In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, host Mat Zalk is joined by Andy Gurczak, Founder and CEO of AllCity Adjusting, to talk about how public adjusters help property owners win bigger insurance claims. Andy explains why claims get denied, how early involvement changes outcomes, and what documents and terms can make or break a payout. He also gives advice on how landlords can protect rental income during lengthy claim processes.
How Public Adjusters Help Property Owners Win Bigger Insurance Claims With Andy Gurczak
Andy Gurczak is the Founder and CEO of AllCity Adjusting, a public adjusting firm dedicated to securing fair insurance claim settlements. With over a decade of experience, Andy has shielded thousands from insurance fraud and boosted their claims’ value. His family’s principle, “If you’re going to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all,” flourishes through his firm’s advocacy for property owners. Specialized in complex claims like fire, water, and hurricane damage, Andy and his team work across over 35 states.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [14:37] Andy Gurczak explains why insurance companies underpay claims and how AllCity helps property owners push back
- [20:50] Turning a low $27K roof repair offer into a $952K settlement for a 13-building HOA
- [29:20] How landlords can claim lost rent during delays and why early documentation is crucial
- [32:25] The importance of avoiding harmful language like “wear and tear” in plumber reports
- [38:05] Key triggers and best practices for involving a public adjuster at the right time
In this episode…
Navigating property insurance claims can feel like an uphill battle, especially when facing denials, underpayments, or confusing fine print. Too often, policyholders accept the first offer without realizing they could be entitled to much more. So how can property owners make sure they’re not leaving money on the table?
According to Andy Gurczak, a seasoned public adjuster and expert in maximizing claim payouts, the key is understanding how insurance companies operate and knowing when to bring in a public adjuster. He highlights how insurers often use vague or technical loopholes to reduce or deny claims. Public adjusters act as advocates, ensuring claims are documented properly and negotiated aggressively. By getting involved early, they can reshape the outcome of a claim and recover tens or even hundreds of thousands more than initially offered. Andy explains how timing, wording, and knowing the system can make or break your settlement.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Andy Gurczak: LinkedIn | Email | Contact no.: 708-655-4186
- AllCity Adjusting: Website | Contact no.: 844-692-3587
- “The Insider’s Guide to Maximizing Insurance Claims With Andy Gurczak” on The Same Day Podcast
- State Farm
- Nationwide
- Allstate
Quotable Moments
- “If the insurance company can delay it for two years, they’re going to delay it.”
- “You’re owed this money… what you’re owed is what you’re owed.”
- “We have to bring value, just like Keyrenter, your management company, you have to bring value.”
- “They’re not bringing engineers to help pay your claim; it’s to support why they’re not.”
- “If you use that word ‘wear and tear,’ it’s going to get a red flag.”
Action Steps
- Involve a public adjuster early in the claims process: Early involvement ensures proper documentation and prevents missteps that could reduce payouts.
- Avoid using terms like “wear and tear” in reports: Certain language can trigger automatic denials from insurance companies, even when damage is clearly covered.
- Document all damage with photos and videos immediately: Visual proof is critical for claim validation and can strengthen your position during disputes.
- Don’t speak directly to insurance adjusters once representation is secured: Letting your public adjuster handle communications helps avoid unintentional statements that weaken your claim.
- Request loss of rent coverage upfront when possible: Securing this early ensures continued income during repairs and protects against delays in the claims process.
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Mat Zalk 00:20
My host of The Same Day Podcast, where I connect with top business experts and real estate leaders. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management. We are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. And part of taking that headache out of property management includes lining up contractors to get make readies done in a reasonable amount of time after a tenant leaves the property.
Or as you’ll see today, after there’s a need for a significant insurance claim. The challenge is that contractors are busy, the work seems to drag on forever, and all of that leads to loss of rental income. But at Key rental, we line up our dedicated vendors so that turns can happen super quickly, and we get more money back into the pockets of our owners. You’re going to hear much more about that today with AllCity Adjusting. But anyways, that’s why no matter what rental, you have a single family home, condo, townhome apartment.
We have the management solutions that you need. Go to keyrenterpmc.com or email us at [email protected]. Andy Gurczak is the founder of AllCity Adjusting, a licensed public adjusting firm with a focus on making sure their clients get what they truly deserve from their insurance claims over the last decade. And he’s not only protected thousands of people from being defrauded, but he’s also helped them receive more money than what they can or what their insurance initially offered.
What they can do on their own, I should say, or what their insurance initially offered. Andy grew up with a family motto if you’re going to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all, a sentiment that he now carries into his business. Find out more about [email protected].
Andy Gurczak 02:05
Hey, Mat. Andy what’s up dude? Got your workout in. Got everything in. I’m.
Mat Zalk 02:11
I’ve been up since 4 a.m..
Andy Gurczak 02:14
I like you, I like that it’s.
Mat Zalk 02:16
I mean, I, I am normally up at like 5:30, but I got back from Israel Tuesday night and it was I’m just like, totally jet lagged. Still, I’m trying to get better. I’m trying to go to bed like 10:00, get up at 530. It does not work that way. My brain just kicks on at 4:00 and it’s like, you’re done.
Let’s go.
Andy Gurczak 02:34
So that time, that time change, I know it’s a lot.
Mat Zalk 02:38
It’s a lot.
Andy Gurczak 02:39
My stuff’s okay. Let me see something. Actually, I was gonna I actually pulled up some jobs that I that I can share this with. What a stud.
Mat Zalk 02:47
Dude, you’re such a stud. Look at you in a jacket and a black shirt.
Andy Gurczak 02:51
Dude, I’m coming on Mat’s podcast, man. What do you to expect. That would be it. Come on, man. This is.
I just pulled this out on special occasions. That’s funny. That’s funny. Let me see something real quick. Give me one second.
I’m just gonna. Acting funny.
Mat Zalk 03:06
And I’d like to. I’d like to publicly thank you for switching this podcast around. I didn’t book my, you know, when I book, when I book spring break, when I book long blocks on my calendar, it just defaults to free. So then people can book over it. I was out there skiing with my kids, which is such a joy.
Andy Gurczak 03:24
And where’d.
Mat Zalk 03:25
You guys ski.
Andy Gurczak 03:27
At Buttermilk in Aspen.
Mat Zalk 03:27
Oh, okay. We haven’t been to Aspen. We went to Keystone. Yeah, Keystone and Buttermilk.
Andy Gurczak 03:31
Aspen is great because kids under six ski free. It’s such a it’s still a family experience. Unlike all these Vail Mountain Corp resorts where they just literally eke every penny out of you. Aspen still like it’s expensive. It’s super expensive to get there.
It’s super expensive to stay. But if you are on the mountain, under five is free, the bunny hills free. There’s stuff that like, you go in and they give you free water and they give you free stuff, it’s still like a family environment. It’s still it’s not like such a blood sucking corporation that they that they want to extract every single penny. So for example, at in Vail, when you go to rent skis, they say thanks for your, you know, $90 a day for skis.
If you want to put your boots here, you’ve got to pay for a locker. I’m like, I’m not paying for a locker. How about this? If my boots aren’t here when I get back, I’m going to hurt somebody. But in Aspen, it’s like, here’s a locker.
Here’s like a whole bunch of cubbies. Put your stuff in it. No problem. Do you need a charger for your phone? Here’s a charger for your phone.
Like, they’re just not. It’s a it’s a company. They’re there to make money. I get it, but, like, they’re not.
Andy Gurczak 04:36
I just came back from. I just came back from Disney. You want to talk about. You want to talk about blood sucking. Oh, my God.
Mat Zalk 04:43
I’m not doing it. I’m not like.
Andy Gurczak 04:45
I’m not a monopoly. I’m not. It’s six. It’s Six Flags with a freaking mouse running around. I mean, holy smokes, I did it.
I told myself I wanted to do it once we took the kids. I’m done. Never great experience, but wouldn’t I.
Mat Zalk 04:58
Don’t even like. Have you been to. I don’t know what it’s called. Cowboy Stadium. America?
No. America Stadium. It’s the same thing. Like it’s just so. I’m a capitalist at heart.
I think everybody deserves to make a profit. If you’re in a business, people need to get paid. But like, every single square inch is monetized. It’s like it’s just too much.
Andy Gurczak 05:18
It’s just that’s how this game is. Everything was monetized. Every little thing. I’m surprised you’re not paying for bathrooms yet. It’s only going to be a matter of time.
I’m a Lambo guy, so I go to Lambo. It’s like, that’s old school.
Mat Zalk 05:29
That’s old.
Andy Gurczak 05:30
School. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 05:30
It’s like it’s like baseball in Cuba. It’s a it’s a democracy, you know? It’s it’s like a people sport.
Andy Gurczak 05:37
Yeah. But everything at these sporting events, anywhere you go now, it’s I mean, the beer is like 15 bucks, I think at Chicago Fire we went to the soccer game. It was like $15 for a beer. Like you’re going to see a soccer team MLS. It’s MLS, God damn it.
Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of insane.
Mat Zalk 05:51
So at the base of Highlands in Aspen, there’s four mountains. In Aspen, there’s buttermilk, there’s Snowmass, there’s highlands, and there’s Aspen Mountain, Ajax. At the base of Highlands, you can ski down and you can go to this outdoor bar, and there’s still like a $5, $6 beer.
Andy Gurczak 06:06
That’s Aspen. Maybe that’s why I go with my wife. Because we’re talking because next year, yeah, we’ll be able to take the oldest is going to be eight. And then the second one is going to be five. The oldest one’s already skied with me.
He learned how to ski. I pay for that. Stupid. Yeah. I paid like $500 for a whole day.
You know, I don’t do skiing lesson. Yeah. They just.
Mat Zalk 06:25
They just, like, they just give him hot chocolate. And I know them. They don’t teach him how to ski.
Andy Gurczak 06:30
We get back. I made that mistake. Yeah, well, that’s the mistake I didn’t know. Come back with my buddies after a whole day. And the guy’s like, oh, he’s ready to go.
He’s been. And they’re building a snowman. There’s been shredding. Yeah, he’s so good. The next day we take him.
The kid doesn’t have to stand on his skis. I’m like, what did I just spend? It took him literally three hours with my buddies, and all of a sudden he’s a ski pro where I paid 500 with these guys. I’m like, no.
Mat Zalk 06:53
Ski school is babysitting so that you can go ski with your buddies.
Andy Gurczak 06:56
That’s what we.
Mat Zalk 06:56
Skied. I skied a great powder day with a buddy, and then I came back the next day and skied with my kids and I found it. I love skiing, I love skiing, but I found it so much more fulfilling to ski with my kids on the bunny slopes. And I’ll tell you, I had one that, like, is kind of timid in general. I’ve got twins that are five and one is like, she’ll do anything, she’ll jump off of anything, she’ll get into anything.
She she’s just super adventurous. And the other is a little bit more, more timid. And I got her on the mountain and she was clinging to me and just hiding behind me. And then I started feeding her gummy bears at the at the, at the. On the advice of my buddy, he’s like, just feed her gummy bears.
If you if you ski down, you get a gummy bear. If you ski down backwards, you get two gummy bears. If you, you know, jump over this little thing, you get three gummy bears. So she was just all into it. And I said to her the next day, like what changed in your mindset where you stopped grabbing my hand and just started, you know, telling me, daddy, I’m going to lead.
You follow. She said, the gummy bears.
Andy Gurczak 07:55
Oh my God.
Mat Zalk 07:56
The whole secret is just keep feeding them sugar and they’ll just keep going.
Andy Gurczak 08:00
That’s a good idea for my my, my my five year old’s very timid. My seven that’s going to be eight. Is is wild. That one is hard to keep contained. So that one though when we went skiing with my yeah with my buddies, I was like, hey, you guys run down with them, I’ll do my own thing because if I’m there, like when he saw me, he’s like, daddy, daddy!
I’m like, nope, I’m I’m out, you know, because he wanted. And my buddies were like, yeah, you know, he wanted to be with me and just wanted my protection. So I’m like, if I go that way, he doesn’t have like, someone to lean on. He’s just with my friends. And all of a sudden you learn how to ski.
And then he was like, hey, I don’t want to go home. We’re like, well, it’s 5:00. We can’t walk. So it’s not going to work. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 08:40
That’s so funny you say that because we got there. We got to the mountain at like 10:00 with my kids, and my wife was like, I have a 1:00 call, I have to be out. And I said, like, you’re totally mistaken. This is like a one hour deal, max. And then by 3:00, I was still skiing with this girl like everybody else had peeled off and they were done, and I was I was like, wow, the endurance of this child.
Great. She’s having a great time.
Andy Gurczak 09:02
Hey, are you guys still. Have you guys still do up pears? I think you told me you guys have an I.
Mat Zalk 09:06
Don’t know, my wife’s. She’s never been keen on having somebody live with us.
Andy Gurczak 09:09
Okay.
Mat Zalk 09:10
Okay. We have we have help. Okay? Especially for the baby. But when I go on vacation, I mean, we generally have help, but.
Yeah, like, I clear my schedule and I’m just with the kids. I’m just like, with the family, I don’t. It gets to a point where you feel like, you know, I’m in the house with my children, but I’m not doing anything with them. I’m not bathing them. I’m not, you know, hanging out with them because I’ve got too much help.
And it’s like, I don’t I don’t want to be that parent. Yeah. It’s a challenge because you’re, you know, parenting is a is like half loving your children and half wanting to murder them, you know.
Andy Gurczak 09:43
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah I know. Yesterday I was thinking, I know my little guy because he was like. I just heard him downstairs. My wife was saying, like, hey, let’s take a bath.
He’s like, no, no. And right away, they’re like boils, like a vein in me when I hear that, like, yeah, like that, that nagging. No. So I like, ran up and I spanked him. Do he just just dropped everything, cried, went and took his clothes off, went to bed.
And then today we’re, like, hugging and loving each other. And I’m like, dude, I’m sorry. I’m like, you know, you were acting like an ahole. Like what you want me to do? I don’t yell unless you’re.
Mat Zalk 10:12
We’ve gotten too soft as a society.
Andy Gurczak 10:15
Yeah. Not me. It’s my neighbors. My neighbors can freaking hear me, man. I mean, I don’t care.
Mat Zalk 10:19
I’m. First of all, you don’t need to smack your kids that many times for them to really, like, get the hint. It’s like, I don’t think I’ve ever smacked my three year old. I’ve never smacked my one year old, obviously, but my three year old, I’ve never smacked. But she knows she doesn’t want to get smacked.
It’s like Pavlov’s dogs. She just knows. And so when I like when the tone changes, she falls into line. Even if she’s having a meltdown because she doesn’t want to get smacked and you don’t have to do it much and they respect you. The other thing is, I love my dad, I love him.
He was a great dad. I also feared my dad as a kid and that’s fine. Like, you know, they’re not they’re not mutually exclusive. You can love your parents and also fear them and understand that as a young child, you either fall in line or you don’t. Anyways, that’s my that’s my rant.
I feel like we’ve gotten way too soft and we like, don’t you know, we don’t smack our kids anymore? And you’re like, let’s draw the line at abuse. But like, you can give your kid a a hit on the.
Andy Gurczak 11:11
Exactly.
Mat Zalk 11:12
Right. Like it’s not like it’s just.
Andy Gurczak 11:14
Abuse is if I’m actually hitting you, I’ve like some kind of like, weird, like cynical like thing. But if I spank you or hit you in the ass or hit you, like, because you’re acting like a dumbass, well, that’s just me parenting. I don’t think I got hit as a child. We all got hit as a child. I feared my mom because my dad would like, be.
My dad was like that quiet, didn’t say anything, and then he would just tell my mom, and then my mom would take his anger and her anger out on us. And I was like, oh, that’s so sane. But my wife goes, she’s like, I don’t understand. The boys always want to be with you. They don’t even want to come bed with me.
But you’re the one they yell at. You’re the like thing. I’m like, because again, if they respect you, if they feel they respect you, and there’s a there’s a mutual thing there, right? I’m like, right.
Mat Zalk 11:53
So discipline, discipline and.
Andy Gurczak 11:56
Love are going on.
Mat Zalk 11:56
This discipline and love go hand in hand. Okay. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Parenting advice from Andy and Mat. The subject of the next of the next podcast.
Andy Gurczak 12:06
Start a new podcast. Yeah I know.
Mat Zalk 12:10
Hey, thanks for being on I appreciate it. I want to, I want to we did an episode eight months ago and we talked a lot about AllCity. We talked a lot about just insurance adjusting in general or public adjusting in general, kind of the, the, the idea that an insurance company is in business to make money to maximize profits for shareholders, and if they can undercut what they really should pay you, according to the I don’t know, you have all this language endorsements and the policy itself? Then they win at your expense. And so the idea is AllCity Adjusting will come in and will fight for you as a client to make sure that you get everything that’s due.
You and I have now spoken many, many times since that podcast. You’ve been introduced to a bunch of folks on our team, and you’ve been working a number of claims. If anybody wants to go back and listen to the previous episode, it’s it’s on all of our websites. It’s on YouTube. You can just Google Keyrenter AllCity Adjusting.
You’ll find it. It’s very easy. And it’s it’s the primer on what public adjusting is. I want to get into kind of more detail today. I want to chat through a couple of examples where we have done really well for our clients and gotten them additional money that they deserved, and where we have failed, either because it was the wrong type of claim, we came in too late and and give some tips and tricks for our property managers and any clients that are, you know, working with Keyrenter that really want to understand when when we say to them, hey, we’re going to send this over to AllCity.
Maybe this is a good primer for them again, to understand kind of why we do that. And then we don’t have to explain it directly every single time to to many different clients. We can just pop them a podcast and, and share it with them. So let’s let’s start. I mean, where do you think we should start in terms of some examples of things that we’ve worked on or anything else?
Andy Gurczak 13:58
Okay. So yeah, I have a I have three jobs. If I could I’ll share my screen if you don’t mind. Sure. If that’s okay.
Can I do that I pulled up I’ll have to share mine. Right.
Mat Zalk 14:07
Let me go to I got to figure out how to do this. I feel like I’ve done enough of this that I probably should know how to do it, but I of course can’t. Let’s see, let’s see.
Andy Gurczak 14:18
You know who? You know who probably could do your little kids? Because these kids know everything. It’s unbelievable.
Mat Zalk 14:23
Exactly. Oh, my God, I don’t know how to do this.
Andy Gurczak 14:28
Can’t I just go into and share my screen?
Mat Zalk 14:30
See? Yeah. See if you can I can.
Andy Gurczak 14:32
Oh you can request share.
Mat Zalk 14:33
Oh, sure, sure. There it is. Share screen options allow. There you go. Boom.
Andy Gurczak 14:37
Okay, so let me share this and then. All right, all right. Can you see this. The all see this estimate. All right.
Perfect. Let me actually pull it in here right in front of me. I can’t move it okay. That’s fine. All right.
So here’s a this is an investor. This was in Middletown, Ohio. I had to block off the address. I wanted to kind of keep their information private. Not that I don’t think they would mind, but this was a fire.
They called us. It’s four gals that are big investors. They own a handful of properties. And this was one that caught on fire. They reached out to us right in the beginning.
So they had a fire. One of the partners knew from someone that they used the PA. They had a, you know, very good experience. So they started looking. They found us, contacted us, had a meeting and ended up signing a contract with us right from the beginning.
So this one, we worked from the beginning. It’s a four unit building, two units downstairs and two units upstairs. The unit to the front right caught fire. And then the rest had smoke. This is an estimate we put.
So we went there right away. Put our estimate together. Put all the documents, everything we did right from the beginning. And then we met with the adjuster from. This was State Farm.
So this is our estimate. And I kind of want. Because yesterday you actually, you know, on a meeting with some of your team members. I had a good question. And it was, well, why don’t we just, you know, why doesn’t the contractor just do a bigger estimate or inflate his estimate and send it into us, you know, to the insurance company or just send, you know, the you know, why would the contractors just not send their, their estimates or their highest estimates?
Well, there’s a reason. Insurance company wants you to send their their the contractor’s estimate. But what they always do is respond to the client and say, hey, make sure your contractor breaks down his estimate. Right, right. I was a contractor.
If you called me to do your bathroom or remodel your house, man, I’m not going to break down my estimate. I’m going to tell you what I’m doing and I’m going to give you a total. There’s no way I’m going to break down each thing. I’m I’m a contractor, not an estimator. Right.
Yeah. So when we do our.
Mat Zalk 16:40
Other the other thing on that, by the way, is that contractors like what owners always do is they say, okay, your contract is $5,000. It’s for doing the baseboard. It’s for doing the, the the vanity. It’s for doing the tile work. I only want you to do the tile work.
Pull out everything else. I’m like, well, I’m not going over there just to do the. If you want me to just do the tile work, it’s going to be twice as expensive. It’s like I’m already there. I’m doing the baseboard there.
I’ve got to go to Home Depot. I’ve spent time going to Home Depot, so I’ve divided everything by the, you know, number of hours that I’ve been at Home Depot. I don’t save a lot of money. So it’s we get into that issue with owners in general, just like trying to peel apart estimates. And it’s really painful because they don’t understand that.
It’s not like each thing is not a standalone deal. Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.
Andy Gurczak 17:18
No you’re good. And contractors are great. Right? I was a contractor. Contractor is a contractor.
We we’re we’re just focused on doing work, making clients happy. Do good work, find good people. Like, there’s already so much headaches in it that writing an estimate or breaking down estimate. Penny by penny. That’s definitely not in our scope, right?
So if you can, if you’re looking at our scope, you know, our scope. Everything is itemized, right? Each item, what needs to be done, I could we could break this down even further. Right. And you can see this is an estimate and I’m scrolling.
Yeah. This is how detailed it gets correct 100%. Right. So this is how detailed it gets. The person that put this out as our main estimator that for fires.
Well he spent 20 years large loss estimating with with farmers insurance.
Mat Zalk 18:00
And this is all estimate right. I mean this.
Andy Gurczak 18:02
Is all estimate we write in there. There’s another software called ability that insurance companies use to we do utilize that one. But this is kind of the main one. Yeah. So you could keep going.
It keeps going and going.
Mat Zalk 18:14
How so it’s 117 pages.
Andy Gurczak 18:19
And this is a this is smart I mean you can we’ve done much bigger estimates. So this is it just keeps going I wanted to show this. This is the only one I did a full one. Just kind of to see. Sort of like your listeners can see kind of what happens and how.
Detailed it gets. Yeah, but there’s 91 pages you could say without the first page. 90 pages estimate itemized. Right. But now what what they want to do is now we can go through it with the adjuster and line item by line item, say, hey, well this we’re not going to pay for it.
We don’t agree with this. Right. It’s it’s it’s kind of how it works. So we did this estimate and then we met with the adjuster on site. Right.
So this claim we started working from the beginning from right away.
Mat Zalk 18:54
Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 18:55
Because the other one I’ll show you what happens when we come in in the middle or something. So then the adjuster came out. Our estimate this is 547,000. On this estimate we did. This probably should have been around for 80 that we should have presented to them.
There was stuff we included that they didn’t have coverage for and stuff, but we threw it in anyways.
Mat Zalk 19:18
Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 19:18
But anyways, adjuster came out, we walked the property and I’ll keep going. Keeps going right? We even recap it gets recapped by category. What’s getting done? We have sketched the entire building.
And so State Farm came out. We met with the adjuster. We agreed to everything. We had we agreed to pretty much everything. Couple small things.
But then he sent us an estimate and of 315. Right. So he lets you cut it by a lot, right. They took out a lot, which we, you know, then we had to spend time now going through. But we already had the upper hand.
Right. Because he already took our estimate. He uploaded it to his system. He removed stuff he didn’t agree with or I don’t know, you know, we agreed with. So I don’t know why he went to 315, but he sent this to us was kind of BS.
We had to meet on site again, go through it, and then we got closer to 418. Right. 383 plus another 34,000 for code. We were at 418, right? Yeah.
This client all in spent 285 on repairing this building. Lots of runs. We got lots of runs approved, meaning they were still collecting rents. Right? So the building was getting fixed.
We got them whatever they were charging rent every month for, I think approved for ten months. And they got this building fixed in six. So they got four extra months of rents. Plus they did a really good on the construction.
Mat Zalk 20:40
So the natural question that an owner or a client would ask is, is it against the law to collect for 18 and only pay 280?
Andy Gurczak 20:50
No. So you’re owed this money, right? You like what people don’t understand is of course, if they can offer you 200 and you accept it, then yes, they’ll do it. But what you’re owed is what you’re owed. And hence in that situation, for, you know, for the claim we have in Saint Louis with you guys, you know, for, for your management team is same thing, right?
The estimates and invoices were presented from the contractors before we put our estimate together. Yeah. And so if their invoices are 100 but our estimate is 130 that they should have paid. Well, they’ll pay those invoices because that was already done. That was estimated for that was retail.
Yeah. So people understand like what you’re out is what you’re out. If the insurance company can can pay less, they will pay less. Yeah. That’s just the thing.
So. Here it is. So yeah, that’s the total. This one is interesting. This one we got involved.
This was 13 roofs in 13 buildings in Hudson, Wisconsin. They had a hailstorm. This was their offer of 2250. But this was 13 buildings, right. So there’s technically 13 buildings.
Mat Zalk 21:59
So at 220, at 2250 a piece. Okay.
Andy Gurczak 22:02
Yeah. Well, what is that.
Mat Zalk 22:03
36, $27,000?
Andy Gurczak 22:05
Yeah, exactly. So right around there. Right. They were paying to repair, like 100 shingles on each building. Yeah.
They didn’t include metals. They didn’t include a bunch of stuff. So if we were there from the beginning, right, we would have inspected it. We would have presented all everything to estimate the damages. And this claim gets paid right away.
And if it doesn’t on the second inspection, or on the second thing, we could have gotten an engineer. Like it would have went from taking a year and a half to settle, to take in maybe six months or five. Right. And it would have been for a lot more. But either way, we got involved in maybe five months into the claim.
This claim ended up settling. Took a year and a half. Went to appraisal. We had like three consultants on this. They brought in three consultants.
I mean, they brought in everyone for this to not pay this.
Mat Zalk 22:45
The insurance company did.
Andy Gurczak 22:47
They did. Yeah. That settled at 952. The replacement cost. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 22:51
So they offered 2829 to begin with or whatever the math is, and they ended up paying 952 100%.
Andy Gurczak 22:58
Yep. That’s correct.
Mat Zalk 22:58
And if if you guys had not been involved, the person would have said pulling their hair out in exasperation would have said, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fight them. They’re offering this thing. We’ll take what we can and we’ll move on with our lives. And that’s it.
Andy Gurczak 23:12
100%. Yep. And so when I spoke with the with the the HOA and I asked the, the members, you know, How do you guys feel? You know, this award. And how do you guys feel with the settlement?
They were in. They’re in awe, right? Yeah. We never expected anything close to this. So it’s a great feeling.
It took longer than we wanted to. But again, it’s sometimes again, if if the insurance company can delay it for two years, they’re going to delay it for as long as they can.
Mat Zalk 23:36
Sure. And what’s what happened in the process? I know you said there were a bunch of consultants, the insurance company, they’ll fight and fight and fight, but what’s the what’s the actual process going through this to get to 952 from whatever we said? 2829.
Andy Gurczak 23:48
Correct. So we went out there, we marked everything, right. We sent them all our documentation, estimate everything. So they said they’re going to bring in a consultant. They brought in a second consultant to meet with us on site.
He met us on site, walk through, agreed to a lot of it. And then he submitted his findings to insurance company. Well, I don’t think they liked his findings because they were more in line with us. So they sent another engineer. Correct.
So another consultant? Yeah. There you go. You know the game.
Mat Zalk 24:16
It’s crazy that they can do that. I mean, I as a buyer of a home, I don’t have the ability most of the time to say, I don’t like that appraisal. I want another appraisal. It’s like that was appraisal. It’s a licensed appraiser.
That’s the appraisal you got.
Andy Gurczak 24:29
I talked about that yesterday again in the in the call with with your team is they’ll bring in ten consultants, ten vendors, whoever they can because they’re not bringing them to help pay your claim or find more damage. It’s more more to support why they are not paying for it. And again, when they bring engineers. Right. And let’s say you look at ten claims, I show you ten of our claims.
And it’s the same engineering group they use usually 2 to 3 different engineer groups, especially like say like Allstate. They use the same ones. And if we look at the reports, literally 90% of the reports are the same, right? You’re building head wear and tear, right? Yeah.
The damage is old. It’s not from the storm. It’s they use the same language every time. Always. And and again, you know, when you call these engineering companies, say, hey, will you guys write a report for us?
Oh, no. We only write for these insurance companies. Why? I thought you guys, you guys are independent. You guys can write for anyone.
Why? Of course, they only write for the insurance companies. Who gives them 100% of their business?
Mat Zalk 25:25
Yeah. Will they give you access after they said I don’t like the first report, I’m getting another engineer to do another report. Are they forced somehow to give you access to the first report?
Andy Gurczak 25:36
So we we always ask for the report, right? Some insurance companies are very like the next claim I’m going to talk to you about. They didn’t they didn’t send us the the entire report. And I actually knew the engineering firm and I knew the, the engineer very well. So he told me and we talked on site.
It was actually pretty funny. But when the when the adjuster said, I don’t know what the problem was with the adjuster, but he sent us like he just nitpicked like three sentences.
Mat Zalk 26:01
Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 26:02
He didn’t send us the whole report, just kind of what he wanted us to see. They’re supposed to share the whole.
Mat Zalk 26:07
They’re supposed to, but they’re not legally mandated.
Andy Gurczak 26:10
No, they it’s wild, wild West. They do what they want until someone calls them out on it. So yeah. So this one ended up at 952. The next one is wanted to say something on the smaller side.
This is this was with nationwide. There’s a big hailstorm last year in Orland, Illinois a big client of ours now Property Holdings. They’re great. And this was actually their own building that they used and it suffered. You know, this was a excuse me, this was damaged.
They estimated 11. So they brought in. They didn’t even send out an engineer. They sent out they sent these companies out to do like just photographs for them. Yeah.
And you know, they came out, took photos and sent this 11,000 after we already sent them our estimate for 70 something thousand. They dragged this on for a good year, almost a whole year. They dragged this on until we ended up sending an, an email to the CEO of nationwide for like CEO, CFO, like literally just like ten hires. The next day we got an apology letter. The day after that, we got an email from some main consultant, their claims adjuster, whoever he is, and basically pretty much he was like, like 95% of our estimate, 5%.
Some stuff we said, okay, we’re good. And and that estimate that settled at. Yeah, 60 199 90. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 27:33
Wow.
Andy Gurczak 27:35
So we had to go drastic measure. And that was right from the beginning too. Right. So every claim is so different. It’s never it’s hard to say how long a claim is going to take.
Now. Now they were okay. Our client was hey this was exterior damage. So they weren’t in a hurry. Right.
It’s different when it’s interior and you have people there or something. This was exterior, so they’re like, hey, it could take on a year. We just want to make sure it gets settled and we get paid. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 27:56
Can you I mean, if it takes a year to settle, does that mean you cannot start the work or was by the time this thing is done, you’ve already you’ve already finished the exterior renovation.
Andy Gurczak 28:08
So that’s a that’s that’s you have you can’t we always advise our clients, hey, don’t do anything till we get something on paper. Yeah. Because if you if you do, if you cover up, let’s say you just did all the repairs and then they want to do a re inspection or they want to send another consultant. Well all the repairs are done. So now we’re just going through photos.
It gets it makes the job much difficult. Yeah. So you know we that’s why we try to push and we try to get all the documentation right up front and get it, you know again goal is always to settle as quickly as possible. You know, but you want the the fairest. You know, you want the right amount and you want the what’s owed to the client.
So so.
Mat Zalk 28:42
What happens? I mean, in an ideal scenario, a client asks for 11, gets 61 plus lost rent, plus, plus, plus whatever in an interior claim if you don’t get as much. I mean, I’m just thinking about it from an owner’s perspective where they’re like, if this goes on for a year, I’ve lost. Let’s just take one single family. I’ve lost $2,000 of rent for a year.
That’s $2,400. Like, it’s a risk for my side to to delay it, to allow the delay to occur. And for me not to get this thing up and running and and and somebody back renting it. What do you say to those people?
Andy Gurczak 29:20
Yeah, 100%. Well, every, every landlord or rental policy has rental income or business business loss. So they’re going to be. So even if it takes a year. That’s why that’s why we love working with landlords and management companies because they’re claiming business income.
So even if it takes a year they’re getting money, right. Their claims getting paid, they’re getting paid. And then once it’s settled, they still that rent is going to continue until they do the repairs and find the tenant. Yeah. So they’re going to be collecting every month.
And sometimes like I said, we always request it as much as upfront as we can. If we can get six months up front, eight months of loss of rents up front, we will get as much as we can up front. So even if we get to settle right, like quickly and the contract and the owner does the repairs really quickly, hey, we got him that up front there. Still able to claim that money.
Mat Zalk 30:07
Let me ask you this. If if you have 20 houses with State Farm and you take three, 4 or 5 losses in a year or two years, they’re going to drop you, right? I mean, they’re just generally going to going to drop you from insurance. Does it Mater if you only have one claim for 20 properties, they’re less likely to drop you. But does it Mater whether they pay out 11,000 or 61,000 in terms of the calculus that they make as to your risk as a as a client?
Andy Gurczak 30:36
So that’s more of an underwriting question. But we have a management. They’re owners and they self-manage. And they have I mean at least over 100 just condo single properties here in Chicago. And I mean, they have like five claims a year and they would say farm and they have not been dropped.
Wow. And then we have clients that have one claim, whether it’s small or big, and they get dropped. So it just it honestly depends. There’s really no, you know, that goes that’s behind, you know, behind closed doors. That’s underwriting.
That’s all that stuff. So we don’t see that. But they can’t legally, they’re not supposed to drop you because of just having a claim. Right? They’ll give you a reason.
They’re just not renewing. What they do is they don’t cancel you. They just don’t renew your policy. That’s happening. We have a rental.
We have an older rental. It’s about 100 years old. It’s in an historic district. And we were with Hartford for, you know, 4 or 5 years. And then this year they said, we’re not renewing.
We’ve never had a claim with them. Nothing high premiums. We paid for good coverage and they just didn’t renew us.
Mat Zalk 31:31
Wow.
Andy Gurczak 31:32
So they just said they don’t want to do buildings. They said again, when a building so many age like old, sure, they just don’t want to.
Mat Zalk 31:39
Do.
Andy Gurczak 31:39
Great. The risk is too great. Yeah. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 31:41
So so with between AllCity and key renter I know we’ve gotten, we’ve, we’ve done at least proposed a number of projects to you and you’ve taken some of them. And then you’ve said to others, you’re too late in the game. When can you. And yet when you’re displaying that, that screen share, you said some of them you got into five months after the fact. Like what?
What are the criteria for failure? What have what didn’t happen in that five month scenario that did happen when we brought you something where you said, like, I don’t know, maybe it’s you already agreed to a settlement. You already said too much. I mean, what’s the what’s what actually happens that prevents you guys from getting involved?
Andy Gurczak 32:25
Yeah. So we have to we have to bring value, just like Kiran. Like your management company. Like you have to bring value, right? You bring value to your client.
That’s why they hire you. So if we look at a claim and I can’t or we can’t bring any value to this claim, then there’s no reason, like, we have to know it’s still it’s still somewhere in the process that will bring be able to bring value to our client. Yeah. So like, for example, we a couple weeks ago, we had a lady called, she’s out of state, owns a property here in Indiana, and she said it’s been three months. And State Farm hasn’t responded to her.
I said, okay, that’s kind of weird. State farm hasn’t responded. Said, yeah, they sent the vendor out. They gutted the entire house. She had a water pipe, damaged the entire house.
She said, they’re you know, they signed the work authorization because what these vendors do, they never give you an estimate, right? They just say, hey, sign this work authorization. We’re going to do all this work. We’re going to build the insurance. They’ll pay us.
Great. And you’re thinking, great. I have nothing to worry about. I’m just going to they’re going to get paid. But what happens when when the insurance doesn’t pay for the claim they come out?
Who? Who pays for that $50,000 bill? Yeah. You. Because it says there.
Yeah. If the insurance doesn’t pay, you hold that money because technically you’re their client, not the insurance company. It’s very slick. So this lady called, she’s got this $50,000 bill, and she says three months. She hasn’t heard from the adjuster like nothing.
I said, you haven’t got a letter? Nothing. She said, no, I said, interesting. I’m like, I think I know what’s going on. She’s like.
And at first thing I asked, I said, do you have a plumber report? She said, yeah, of course. Can you send it to me? So she sends it to me. I started reading the plumber report, and as soon as I read the plumber report, I said, this is pretty simple.
They’re going to send you a denial. They just haven’t sent it yet. She said, why? Well, because your plumber said that the water. The reason for that pipe break or whatever happened, I forgot that the toilet was old or it was old and it just from wear and tear.
He used the word wear and tear.
Mat Zalk 34:12
Yeah. That’s terrible. The correct word is sudden. Unexpected.
Andy Gurczak 34:15
Look at that. Week later. Week. Yeah. Like days later, she reached out and she got that letter.
The denial letter for that. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, people are like, well, why would why would I call you right from the beginning? That’s the whole reason. Because I would have got that letter.
I would have made sure the plumber writes it the right way. And again, and he’s not we’re not trying what PBA’s do. Right? Like like what we do. We’re not inflating any numbers.
We’re not making up stuff. It’s, you know, we’re we’re we’re just making it, wording it the right way. He used the word wear and tear. If you use that word just like you use the word mold, those are words that don’t get covered. But if you said it was a pipe break, there’s no reason to say everything’s goddamn old man.
If you look at my house, everything’s old, right? Like ten, 15 years. Yeah. Its wear and tear, its normal. Yeah, but if you use that in your report, its going to get it’s going to get a red flag.
And now the lady got denied. Now she’s stuck with the $50,000 bill and her house is gutted. And that was one of I think Marissa, your teammate or one of your team members that called it was claimed like that where the vendor was just doing all this work and they were like, almost done with it. I’m like, hey, you know, the only concern here is if they the because it was kind of iffy. I’m like, hey, if they don’t pay or if they insurance says, hey, we’re not going to pay their bill or not pay it full, then the vendor, then the insurance stuck with it because he never got an estimate.
He just signed these workouts. Yeah. So that’s when also claims, you know, so that lady we couldn’t get involved. It was too late. There was nothing we could do.
Now, you know the plumber report in some instances all the work has been done or the repairs are like almost done or halfway. So it’s too late for us to get involved because we have no proof to go after anything.
Mat Zalk 35:45
Yeah. You guys work with a lot of restoration companies.
Andy Gurczak 35:48
We do. We have a great relationship with restoration companies, so we use a lot of them because there’s a great like you need restoration companies. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. My our biggest thing is there’s a right way.
There’s a time to use them and a time not to use them. Like, you know, when we have a lady with a $10,000 limit in her basement for sewer backup, and the mitigation company wants to charge 1200 to suck out water when she’s got a drain in her garden unit. I talked about this yesterday, and literally they’re saying they’re going to charge her 1500 to squeegee water into her drain. And I said, I said and I asked her, I’m like, was the water like going down? She’s like, yeah, it’s almost down.
There’s just a little wet spots. I’m like, so they’re going to come 1500 to like I’ll come for 1500. Yeah. Like you only have a $10,000 limit. Do not let them put any fans because if they put fans and they dry out, you’re going to max dollars.
Mat Zalk 36:35
A day per fan.
Andy Gurczak 36:36
Oh my gosh, it’s insane. So she ended up listening to me. Got a contractor, got a retail estimate. He was able to do the repairs for close to 10,000. Boom.
Perfect. She’s the happiest. She’s like, oh my, I don’t know what I would have done. She’s like, well, I still want to pay you. I’m like, there’s no reason to pay me.
You didn’t need my help.
Mat Zalk 36:52
Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 36:52
I didn’t, you know. So I was just able to kind of advise her over a few days of how to help her. And that’s why I was telling your team, like, we bring value. We want to take a look at a claim before. So if we don’t, we’re not needed.
Or the client doesn’t need a contractor or doesn’t meet their deductible, we’ll advise them so they are in the best position when all said and done.
Mat Zalk 37:10
I just think like what’s the what is the exact right time to to send you guys into or include you in the mix because we might just get a work order. It doesn’t always come through the emergency line. If it comes through the emergency line, it’s two in the morning and somebody says, hey, my house is flooding, okay, we know it’s going to be a claim that can go to you immediately. But if there’s yes, if there’s smaller, if it’s something that comes on a Tuesday afternoon and it’s just a work order that comes through our system, and we don’t know the extent of the damage until we get out there and we’ve sent a vendor, we may start shop backing up water kind of immediately and we may not think to get you guys involved from the very beginning. Like what are the triggers?
What are the key things that we should be looking for to know? Like, okay, we need to get AllCity involved in this.
Andy Gurczak 38:05
The best is documentation. So whoever’s going out there, even if they’re going to shop-vac like mitigate. Yeah. You you just want to make sure they’re like taking photos, right? Photograph everything.
Videotape. And that way in the morning they can reach out and say, hey, Andy, or, you know, Ashley Tiffany like our team. Hey, look at this AllCity. Is this a claim? Should the insert file it?
We just sucked out the water. Is it worth. Well, we can look at the photos, look at the policy, and right away say yes, file it or hey, don’t file it. It’s. This is like $2,000 worth of damage.
Yeah. It’s better that he doesn’t put this on his record.
Mat Zalk 38:34
Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 38:35
So we can get right again right away. We want to take a look at it, but it’s just photographing whoever’s going there is photographing, you know, making sure they’re photographing it. But we’re available all the time. I mean, if you call us at 2 a.m., most likely someone’s going to answer.
Mat Zalk 38:48
Yeah. What’s the number? What’s the number that somebody would call if they have a midnight emergency?
Andy Gurczak 38:56
Yeah. Our 844 number. It’s 844. My adjuster. It’s like 844692.
I forgot the last four ending, but it’s 844. My adjuster. If they call that. Yeah. Melissa here the answers.
Our phones is is 24 seven.
Mat Zalk 39:11
What else. What else should we be kind of highlighting for for people that maybe are new to the game? I mean, we’re even new to the game. I just did not realize and I told you this earlier, I just did not realize how valuable of a service this is to our owners. And we’ve been operating for so many years without, frankly, without providing a level of service to our owners that I think they deserve, where we would say, okay, the insurance said it’s worth 10,000.
Here’s your $10,000 check. It may have cost us eight to do or may have cost us 14 to do, but it’s like we didn’t know that this existed. And so meeting you eight months ago was really, to me, a game changer in terms of how well we can serve our clients. I’m always looking for better ways to serve our clients, right. Bumping rent is one way limiting the damage that a tenant does to a property, and the cost of a makeready is another way.
But like getting them max dollars for an insurance claim when it invariably happens. Which sucks, but it’s going to happen eventually if you own rental properties is a critical way of really serving our clients. So I’ve been kind of bummed that we haven’t been doing this for the last eight years, frankly. But, you know, is there anything else that our property managers that our owners should know about this process, about getting working with AllCity, about anything else, the insider tips and tricks with, you know, that insurance companies try to pull to to avoid paying that I haven’t asked. Yeah.
Andy Gurczak 40:30
No, I would say time is of the essence in terms of making sure you get a again, whether it’s AllCity or you were to hire another legit public adjusting company that handles like interior large loss claims, right? Not a storm chasers, which a lot like 90% of par. Yeah. The quicker you guys involved, the quicker we can make sure we dictate. We present the claim the right way.
Yeah. Because the mistake that that people do. Right. And not because they don’t. They’re trying to harm the client or you know what they say.
People talk too much, say the wrong terms. Right. There’s terms that you use with insurance companies that aren’t covered like mold. Right. Mold is not covered like we just talked about wear and tear stuff that’s not covered.
And people say, hey, it was old, it broke, and it caused damage to my building right away. That’s going to pay. Investigator say it was old. Hey, we don’t cover old.
Mat Zalk 41:17
Sure.
Andy Gurczak 41:18
So, you know, it’s getting it’s getting us involved right away. And then the second thing is, you know, saying if you if you do file on your own or you’re trying to work the claim on your own is, say, as little as possible, and then and then third would be, you know, it’s it’s definitely a it’s definitely a journey with claims. Right. It’s not like an overnight if you think, hey, you’re going to even if you just don’t use EPA and you use it like it takes time, the claim takes time and the insurance companies it. It’s better for they want to delay.
They want to push this claim as long as they can. Sure. It’s just you know, even with even with the one in sales, you’re you’re the state farm adjuster for for weeks said he was setting his estimate that he was done with his estimate that he was sending it in for four weeks. I mean, we have this in emails. We didn’t delay it every day.
Ash Ashley was on him every day or every other day, calling, emailing every day for four weeks. We’re going to. I’m almost done. I’m done, I’m done, I’m done. And so think about it.
If we weren’t on him every day, this might be this might be three months to get it. And then you guys already spent all the money on all these repairs.
Mat Zalk 42:21
Because do you get the sense that that’s like that that directive comes from on high where somebody says like you’re a great adjuster for us because you always delay, you always push out? Or is it that he’s got 40 cases that he’s working at the moment, and it literally just took him a month to get that that document, that estimate document over to you.
Andy Gurczak 42:47
40, 40 cases. That’s why I know these I a lot of the when we do large lots, we deal with a lot of the same adjusters. And you know, when they’re just so overloaded with claims, I mean they get 3 or 4 fires a day or these large. How can you do that? There’s no way it’s to put one good fire, one good job.
It takes a solid day. Two days. Like to put something together, you know, and you get four. And if you fall behind, you know, you know, then you’re not answering phone calls and you’re not responding to emails. It’s all bad faith.
But again, no one’s calling them out. The only way to call them out is you. Can we do write letters to the Department of Insurance, but even the Department of Insurance really doesn’t do anything about it. But it’d have to be from an attorney saying, hey, you know, if you if you don’t like, act in good faith, like we’ll just go to litigation, that could work something. But, you know, attorneys now charging, you know, 33%, 40% sure.
Mat Zalk 43:36
The other thing you mentioned on the on the first podcast that was super interesting was once AllCity gets in involved our property managers or any, you know third party client if they were contracting with you directly, should avoid speaking directly to the adjuster. If the adjuster is going to call you, they’re going to try to go around AllCity. They’re going to try to get you to slip up and say something like, yeah, that toilet is, you know, it’s been wobbling for years or whatever, whatever it would be. In that case of the broken, you know, toilet line. So is it best for our property managers to just direct every phone call?
They say, hi, this is, you know, Billy over at State Farm. I’m the adjuster. Do they cut him off immediately and say, we’ve we’ve already hired AllCity. I’d prefer that you go talk to Ashley.
Andy Gurczak 44:19
Yeah, that’s 100%. I was supposed to. Now they know once we’re hired, they’re not supposed to call. Whether it’s a management company or the the the home, you know, the the investor themselves. Yeah.
They’re insured. They’re supposed to call us, but they always in the beginning, what they do is they try to get to the insurer and try getting more details. And and they always do that. And then when it comes to the end and the client, then we’re like, hey, well, this, you know, this part of the claim we’re not handling for you or he’s like, I just want to call the adjuster and ask him a question. And that’s when they just are like, well, you got a PA, you know, we can’t talk to you.
Oh. So it’s funny. Now, you know, when the intern actually wants to handle you can’t talk to them. In the beginning, you were able to talk to anyone you know, on the team. Yeah, it’s always the same.
Funny.
Mat Zalk 45:00
It also reminds.
Andy Gurczak 45:01
Me we always.
Mat Zalk 45:02
Go ahead. Sorry.
Andy Gurczak 45:05
I was just saying that, you know, we always tell our clients, hey, if anyone calls you from the insurance company, don’t answer. And if you do answer, tell them to call us. There’s no reason they should be calling you. Everything goes through us. They have questions about coverage.
They have questions about what method? With this property before what he’s been doing at this property. We’ll find out with Mat. We’ll get a story and we’ll let you know. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 45:25
It makes me think, though, that we should have. First of all, the system is broken. Obviously, if it requires third party intervention, the system is broken. But it reminds me of, like, our healthcare coverage. We should have as clients of, you know, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna or whatever, we should have a client representative that’s battling the insurance company for us to to do the same thing.
I mean, it’s just a crazy system and I don’t know anything about it. I was talking to a doctor the other day who was just explaining that he has two full time people that just deal with insurance from the doctor’s office to the insurance company, but as the insured, whether the insurance company denies it or whatever, it just goes back to the client to pay to the, you know, to the patient to pay. Like we need a public adjuster for for health insurance as well in the end.
Andy Gurczak 46:09
My my wife does she was a medical coding and did all that in medical. So it’s funny because she would her job was to she used to have to find coverage for the hospital to get claims. She, you know, her job was to find terms and and like stuff to classify the surgery or the procedure so that the insurance would pay for it. And now that we’re at home, we I had I had some how would I have done an x ray or something. I forgot what I had done, that they sent us a bill for a lot of money that should have been, you know, paid by the insurance.
So now she’s like fighting. She’s doing exactly what I do for property, for her own. You know.
Mat Zalk 46:42
It’s a waste of time.
Andy Gurczak 46:43
It’s wild. It’s wild. So the system is broken again. When we tell people like they’re in the business, it’s it’s they’re they’re a business, right? I can’t be.
No one should be upset that you have to hire a PA, that this is how the claim process works their business. And they figured out how to make more and more money. That’s why Allstate becomes more wealthier. They’re paying their shareholders more. It’s okay.
It’s fine. Unfortunately, that’s just I mean, it’s good for our business, but they are in a business and they’re looking to make money. They have shareholders to to to impress. Right. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 47:14
Yeah for sure. So Andy Gurczak is the Founder of AllCity Adjusting, a licensed public adjusting firm with a focus on making sure their clients get what they truly deserve from their insurance claims. Over the last decade, Andy’s not only protected thousands of people from being defrauded, but he’s also helped them receive more money than what their insurance initially offered. He grew up with the family motto if you’re going to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all. And he carries that sentiment forward into his business.
Now, if you want to find out more about Andy, visit allcityadjusting.com. And he referenced the Andy. You referenced the 844 number I think earlier in the show. So we’ll put that in the show notes as well.
Andy Gurczak 47:52
I’ll leave if our listeners want to reach out to me directly if they have questions like regarding policy coverages, anything, even claims they can reach me directly, I leave my, you know, for the podcast. I always leave my cell phone. So it’s (708) 655-4186. Any anytime they want to reach with the questions, I’m more than happy to help.
Mat Zalk 48:11
Love it Andy, thanks for being on again. I appreciate the additional detail.
Andy Gurczak 48:15
Mat, thank you so much again for having me.
Mat Zalk 48:17
Take care.
Outro: 48:22
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