You can protect your pipes from freezing by insulating outside walls and unheated areas of your home; wrap pipes nearest the exterior walls and in crawl spaces with pipe insulation or with heating tape; try to keep your home warmer to prevent pipe freezing if possible; or, allow your faucets to drip lukewarm water to minimize freezing during severe outside temperatures.

The Importance of Planning

Recently my Brother passed away after a fight with cancer. Unfortunately he did no life insurance planning which ended up in a horrible nightmare for his wife. Please take the time and review what your family needs to survive if you are gone. Regardless of who you buy the life insurance from, get it done. I wouldn't wish the results of not planning on my worst enemy.

Allstate Fighting Fraud

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Allstate Insurance Company Files $2.9 Million Fraud Case Against Fraudulent Medical Corporations

Allstate Insurance Company Files $2.9 Million Fraud Case Against Fraudulent Medical Corporations. Allstate Insurance Company filed a $2.9 million medical fraud case against fraudulent medical corporations. The lawsuit is the company’s sixth this year in New York, for a total of nearly $10M in damage

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Maximizing Discounts

Maximizing discounts when you purchase insurance is consumer wise. For instance, having your home and auto together garners a 25% discount on your home insurance and a substantial discount on your auto insurance at Allstate. Did you know you could get a discount in some cases for receiving your bills by email versus paper? Did you know paying your bill electronically can earn another discount? Annual Reviews with your agent are important.

Correcting Fire Protection Class

Insurance companies are beginning to subscribe to ISO to properly determine the correct Fire Protection Class for the property insured. Each property (home or rental) has a specific contractually-obligated Fire Department that is it's primary responder. The property owner may have believed that XYZ FD was the department handling them at the time they bought their property insurance. Now, with the correction, they may find that another department handles them and this may cause an increase in premium because the correct Fire Department may not have the equipment or rating of the department formerly believed to be the correct department. Insurance companies are taking action and adjusting premiums. You need to know.

GEICO versus Allstate

I had the staff all shop GEICO to get the GEICO EXPERIENCE. Some of the observations are:

1) While all times they asked if we knew liability limits, they did not ask about any other coverage.
2) They attempted to close three times on the average and one Rep became annoyed when he couldn't close my wife.
3) The quote was given as a 6 MONTH PAID-IN-FULL PRICE without ANY discussion of what coverage was being quoted.
4) No Motor Vehicle Reports or SS numbers were given so we were told this was the ABSOLUTE best rate.
5) When we received the email follow up it included a link to the quote which was for MANDATORY PIP, $500 deductible for Comprehensive and Collision. The Uninsured did match the liability limits.

While it is easy to find fault with a company we have all been with for years the bottom line is that GEICO versus Allstate was $379.30 versus $386.10, respectively, WITHOUT A MULTI-POLICY DISCOUNT ON THE ALLSTATE. Other staff quotes actually had BETTER rates than GEICO.