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Florida CFO: Tornado Recovery? Don't Sign That Document! · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  For the five and sixtieth occasion, we turn the page on the rundown and
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  get to our number three of the Morning Show with Preston Scott. I'm Preston.
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  He is Grant Allen. It is Thursday, May sixteenth, and it's
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  great to be with you this morning, and I am honored to have with
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  us once again Florida's Chief Financial Officer CFO. Jimmy patronis, how are you,
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  sir? Heck, I'm honored to be with y'all. Thank you for
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  having me. I warmly received your email and offer to try to guide those
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  listening through the process of recovery, not get scammed, not get taken advantage
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  of. Jimmy, it strikes me that a tornado is kind of like a
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  rifle versus a hurricane, which is kind of like a shotgun. But the
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  damage left behind, regardless is always devastation. And what are some things that
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  you can advise our listeners in this area impacted by these storms that might be
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  helpful to them? The best, the best thing I can tell in Preston
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  is don't sign anything. A lot of your listeners have been approached by very
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  aggressive tactics by contractors and tree tremors with when it comes to tree tremors,
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  if you've got a tree down in your yard, that is going to be
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  your responsibility to get removed. Now, if the tree is on top of
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  your house, that will be a responsibility of your insurance carrier. So you
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  know, when when you've got a damage to your house created by the tree
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  does the storm's that's where where your insurance company will come and take care of
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  it. The contracted tree tremors by the insurance companies. Now you can say,
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  hey, I've got other trees here, can you take care of them?
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  The same time, they will treat that as a separate contract. But
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  these guys that come fly by night, that come and knock on your door,
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  that want to offer to put a tarf on your roof if you'll sign
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  something, those guys are now going to take over your insurance claim. And
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  unfortunately they will suck up the resources that really should be going to the repair
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  of your house, that should be going to use. They will take it
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  and use it for them. So I just you know, if it sounds
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  too good to be true, please don't take the babe. What what are
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  the I guess the options? Is it? First call to the insurance company
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  is it somewhere else? So what I tell people all the time, if
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  your first phone call is either to my office at one eight seven seven,
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  my FLCFO, your insurance agent, or your carrier, there's zero chance of
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  you getting scammed. Okay, you know what was what's great about the tornadoes?
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  We saw it also, I tell you because the size of the storm
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  was manageable. The carriers have the abilities so that one of the carriers I
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  was talking to this earlier this week, when a storm hits, they've got
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  the ability to physically pick up the phone and talk to ten thousand people with
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  a twenty four hour period. Where the carrier will call, they will say
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  you know, I'm x y Z insurance company you're in and they track it
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  via via storm weather spikes. So you know, if you live along blairstone
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  and your carrier, you probably got outreach from carry your carrier because along Blairstone
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  there was such a devastated path. It'll either text or email a phone call.
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  So you know, I know, sometimes it sounds a little unorthodox that
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  your insurance company is trying to call you, But where the insurance company mentality
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  is guiden Now is be proactive, reach out, touch to the policyholder.
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  Let the policy holder we're here to file a claim. When you file acclaim
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  with that policitive, that carrier over the phone, it's not costing anything.
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  It's getting the ball started. You're not obligating yourself to anything. But I
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  would always err on the side of caution. If you've got the ability to
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  jump in line as quick as you can and get a claim started, take
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  it. I want to get your money as soon as possible. If if
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  someone's already signed and now they're listening to you and they're concerned, what recourses
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  do they have? So it depends on what you signed. You can call
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  again, call our office at one eight seven seven my FLCFO, or you
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  call your agent. One thing we did in this most recent legislative session,
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  but it doesn't kick in till July one, is we put a ten day
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  right of recision period in it. What we saw with Hurricane Idelia, and
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  I hate getting in the middle of contract between adults, but what we have
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  with Idelia. I'll give you one example. We had a man in Perry.
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  He had no damage to the roof. He was ninety years old.
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  He had signed up with four different roofing contractors because they were so aggressive.
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  So then are our depths, our law enforcement officers. They went out,
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  they tracked down those those contractors and go, really, is this what you
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  really really want to do? And we got all four of them torn up
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  voluntarily by the contractors. But you know, I mean sometimes unless we know
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  about it, we can't help you. So we've got our guys. I
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  mean, literally minutes after the storm, we put our defast team, that's
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  our our law enforcement officers. We hit them out in the street. I
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  told them, I said, guys, cruise the neighborhoods with your lights on,
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  no sirens, just like them. I want people to see that you're
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  there. But the bad guys will keep on moving if they see law enforcement
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  there because they know better. Two decades of doing morning drive radio differently doing
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  it his way like old Blue Eyes, except he has a little more hair.
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  The Morning Show with Preston Scott making time in his very busy schedule to
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  share some helpful tips to those of you impacted by the tornado outbreak nearly a
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  week ago. The devastation. You've heard the numbers more more power lines snapped
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  in half, poles snapped in half than the last three to four hurricanes combined,
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  which tells you something about the intensity of the storm. Mister Cfo,
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  let's talk about storm season and some of the best practices, not so much
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  for battening down the hatch, but for preparing for having to deal with the
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  aftermath of a storm from paperwork and documents and so forth. Yeah, I'd
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  say we're a smartphone society. Now, preston and tell people use your smartphone.
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  And you know, unfortunately Tallahassee has been devastated, but there's a lot
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  of parts Tallahassee in the northern part that didn't have the type of storm activity.
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  But take your phone. Take take a walking talking video of the outside
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  of your house. Give two minutes to walk around the outside of your house
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  and just say, hey, today's date. You know, this is what
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  time it is, and you can and just show that your house has no
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  trees on it, okay, and that all your eaves and your roofs and
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  good and just good shape. Don't climb up on the roof, just the
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  outer edge of your house. And some photos do the same thing inside and
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  kind of take a little bit of an inventory showing you know, your TVs
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  you're all covering your furniture. Because when you have a storm and it's not
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  if it's when it's going to happen, okay, you're gonna have to file
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  a clean Whatever you have got that's photographic evidence, I would email it to
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  yourself, so it's in a virtual place. It's in the cloud, and
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  it's always there. So when and if you do have damage, now an
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  adjuster's gonna come to your house saying, hey, this was how my house
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  looked on May sixteenth of twenty twenty four, And so it makes it more
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  black and white, more cut and dry, because now you go back and
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  you've got a tree fall in your house, it becomes pretty obvious. Yeah,
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  this this tree didn't exist on May sixteenth, But here we are on
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  August twelfth, and the tree is there. So that's that's one thing that's
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  really easy to do. The others, you know, take pictures of your
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  insurance documents and do the same thing, just email them to yourself. But
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  like the beauty of technology now is like we saw with Idelia, we saw
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  with the tornadoes, is the carriers are leveraging that technology to reach out to
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  those that, like I said, and this one carrier was talking to where
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  the winds spiked over one hundred miles per hour. I mean, those folks
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  got calls immediately. To the Carrier's attitude is I would rather get to you
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  first than the bad guys. So they want to start that claims process as
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  soon as possible. Yeah, because Florida has unfortunately, because we have more
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  than more than most people believe the number of tornadoes that hit this state.
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  In fact, I saw somewhere Jimmy that Florida ranks number one and most tornadoes
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  every year annually. But that said, we've learned some painful lessons over the
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  years through hurricanes and all that about how just rotten some people can be.
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  Yeah, and that's why you know, we keep on every year that I've
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  been in office, We've kept on chipping away at the bad guys with walls.
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  So like some of there's there's good public adjusters, and there's some that
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  are they're like locusts, they're so bad. And so like, we successfully
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  last year put a thirty day writer decision on a public adjuster. But what
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  I also put in there is, you know, you got thirty days from
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  the time of the disaster, and most people are gonna file acclaim. You
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  would think within ten days they got damage, they're going to contact their carrier
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  or their carrier's going to contact them with them first ten days. So my
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  attitude was, Okay, carriers, here's thirty days for you to get your
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  act together. If you don't get your act, goether when that first thirty
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  days, then you know what, We're going to cut the dogs loose,
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  okay, and they're going to go out and take over these claims. So
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  the carriers there is a way to get the carrier's attention. But it was
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  also telling the public adjusters. Look, if you're noble in what you're doing
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  your good people, fine, but if you're one of these predators, we're
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  going to give that homeowner up to thirty days to get their wherewithal and fire
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  your tail. Nice. Always appreciate your time, Jimmy, and I appreciate
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  all you're doing on behalf of the citizenry of this great state. Thank you,
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  well, i'd say it radios, it's the gifts during disasters. Thank
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  you for what y'all do. You may not hear it enough, but you're
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  just like a first responder because you're sitting there behind the microphone during the worst
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  weather of anybody. So God bless y'all. Preston, thanks for having me
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  this morning. I appreciate it. Sir Jimmy Patrona's Florida CFO with us some
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  brilliant tips. Just walk around your house in and out with your phone,
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  narrate what you have, document its condition, take some pictures, and then
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  email all of that to yourself. You will be so grateful. Do it
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  sooner versus later seventeen minutes past the hour