Shopping for insurance and it seems circular, one will say no ccc needed another says the opposite.
As far as I’m concerned aside from a selling point , insurance is only “good” if they pay claims so……can anyone comment on a company based on if they rejected or paid out a claim?
Never filed one…hope fully never will. Written a lot of checks to people for various items though.
I guess those instances were small enough to not want to use the insurance?
The industry likes to call them insurance agents, but they aren’t, they are salespeople. You are buying a product. Some products are marketed differently. I use Erie, I have an inland marine, ccc, and regular bus insurance through them. My “agent” gets a call from me if my rates change.
I was told as a young man to always set your deductible high, never file a claim that you can pay for with a check/cash, and always have the people sign a statement that you paid for x or y. I don’t know if that is the correct way to do it in today’s world, but that is what I was told in the 80’s. The first time you file a claim with your business I would expect your premiums to jump, or that you might get cancelled if you haven’t been with them very long. They are government backed gangsters, because the government forces you to have it if you are a law abiding citizen.
I also heard the same. Unless it’s something catastrophic just pay for the damage out of pocket. My broker said point blank he’s the ‘yin’ to the insurance adjuster ‘yang’ and is there to try and make sure I have enough coverage when they start to balk at paying a claim.
Customers generally don’t understand this and think we “have insurance” for any little thing that pops up like with automotive.
Yeah I agree with you both. Also I see many people running general liability without CCC, errors and omissions, or professional liability. It seems you need at least one of these to cover your actual workmanship. I’m starting to wonder if many companies don’t offer these because they want to use that as an out to not pay your claim later on
Most Policies have high limits for GL
But very low limits for CCC, while both are important… CCC is the one that you need when the blue house turns purple after the wash 
Yea what you most likely need a payout in is always the lowest covered
Also what is with the blue houses? I have yet to do one is it simply the color blue or is it a organic Sherman Williams type thing?
I assume a test spot is all you can do ?.
IDK about small enough, but definitely wasn’t filing a claim for them knowing I’d pay it a few times over in the long run…
Yep, if we burn down a house, that’ll probably be a claim…
Not sure I follow if you mean items you’re working on, or for quality of your work (which is what I always understood workmanship to mean)…no one will insure that. Most will never insure things that you do regularly as they expect you to know how not to ruin a window with acid…but if your WFP gets unweildy and cracks a pane that’s another thing.
had a blue house turn green a couple years ago (that one was a Sherwin Williams thing, they didn’t test spot bc it was a roofwash only…) wasn’t even close to filing a claim on the $2400 repaint either…
Here’s the thing. While your goal is a rate of zero for callbacks and damage repairs, the reality is that it should be a line item in your annual budget. If you have zero dollars in the budget, you’re going to get upset every time you spend a few bucks to fix something (and by default your going to seek to avoid paying, probably more than you should). Then it becomes not taking care of the clients properly.
In all honesty, some of it becomes marketing spend too. Little ceramic porch trinket gets broken, snap a pic of the sticker or find out what you can about the item and send them a new one. Spmetimes it’s $5, sometimes it’s $40…or a $20 grill cover that bleached out…they will feel like they were taken care of despite the hiccuo, and refer friends.
I like that idea. Set aside maybe 500 bucks a year for flowers and stuff.
More than an idea…if it’s an item you pay out in the course of your business, there should be a line item in an actual budget for it. Conversely, everything you pay out throughout the year has to be assigned to a budget category for tracking purposes. That’s just good business, and it’s where most move from running a truck to running a business
I have a hard time with budgets because let’s say you budget 10k for sealer. But you end up getting allot of jobs and use 15k. It’s money you have to spend to get the jobs. So should you rather make it a percentage? Does any of that make sense? My wife and 4 kids are out of town and I have the house to myself and had a few
Agreed, super important to have a running fund set aside for unexpected events. A few years ago I got in a motorcycle wreck and was out for two months, right in our fall busy season. I blew through most of what I saved and had just enough for the dead winter months.
Then there was the kidney cancer thing…that was fun.
Budget based on %, but you should also be budgeting for total revenue, so you then have dollars to target for expenses. Then you just have to figure out how to make the revenue happen. Of course that is also a good thing because you’re looking forward on revenue too, nit just going into the year saying “well, let’s see what I get this year”…
In your example, If you’re way up on sales, by all means spend away, but know your percentages so you can keep yourself in line in terms of profitability.
Totally agree, but those are more “personal budgeting” than something you would budget business-wise. If you have yourself in a position as getting paid for your technician work, and taking a draw out of the profits as an owner, then you could bring someone else in for your hourly, and hopefully still get the powner’s protion, while paying them your hourly rate to do the washing…
