LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE

I did contract liberty mutual insurance company to provide my homeowners policy because they had the lowest premium price.  This I thought was settled two mounts before the initial closing date.  I was able to close three weeks earlier than the scheduled date.  I then informed liberty mutual insurance company of the schedule change for which they informed me of the increase because of the schedule change.  I then informed them that I was very dissatisfied with the tactic of raising the premium just before closing.  I promise to fire them after all issues pertaining to the purchase of my new home were done.  Liberty mutual insurance company then sent out a second inspector to inspect my house.  For the second time and then determined that the house did not meet their criteria.  Liberty mutual then refunded the money sent to them by the mortgage company.  In my opinion a clearly showed that liberty mutual insurance company.  Would rather show a denial of service versus being terminated by the client.  Needless to say, I then turned to Farmers Insurance Company who not only provided a superior service at an even lower price.  That made me feel as if it was better for liberty mutual insurance company to show me how they really operate early in our business relationship.  In closing, Farmers Insurance Company was more than happy to work with me to correct the issues that liberty mutual insurance company would not.  My story is true, I stake my honor on it.

Liberty Mutual Insurance were extremely helpful. They are competitive with prices, really nice on the phone, and they sent an inspector who was very thorough. We had told them that we had a new roof and he actually climbed up on the roof to look at it.

When I moved back to CO from CA in 1999, my car had just been insured through an owners club group discount through Liberty Mutual. When the owners club group discount expired, I elected to stay through Liberty Mutual, and was directed to Chad Otto (whose office was on south Havana at the time, now out of this one) .  From 2001 to 2008, Chad was my insurance agent and Liberty Mutual my insurance company, first with my car, then my condo, then my second & third cars, and an umbrella policy.  When we moved to a new house we were renting and converted our condo to a rental, he helped with the insurance transition of that, and then again later on when we bought the house we were renting.  When we had a single car accident in 2005, Chad was helpful in getting that all handled.

In late 2007, with the purchase of the house, things began to go down hill. I had been living in the house for nearly 2 years, and my wife and I had done lots of remodelling and refurbishment of the nearly 40 year old home.  Liberty Mutual sent a home inspector out for the insurance policy, who reviewed the home and found no problems.  Knowing that he hadn't looked at the electrical, and that it was an older home, I voluntarily disclosed that the upstairs portion of the house had aluminum wiring - not at all unusual for this neighborhood.  The inspector didn't seem concerned.

BIG MISTAKE.

Now, knowing what I know about aluminum wiring, I figured that I would wind up paying a slightly higher premium, which is why I wasn't concerned about disclosing  - it seemed fair, to pay for the slight extra risk it creates (there is a reason that aluminum wiring isn't used any more, there is also an equally valid reason that no one has required ALL aluminum wiring to be replaced. It's safe, when properly maintained. Tens, possibly even hundreds of thousands of houses were built with aluminum wiring.)  Anway, two months later I get a letter from Liberty Mutual informing me they will cancel my homeowners policy if I don't replace the aluminum wiring.

After getting a few estimates, Liberty Mutual wanted me to pay $25000 to $35000 to replace the Aluminum wiring to reduce their risk.  There were plenty of electrictians who were willing to do the work, but all of them admitted it was ridiculous for Liberty Mutual to require such a drastic fix. Through a bit of research, I identified a fire and building code approved method of mitigating the risk aluminum wiring creates that would cost less than $5000, and further more, could be done on a room to room basis, meaning I didn't have to outlay a huge chunk of money at once, nor dealing with my house being torn up for weeks.

I worked with Chad for 6 months trying to negotiate with Liberty Mutual and their underwriters, to no avail.  Eventually, even Chad could see he was getting no where with the underwriters, even though I had valid points about me showing responisibility by giving full disclosure when I pointed out the wiring to their home inspector (who didn't catch it ) and an alternate approved repair method.  At that point, he became about as helpful to me as his underwriters and my letter to the CEO were.  I really got to see the ugly side of Liberty Mutual.

In Dec 2008, Liberty Mutual cancelled our policy for "non-compliance."  Which was ok, because we had already arranged another company to provide our homeowners insurance.  At that point I cancelled my other three policies with Liberty Mutual.

Had I known the grief I was going to put myself through, I would have kept my mouth shut.  After nearly $10,000 in insurance premiums, with only one minor automobile claim and a track record of being an honest and responsible customer, Liberty Mutual was willing to throw a good customer to the dogs over a few dozen yards of aluminum wiring that they wouldn't have even known about if I hadn't have disclosed it.  To add insult to injury, now all of Liberty Mutual's adds go on and on about "Responsibility".  Well, I showed some responsibility and was treated like crap.

To sum up - Chad was a great insurance agent - ALL of my negativity here is directed at the company he represents, Liberty Mutual.  I would seriously consider doing business with Chad again if he were to represent a different company. But I won't ever do business with Liberty Mutual nor any of their subsidaries again if I can help it.