I explained to her that it made no financial sense to spend so much labor to collect such small amounts of money. I told her that the estimator would have to get involved with each of these files, and the time involved for him to collect such a small amount would become a greater loss to us. I then told her that we needed to write-off these small amounts because those types of supplements are more costly than they are worth.

She respectfully answered me and said, “I think you are wrong because that is exactly what the insurance company is expecting us to do.” She said that every one of these supplements were approved to the exact dollar amount that we billed, and she said that she explained to each adjuster that, according to the BAR, their final payment and estimate must match ours exactly, or we have to contact the customer and forward them a revised estimate.
 

Kim went on to say that she hears the same excuse over and over. They say the difference is because we don’t use the same database. She went on to say that they never overpay, they always underpay us a couple of dollars expecting us to do just what I was doing. She went on to tell me that when the shoe is on the other foot and they hand us one of their estimates, we spend whatever amount of time it takes to enter their estimate into our management system. We use our time matching everything exactly to the penny and they should do the same.
 

Kim finished by saying that if we don’t put a stop to this it will continue to happen until we train them to pay us the exact amount we agreed upon. It should be their responsibility to match our agreed upon supplement price to the penny. After all, why should we write-off any amount after the fact when we have done everything upfront?  Kim was so right and I really appreciate the point she made.
 

I recently purchased some closet organizers for my master bedroom closets, and I observed a couple of things about the way the company did business. We used a large, top-of-the-line company because we had some bad experiences in the past. First thing we did was get an estimate for the work that we wanted done, then we came to an agreed-upon price, then we signed a contract. Then they requested a 25% deposit before the work could be started. I handed them a check and they scheduled the work to be done when they had a time slot. They completed the work and requested payment immediately. The work was fine and I wrote them their final check for the exact amount I owed.