Farmers Insurance: “We screw folks hard, and thanks to our Woudstragentzkostenzähler, now we know exactly how deep”

December 23rd, 2009

Farmers

Insurance CEO Bob Woudstra

and Zurich Financial Services CEO Manfred Gentz

have announced a technological milestone in the often drab world

of corporate accounting.  Their jointly-developed Woudstragentzkostenzähler

will record in real time the expenditures made by their

companies on screwing little people

out of legitimate

claims.

“It was a

necessity, in our view,”

acknowledged Woudstra. “We were nearing

a billion dollars in costs incurred to keep from paying what

was originally a claim of about twenty grand to some lowly douchewad

in Colorado.  Little fucker had a documented electrical explosion at his house,

thought we’d cover it just because it was in his policy!  That was making

us giggle, and the higher the number got, the harder we laughed.

So we decided to use our modern computing machines to

keep a tally in real time.  It’s just a more

efficient way of keeping our

giggle going,

really.”

The

Woudstragentzkostenzähler,

developed at a cost of nearly $74M, will be stealthily inserted

into every site that deals with Farmers Insurance’s ongoing effort to defraud

their customers.  ”Ja, ja, ve haff vays of getting zis technologischerDildo

onto zeir very own websites,” said Gentz.  ”Ze are puny.  Ve are

powerful!  Zis makes us laugh and laugh

and laugh!  No one should say

zere is not a Santa

Claus!”

The

Woudstragentzkostenzähler,

which is creating envy throughout insurance circles,

will provide detailed statistics on exactly where Farmers Insurance and

Zurich Financial Services are blowing cash out a fire hose to keep from honoring their

claims.  The technological thingamabob will show precisely where

the money is going, how fast,

and for what.

“Sometimes

we get a wild hair

up our asses and we’ll just

start tossing our customers’ money at an

outside consultant like Skadden Arps as if it were confetti,”

Woudstra remarked.  ”We don’t particularly care what they’re billing us

for — hey, face it, the premiums racket is a bottomless bucket of cash — but if it

makes us laugh harder, we want to know.  In this instance, our lawyers were

billing us thousands of dollars to sit around and read books written by

the policyholder we were skullfucking.  ’Background research’, they

called it.  Didn’t have anything to do with anything, but it

gave them a structure on which to hang a few

more billable hours.  Big hoot

for them, big hoot

for us!”

“And zat,

my friend, is insurance,”

added Gentz, “ve make ze laughing all ze day!

You might say our business model is

turning ze little people into ze

big laughs!”

____________________________

(Just on the slight off-chance anyone thinks I’m completely losing my nut, here’s my first letter to Bob Woudstra, CEO of Farmers Insurance, from almost a month ago.  Totally calm, totally polite, totally informative about how his employees where trying to force me into the untenable position of forsaking my own Farmers-insured financial interest to save them a nickel.  Totally unresponded to, from that day to this:

“Dear Mr. Woudstra,

Last month I filed a claim with Farmer’s for damage to electronic equipment in my home that was sustained when an animal contacted a transformer and it exploded outside my home, causing a surge. This was documented and repaired by Xcel, my power company. This is the second time this has happened in two years here, and Farmer’s paid a claim of about $xx,xxx on the first incident. My property was new construction two years ago and on my own initiative, to try to assist Farmer’s, I obtained information from the developer that some of Xcel’s initial work on the property was faulty and the entire parking lot had to be dug up so that it could be replaced.

When that initial surge occurred, it only took power out of half my home… It did not make sense to me, nor to anyone else, that a unit that small would be on more than one transformer, and it suggested that there might be a problem with the wiring. The fact that Xcel had had to come back, dig up an entire parking lot, and redo its work further suggested that the problem might lie with Xcel. I went to lengths to get documentation from Xcel about that situation and provide it to Farmer’s so that the claim could be subrogated. Farmer’s was half-hearted in that effort and eventually let the matter drop.

When my property was electrically surged again in November, it once again only cut power out of half of my unit. I was able to observe this for the hour and a half that it took Xcel to get a crew to the scene and replace the exploded transformer. Just as in the previous incident, my breaker box was completely unaffected — again suggesting a potential problem with the wiring in the construction. Surges are supposed to pop breakers, not bypass them.

My computer, television, and the stereo equipment that Farmer’s replaced for me two years ago were all ruined by this surge. I filed a claim, immediately telling Farmer’s that I thought they needed to be pursuing Xcel vigorously. I took my computer to the Apple store, they attempted a repair, it failed, they documented multiple issues with the computer as a result of the surge, and they recommended replacement. I provided all this documentation to my adjuster, Brittni Girk…

The manufacturers of the audio equipment that I have have a policy about surged equipment under warranty, and it is that they will not attempt to repair it, they will only replace it. They have good reasons for this, namely that a surge can stress many components in a piece of equipment short of complete failure, and when the component fails nine months or two years later, they are on the hook for a warranty claim. Farmer’s was familiar with that policy two years ago when they replaced my stereo after the first surge.

After visiting my home and documenting the equipment failures, Farmer’s started sending me letters and emails suggesting that that had not happened, and that they were entitled to come pick up everything from my home for “further testing”. I corrected Ms. Girk about what had transpired in my home — you may see a small part of our voluminous email correspondence below my signature — and told her that I could not turn my audio equipment over to a third party because it would without any question void my warranties, which have years left to run. She repeatedly asserts that Farmer’s is entitled to repair it, and I disagree. If the manufacturers themselves will not attempt to repair it, and if letting a third party touch it will void my manufacturers’ warranties — which is a property right of mine, Mr. Woudstra — then I cannot allow them to take it, or I am divesting myself of my own property right in order to satisfy Farmer’s desire to try to nickel and dime the claim by having an unqualified party perform a repair that the manufacturer will not even undertake itself.

I am extremely busy in my work life now and I have informed Ms. Girk and her supervisor repeatedly that I cannot and will not tear apart my living room and harm my own financial interest in order to comply with the unreasonable demands that are being made. I have also informed them that there is videotape and audiotape of them observing the equipment malfunctions in my home. In response, they have told me they are closing the claim…”