Day 7 – Driving to New York to begin Insurance Adjusting

Woke up early on Sunday morning and drove to Long Island. Once I got my claims and mapped out where they were, my wife got on craigslist.com in Long Island and found someone who was renting out rooms. $300 a week seemed a much better deal than $200 a night, even if I did have to make some comfort sacrifices. Gas was being rationed on Long Island based on the number on your license plate.  So I filled up before I got there and didn’t have any trouble after that.

I was close to the help room and close to 80% of my claims, so I was happy how my housing worked out. I discovered I was also sharing a house with several other adjusters. So it was nice to have some knowledge around me too.

This is where the rubber meets the road. You realize that these are YOUR claims and they expect you to KNOW your stuff. Determination and perseverance are important things to have as you walk through this.  Nobody is just waiting around to hold your hand through this. There are people to help you, but it requires effort from you to go get that help. They have way too much going on to worry about your problems.

I set up my first appointments and then went to the help room to see if they had someone who could ride along with me on my first visit to show me the ropes. The biggest thing is portraying to the insured that you’re a professional and know what you’re doing.  Since I was making the determination of how much they’d receive for their claim, I’m sure they didn’t want to know that I’d never done this before.

The ride along was very helpful on the first two claims. The first being a basement that was flooded with about 5 feet of water. The water had damaged the boiler and some AC duct work. The second claim was a home that had 20 inches of water in it.

I documented the first one and went to the help room to get assistance in writing my first claim. The help room was a good place to go. It was filled with all types of personalities though. Be ready to suck up your pride from time to time and work through your own issues. They’ll help you, but not always in the way YOU want.

Over the next several days, I got in the groove of what I was doing and spent less and less time in the help room and more time getting my claims handled.

Back to work…

John Bowers has a background in construction and decided to add claims adjusting to create a new income source.  Follow John’s journey as he shares his experiences on training and deployment.