Legal disclaimer since I cannot sell or advise in the state of Virginia) Best of luck, Cynthia! Kevin

It is true that brokers often seem able to circumvent the closed systems that many companies have. Many brokers have sufficient access to the information, so they can give the information necessary to appear they are also brokering for Company XYZ. So, it is true that brokers can get quotes, or appear to be getting quotes. To the OP: either web searching or through any other means, find a broker. Ask him/her what group, association, or whatever-they-call-it that he or she belongs to. Get that association. Contact them. Get a few more names from them. Ask each broker which firms they send most of their business to. No matter how impartial they seem to be, with their quotes, they will ultimately find ways to send most of their customers to a small number of insurance carriers. One way or another, you will be channeled into a small number of good choices. They may all be good ones. But speak to another broker. hth

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.