[Steve9930]

Originally Posted by CSwofford147@comcast.net

I would have to say that most Villagers have fire insurance on there property. I would like to know from the people of the Villages, how many have dropped there fire insurance on there property. There are many people here who have owned property for 50 years and carried Fire insurance and never used so it would seem that there would be no good reason to keep it. So who needs sinkhole insurance it does not happen very often so why have it There have been many comments on TV from Villagers regarding Sinkhole insurance fraud and how we got to this mess. I would very much want to hear from Villagers about there experience with fire claims. In particular if any one knows anybody who burned down a property and got away with it. There are highly trained investigator's who investigate fires if there is even a hint of Arson or insurance fraud. These investigators just about every time determine whether fires are of natural causes or they are set. This determination is made in order for the insurance company to determine if there was fraud involved and whether they should pay the claim.
It would seem that if insurance companies have put in place a system to detect very complex and hard to detect insurance fraud like arson that it would not be to hard train people as to what is real sinkhole claims and fraud. It is my understanding that before the change in the sinkhole insurance law claims were often paid with out checking or investigating these claims. If anyone in the Villages thinks that people could not be trained to investigate these claims I would like to hear from them. I think and would like to know what people think as to whether this is a lack of resolve, interest and quite possibly the fact that companies do not think there enough easy money to made. To take the issue one step further I would like to know what Villagers would think about there being possible civil and criminal penalties for trying to defraud insurance companies by making fraudulent claims to the insurance about sinkhole damage. These type of penalties make people think long and hard before they try to burn down buildings for profit. At this point there is no reason not to make fraudulent sinkhole insurance claims and every reason to do it. .

The geological testing to determine whether there is or is not a sink hole under your home is not a trivial expense. The problem with the original law is if there was sink hole activity in the area and you had a few cracks that appeared in your home the insurance company had to investigate the claim which was not a simple walk around the property. The second problem with sink hole coverage vs Catastrophic Ground Collapse is the old law did not force you to use the money to fix the problem. Insurance companies always take the road of giving you the smallest check. So the Insurance company looked at it from the point do I want to spend all this money to look to see if there really is a sink hole or just pay the claim. Of course that type of behavior spread to those looking for free money very quickly. So there is plenty of blame as to who caused this problem. The way it works now is there will be an obvious sink hole, that has compromised your property and the money will be used to fix the problem if it can be fixed. If its jus a little settling then its your dime to fix it. I looked into sink hole insurance and although I could get it, it looked like it was a waste of money. The deductible was so high that Catastrophic Ground Collapse would cover it anyway if it cost that much to fix.