Wednesday, November 10, 2010

How time flies........

Wow!! I did not realize it has been over a year since I have blogged about anything. I guess I figured Facebook had it all covered. LOL
Well, I am still on Artfire with my wares and I also went back to selling Tupperware as well. I has been a very eventful year as usual.
I think I am beginning to dislike the Fall season, not because I know it's going to get cold, but because it always seems to bring trouble out for me.
Yep, you guessed it, another large company has decided that they would like to take my money and run.......and that they did.
Which company this time you ask? The Hartford. They are an insurance company out of Connecticut. I had our car and renters insurance through them until October when I found they had been stealing from me for 3 months and then some.
At the end of September hubby's car broke down on his way to work. I called for the Roadside Assistance and was told that I had none. So at 5 in the morning, I had to find $71.00 to pay to get him towed home. Later I go searching and lo and behold I DO have Roadside Assistance!! What's the problem then, you ask? Well, according to The Hartford I did not have it as they seemed to have changed their Roadside Assistance Policy and never notified anyone.....including the people that sell policies for them. So now they say that "towing & labor" is separate from "roadside assistance". I talked to people at Answer Financial (they sell policies for The Hartford) and no one there knew that the policy had changed. So now I am fighting to get my $71.00 back for the tow. On top of that, I cancelled my policy with them when I realized that they stole $300.00 from me as they more than doubled my car insurance premiums and didn't bother to notify me of that either. They used an almost 3 year old ticket as their excuse to raise rates. A ticket they were told about a year before when the policy was taken out.
Now I get my refund checks in the mail from them and I'm like, this can't be right. I get back on the phone to see why I was shorted almost $30.00 on my refund and get a HUGE runaround about so many days of this that and the other. I said this is NOT Pro Rata, this is Short Sale. They claim it is not and send me their breakdown in the mail. It still doesn't make it Pro Rata because they mailed it to me on paper. See, Pro Rata's definition is this: Insurance cancellation method
Calculation of return premium of a cancelled insurance policy is often done using a cancellation method call pro rata. First a return premium factor is calculated by taking the number of day remaining in the policy period divided by the number of total days of the policy. This factor is then multiplied by the policy premium to arrive at the return premium. Traditionally this has been done manually using an paper wheel calculator. Today it is normally done using an online wheel calculator.

What does The Hartford consider Pro Rata to be? They say Pro-Rate means "I was only charged for coverage provided from my policy renewal date through the date I cancelled". They did NOT take the number of days remaining on my policy (15 to be exact) and refund the premiums for the 15 days, but gave a bunch of hooey about the entire policy life of 6 months which was paid monthly and I had coverage for 80 days and they subtracted that from payments that were made and added service fees too. Arriving at a figure that is $30.00 less than what I should have gotten. Oh, and there was also a $1.40 difference in their total and the check they cut to me, in their favor of course "due to rounding".
How did I not know they jacked my premiums? Well, I would go in and check my checking account (they automatically withdrew) and I would see that they had gotten their money and would move on. I didn't catch the "jack up" until the third month when the amount jumped off the page at me. July and August didn't jump out for some reason. I just saw their name, knew the bill was paid and moved on. I figured I was short on money because I was catching other bills up. Now I KNOW why I was so short on funds.
Answer Financial is who I went through to get this insurance (through a friend) and they are supposed to be helping me get this all straightened out. I also filed a complaint with the Ohio Insurance Commission as well and they are supposed to be looking into it too.
From my figures, they owe me around $700.00. They also have to pay the labor for the car being fixed.
Stay away from The Hartford...............be afraid, be very afraid!!!

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