ComplaintsforDan Burghardt Insurance Agency

• Initial Complaint

  07/18/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Myself and another loan officer have been trying to get in contact with an agent with this company with no success. Half of the phone numbers online do not work and the other ones just go to a call center where no return call is issued. This has been months on a deal that was originally set to close in May. This level of service is awful. The request we have should be resolved within 24 hours. Each day that goes by costs the borrower additional money and all because this company does not have agents who reach out to their clients.

  

  Business response

  11/28/2022

  *** ******

   

  For whatever reason we did not receive notice of this complaint when it was originally filed.  By the time we did become aware of it many of records for this time period had been archived and we needed to retrieve the data and analyze it.  Unfortunately, this complaint was made during the period when multiple insurance companies had failed, necessitating the replacement of over 2,000 client property policies within 46 business days (counting Saturdays) between May 23 and July 15, 2022, a period when there were very few markets writing insurance to replace these policies.  The level of calls, emails and texts we were receiving was completely off the charts by several orders of magnitude.  I have worked in the insurance industry since 1983 and have NEVER seen a crisis this serious or overwhelming.

   

  During this 46 business day period our agency received over 20,000 phone calls as well as thousands of email and text messages from clients and other interested parties concerned about the status and replacement of their insurance.  This number was far beyond anything our 18 client-facing employees we have could possibly answer and address as they came in, even working the 70-80 hours per week we asked of them.  To avoid completely missing calls, to facilitate the need to prioritize the issues, and to have the time to actually replace our clients’ coverage (approximately one hour per policy if all goes smoothly), we contracted with our after-hours answering service to take messages on ALL incoming calls throughout the period.  We prioritized these messages as well as emails and texts as follows:

   

  1.      Communications from clients who were losing coverage because of the liquidations;

  2.      Communications from clients who had an issue with their existing policies that could result in cancelation;

  3.      Response communications from insurance company personnel regarding policy replacements and issue resolution;

  4.      Communications from clients needing new coverage because their existing agents had no remaining markets in which to place their coverage;

  5.      Communications from clients who had non-critical questions and issues;

  6.      All other communications.

   

  One of the types of communications that fell within the lowest priority were mortgage companies and servicers requesting proof that policies were still in effect or had been replaced.  Since mortgage companies are automatically notified by insurance companies, as required by law, of any changes in the insurance carried on a mortgaged property these types of calls are normally handled as a courtesy to their personnel who do not have the patience to wait for official notifications or who work on unreasonable timelines.  Needless to say, almost all of these mortgage company calls went unaddressed because by the time we could address them the questions were already answered by insurance company official notifications.

   

  With all of that said, Mr. ********* works for a mortgage company called Assurance Mortgage.  After searching our records for his name, the two telephone numbers he used when he left his messages, and the name and published numbers of Assurance Mortgage, I could find only 3 instances where there was an attempt by him or his company to contact us between April, 2022 and the present day.  Two of those messages were left on 7/15/22, the day when 1,392 of our clients’ policies would be canceled, and a third was left on 8/12/22.  The latter was returned by one of our account managers.  I found no messages from anyone else during this time stating they represented Assurance Mortgage, or who was calling from any of the numbers used by Assurance or Mr. *********.  Since his complaint did not specify the name of “another loan officer” I am unable to search using that information.

   

  Further, at no point in these messages does Mr. ********* state that he is calling to obtain a new policy for one of his mortgage clients, nor does he even mention the name of his client.  Therefore, I am unable to check the records related to the client involved to see if we have any record of communications from Assurance Mortgage.  So Mr. *********** message was treated with exactly the same priority as any other mortgage company communication seeking an immediate answer to a question that would be answered in due time.  We had nothing to indicate otherwise.  Mr. ********* may not agree with our system of prioritization, but given that fact that as insurance agents we can be held civilly and criminally responsible for failing to try to maintain a client’s insurance we had little alternative.

   

  I cannot speak at all to Mr. *********’s assertion that “Half of the phone numbers online do not work”.  We have complete records on all of our phone numbers and our phone system at all times—it is a highly managed and monitored system.  The only time the system was off-line during this period was on the evening and morning of July 3rd and 4^th when it was brought down for needed maintenance.  This, of course, was the Sunday evening before July 4th and the early morning of the holiday itself.  Based on other Sunday evening-Monday early morning periods during this crisis there were few, if any, calls attempted during this time.  No other of our callers complained of a problem during those 46 days.  I cannot, of course, verify which number(s) Mr. ********* was calling, and it could well be that he picked up a number off of the internet that we have not used in a long time.  We do use numbers for strictly marketing tracking purposes, and generally we retire those numbers after a year or two of discontinuing their advertisement.  Unfortunately, there are many sites on the internet that pick up numbers at random and never bother to verify their continued validity over time.

   

  Given that Mr. ********* works in the mortgage industry and that his industry is highly dependent on our industry (and vice versa), I am sure he was well aware of the insurmountable problems we had to overcome.  The news in our area was non-stop in reporting the severity of the crisis and the problems we all faced.  And, not to engage in tit-for-tat, we had many problems communicating with the mortgage industry during the refinance frenzy of the last few years.  Being in a public facing business, we try hard to understand and take into consideration that there are times when the volume of work is simply overwhelming and, at times, unmanageable.

   

  Dan Burghardt Insurance Agency has always, and will continue, to provide prompt, courteous and helpful assistance to our clients and the third parties with an interest in their insurance coverage.  Unfortunately, as I explained above, the crisis our industry was thrown into from the end of May to the middle of July is completely unprecedented in my lifetime.  And it probably will continue at a less intense level for a few years in the future as the ramifications of this event affect coverage availability, affordability, and by extension the market for property in general.  I hope that all of us in these industries and others pray that we do not face another like it in a long, long time.

   

   

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