2/11/10

[yagathai]

Work on my apartment has been moving ahead of schedule. The structure has been repaired and remediated (nominally, at least -- it still reeks of smoke, but the insurance company won't pay for refinishing the floors or replacing the ductwork, and there's only so much ozone generators can do), and the property, ie my stuff, has either been written off or repaired. I'm expecting that a lot of it will be technically "repaired" but still unusable, but it wouldn't be an insurance company if it didn't try to screw me at least a little bit, right? I know they didn't do a full restoration process on any of my books, so even though some of them might still be readable, their resale value will be destroyed.

What's holding us back right now are the dry cleaners, who are technically part of the property claim but for byzantine bureaucratic reasons treated as entirely separate thing. Today I got the news that they are billing the insurance company $7000 -- yes, with three zeroes -- for dry-cleaning all of the salvageable clothes. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? That's almost half our maximum claim allowance. Hell, I could have easily replaced my entire wardrobe for a fraction of half of that amount. I am dead certain that between the two of us (remember, that includes my roommate's stuff too) we didn't have $7K in clothing, and that counts a *mumble*hundred dollar Brooks Brothers dinner jacket and my roomie's shoe collection. How much did they charge us per piece, I wonder?

Also, the small "emergency" job they did so we had clothes to wear immediately after the fire did not fill me with confidence, as they mangled, tore or burned at least 20% of what they were supposed to clean.

The claim manager lady was also unhappy with their bill, so we're wrangling that back and forth now, but if we can resolve that portion of the claim, we might be able to move back in by next week!

Comments

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

But it's the insurance company paying them, not me, so I dunno.