What is a storm chaser and how can if affect your home insurance? A storm chaser is for insurance purposes are roofing contractors who follow severe weather. These are typically the trucks you see after hail storms, they have plates from Alabama, Texas and other states. In addition to being from out of town, storm chasers typically show up in your neighborhood and ask you and all your neighbors if they can look at the roofs. Similarly, these storm chasers will offer in some cases to get you a new roof for free. They will also offer to waive your insurance deductible if you use them for your roof.
This sounds bad for my home insurance but why is it bad for me?
Storm chasers can affect your home insurance in a couple of ways. One way is that they can cause you to have an increase in your home insurance premiums. If you turn in a home insurance claim you may have a surcharge on your home insurance due to that claim. Even if you decide not to turn in a claim a storm chaser can still affect your home insurance. All the other people who turn in insurance claims affect the companies loss ratio. Too much of a loss ratio and base rates rise due to the claims. In other words false roof claims can impact everyone.
Claims that may or may not be storm damage are not all.
Finally, we have heard of reps for storm chasers causing damage to the roof trying to mimic hail damage. Underhanded reps can take a hammer and try to hit the roof to look like hail damage. Unfortunately it can be hard to mimic roof damage due to the other areas that hail causes damage. Most claims reps are very well versed in what actual hail damage looks like. Technology also gives insurance companies ways to see if a storm really did hit your neighborhood. They can also look at satellite damage from right after the claim to see if any damage occurred.
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