ComplaintsforHarris, Reed & Seiferth Insurance Group, Inc.

• Initial Complaint

  05/15/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Hello,I purchased liability insurance (policy *************) from Harris, Reed & Seiferth Insurance Group, Inc. for my work as a marine electrician. Insurance was bound on January 25th. I chose monthly payments and provided my account and routing numbers for autopay, and a charge of $620 was debited from my account. Never mentioned was that further billing would be outsourced to a business called Best Choice Premium Finance (BCPF). There was never any mention of billing via any means other than the autopay I had already set up via my bank account.I assume initial emails from BCPF were filtered out by my spam filter and deleted, but I saw one email from BCPF, scrutinized it, and flagged it as fraudulent. This email was from a company I had never heard of, had no mention of Harris, **************************** Insurance Group, **** and no mention even of insurance. It just had an amount and a link to click on. The most basic Internet security measures per every major bank, the *********************** et al is that you should never click on a link in an email from an unknown sender, and BCPF was certainly unknown to me.Seven weeks after binding service a letter arrived in the mail from BCPF. I recognized the name from the 'fraudulent' email and opened it, which I almost didn't do because it looked like junk mail. It was a cancellation notice. I emailed Harris, ****, and Seiferth, and they were unapologetic for the mixup.Not only am I out the $620, but I was unable to work in marinas, which require liability insurance.I believe Harris, **************************** was negligent in this gross lack of comminication, and it cost me.Thank you for your attention to this matter.Sincerely,*******************

  Business response

  05/16/2024

  Below is response previously provided to ******************* VIA EMAIL: ******************* on 3/26/2024 in response to an identical complaint submitted with the State of California under File Number: RUS-******* for Policy Number: *************, which we were sent a letter from them with instructions to investigate on our own and cc them on the correspondence. Given that said letter also outlined that we may not hear from them again unless they needed further information, make a determination that the consumer's complaint is justified, or otherwise, determine that there has been a violation of applicable law, and we never heard back from them since, we assume that the consumer has been told by the State of California we were not wrong and this is retaliation for the State of California not telling us we were wrong.
  
  "The Quote provided to you 1/18 outlining Broker Fee and reflecting the Paperless Finance payment option requiring no printing or wet signature, with the applicable Premium Finance Agreement and disclosure from Best Choice, reflecting us listed as Agent/Broker
  
  The text of the email itself with the quote specifically outlines Total Annual Premium for the Policy at $1,700, Down Payment to bind at $620, and 10-Months of Installments each totaling $122.77
  
  
  Detailed policy history
  
  Policy quoted with Starr Indemnity & ************ through BTIS on Thursday, January 18 at 11:06?AM. Policy Bound with down payment as per Premium Finance Agreement totaling $620, using Paperless Finance requiring no printing or wet signature, on Thursday, January 25 at 3:10 PM for effective Friday, January 26. The policy was issued and BTIS sent the agency policy documents at 3:12 PM; policy documents were then sent to you at 3:20 PM. No additional endorsements were ever requested.
  
  
  Detailed accounting of premiums
  
  On Thursday, January 25 at 3:10 PM, $620 was submitted from you to BTIS, as per the receipt you received directly from BTIS and the Premium Finance Agreement reflecting said down payment required to bind. The down payment amount of $620 is also outlined on the finance statement of account. **********************, **** & Seiferth Insurance Group never collected any money from you directly and thus have not issued any refunds to you; we additionally have no information on any current refunds issued from the insurer to you.
  
  
  Detailed narrative of this insurance transaction
  
  On Saturday January 13 at 4:03pm, you completed our Get Quote form on ******** for ***************** Liability insurance for your marine electrician services.
  
  
  On Wednesday, January 17, 12:51?PM, after reviewing, we engaged for some additional information to determine product eligibility, which you provided on Wednesday, January 17, at 6:23?PM.
  
  
  On Thursday, Jan 18, 11:06?AM, we provided the requested quote you, which outlined Broker Fee and reflected the Paperless Finance payment option requiring no printing or wet signature, with the applicable Premium Finance Agreement and disclosure. Additionally, the text of the email itself with the quote provided to you specifically outlines Annual Premium for the Policy, Down Payment to bind, and Monthly Installment total.
  
  
  On Thursday, January 25 at 12:32?PM, you responded with a request to confirm coverage on Stated Operations and outlined an interest in purchasing with effective date ASAP. At 12:39?PM, we responded outlining specific policy language to confirm. At 12:59?PM, you confirmed to proceed and outlined youd pay monthly with a method that did not include a 2.75% additional charge. At 1:03?PM, we requested your Driver's License or FEIN number, as required for eCheck, At 1:23?PM, you asked if we said the only only options are debit card or Echeck, with the associated additional 2.75% and if there is another method of payment that doesn't incur this charge. At 1:25?PM we confirmed there is no fee for eCheck, thus why we engaged you for the required details (DL# or FEIN) and requested again for you to send to bind the policy for effective 1/26/2024. At 1:32?PM, you confirmed understanding and provided DL#. We then sent you the payment form for the down payment via DocHub to complete electronically. After the audit showed you read but didnt complete the payment, we sent at 2:28?PM a head up that the form had to be received back by 5p in order to bind a policy for effective next day. You then completed it at 2:51?PM. We tried payment with the details you provided to us and it failed. At 2:59?PM, we notified you that your payment failed and asked you to confirm the State for your Driver's License is California so that we could try again. At 3:08?PM, you said you still had the form up and that the last number is missing from the routing number, likely your fat finger, and that DL is correct, according to their (BTIS) instructions and asked for us to try again. At 3:13?PM, we outlined that ****** helped us with the last number that was missing from the routing number, that we had tried submitting payment again and got transaction approved, and outlined that your policy docs would soon follow.
  
  
  You reference auto-pay to the State, however, as reflected in our appended correspondence, we never discussed nor received any authorization to set-up auto-pay, as required by law, thus never did as such.
  
  
  In our onboarding due diligence, we emailed you one month after policy issuance on Monday, February 26 at 11:26?AM to see how things were going and check if you had any questions regarding your coverage but never got a response.
  
  
  After you received a notice of intent to cancel your policy effective March 17, 2024 due to non-payment of premium from the finance company, Best Choice, you emailed us on Wednesday, March 13 at 5:16?PM, advising that you had been receiving emails and texts from Best Choice and had marked the communications as spam and assumed it was a scam. You questioned the legitimacy of the company, the expectation of from whom bills would come, and why you were sent a bill when you paid half of your annual premium six weeks ago when you were not expecting a bill for another 5 months. At 5:41?PM, in response, we outlined that the company is legitimate and questioned why were you just then engaging us to determine if a scam or legitimate as the policy had been in-force for almost 2 months now up until that time when we had reached out on 2/26 to check on you a month after policy binding, to which no response from you was received. We further outlined that on 1/25, you paid a $620 down payment to bind the policy, not "half of your annual premium six weeks ago" as the audit of your account shows, that your first payment was due 2/26 and was never made, thus the letters received regarding intent to cancel on 3/17 due to non-payment, and that you would need to submit a payment before then to avoid cancellation. The payment reminder letter sent to you on 3/12 for the 2/26 payment was attached, along with the intent to cancel letter sent to you the week prior. We advised that if you had any questions on your account or needed assistance in setting up your account with a recurring ACH payment plan, to please call Best Choice at **************
  
  At 6:44?PM, you responded that our response was rude and dead wrong, not only in general, but on each individual fact and to please cancel your coverage and refund the remainder of my premium, and you would take my business elsewhere. At 9:11?PM, we attached our email from 2/26, thanked you for your feedback, and confirmed no problem at all to cancel. It was additionally outlined to you that, as per policy terms and conditions, the minimum earned premium (as outlined directly in the policy) is $337.50 and to provide a written notice when thereafter such cancellation shall be effective, which needed to be signed and if not received before 3/17/2024, the finance company would cancel the policy effective 3/17/2024 as aforementioned due to non-payment of premium. We further offered that, as per the policy, the insurance company will process any short-rate return premium refunds directly to you, not us. You will not get $620 back as the policy documents outline the aforementioned 25% Minimum Earned premium, the quote outlines BTIS Service Fee of $250.00 Fully Earned, and the finance statement of account outlines the Broker Fee of $100.00 Fully Earned."

  Customer response

  05/24/2024

   
  Complaint: 21718301
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  Your lengthy recounting of our history is largely accurate, except for your assumptions about the response from the ********************* of Insurance, which are not accurate at all.

  Notably absent from the history is any discussion of Best Choice Premium Finance (BCPF). I'm sure you agree that how payments are to be made, and to whom, are quite important in a business relationship. The first mention of BCPF between us is after I'd received a cancellation notice in the mail. You understand this, right? The entire reason our business relationship blew up in our faces is because you failed to mention this company at all, or that my payments would be made to a third party.

  Another way to look at it might to be to ask what could I have done differently to have avoided this situation? Go through my spam folder looking for scammy emails, clicking on suspect links from unknown senders, wondering if one of them might have something to do with Harris, ****, and Seiferth insurance, even though there is no mention of Harris, ****, and Seiferth in the email?

  If this was just a rooking mistake, or a failure of communication on your part, you should have apologized and refunded my money a long time ago, but of course if you had been straightforward about BCPF I wouldn't have agreed.

  
  Sincerely,
  
  *******************

  Business response

  05/29/2024

  Why are you hiding from the BBB the receipt for the $620 transaction from 1/25 that shows who you actually paid?The real deception here is that you failed to inform the BBB as well as the ********************* of Insurance that you never paid us directly.  We owe you nothing. 

  Customer response

  06/07/2024

   
  Complaint: 21718301
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  Wow, that last response is a real jewel.

  To be clear, you concealed the identity of Builders and Tradesman's Insurance Services from me, rather than me concealing their identity from anybody. I only knew of them after I gave you my payment information and money from my bank account was debited to them, rather than you..

  I have been in touch with BTIS, and they are refunding my money with apologies, under grounds of "Financing Not Disclosed," as in they agree you never disclosed the finance company to me, or sold my contract to a third party without informing me.

  In your prior resoponse you assumed the ********************* of Insurance found "you'd done nothing wrong." To the contrary, the ********************* of Insurance has no enforcement powers, but suggested I take you to small claims court, and advised me how to do so. When I took the first step by sending you a 30-day demand letter via certified mail, it came back because you have no legitimate address. Both your Florida and Texas addresses are "virtual," sold by businesses who traffic in such. In other words, your addresses are fake. If I could *** you in small claims court I would of course win and collect damages for lost work. Looking into ***ing you in superior court, you are a ******************* with no assets and a fake address. In short, nothing to ***.

  Looks like you're actlly just two people running a home-based business, right? 
  

  Once I get my refund from BTIS I'll let the ****** member ******** group, Marine Technicians Forum, where I heard of you or saw your ad, know about the experience I've had with you. Just the facts, but the facts are quite damning. The insurance industry is already despised among honest business people. Conduct like yours confirms the worst, and your prior response makes clear exactly the kind of people you are, and exactly the kind of "business" you're running.
  

  Reviewing the documents, it looks like you only got a $100 referral fee for my contract. If you guys are doing this for $100 referral fees, you're not really in the insurance business, are you? You're just referring business to others. Really wasn't worth it for $100, was it?

  
  *******************

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