Lois Epstein - Episode 369

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Okay, back here in studio with Lois Epstein. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you, Jeff? You're just good. You just told me, I asked about your name with the bad guy, and you said you have a cousin named Jeffrey Epstein. I do, and he lives in Miami even, and I... Saw him recently, and it's still his name.

Man, that must be so shitty to have that name after that thing went down. Does he care? The one story he told me is that his photo was printed in a paper at some point instead of the bad guy. And he ended up with a settlement that was... substantial. I just saw somebody sent me an article, it was like a Politico or something, and it was about Nick Bagich. It was like some profile or something about his vote, and the picture they used was Mark Bagich.

Similar. Similar kind of thing, you know. So interesting having you on. I want to talk about an insurance kind of fiasco you've had over the year, more than a year. And I got connected with you. You reached out to me, I guess, over about a year ago. And so you had a tree. You live over off that turnoff by Westchester, right? Right. Downtown. And you had a...

tree fall in your house in a big, big windstorm. It was Easter, right? Yeah, yeah. It was Easter morning, about 3.30, 4.30 in the morning. I thought nobody would help me. It was an 80-foot spruce. That blew over. Yeah. Huge tree. Yeah. Yeah. It fell, hit my, I have a flat roof. It fell over the kitchen. Lots of leaks there. I have a tenant leaks into her place. It landed on.

My skylight broke that, and the skylight had a frame that was about six inches. So that probably, I'm told, reduced the impact a little bit, but I still had in the—well, we'll— Cut to the chase. It was about $60,000 worth of damage, some of which was ultimately paid for. But I think we're here to talk about what a long process. You had reached out to me, and I had come by last summer, I think. It was last summer.

And the damage was still, it was kind of somewhat repaired or a little, you know, there was, the leaking had stopped, right? Yeah, well. I mean, you could see the damage where the roof was all screwed up and the light you were talking about. And this was March, and by the time you reached out to me, a few months had gone by? Yes, that's right. So the immediate mitigation where they come in and they pull out all the insulation and the...

open everything up to the framing. That had all been done, but I had ongoing leaks. I had been talking to USA... A insurance. That's right. That's right. Early in the spring because, you know, it had just happened. I thought it was before hurricane season. You know, this is the time to get construction lined up in Alaska. And they weren't responsive. The constant refrain I heard from the adjuster that I was assigned who was out of the Southwest was, ah, we'll take that up with our team.

And I kept saying, you know, I'm worried if this is not fixed, my roof is trashed in the corner. You know, it's going to be a horrible situation. For the winter, if it's not fixed. I actually tweeted. I think that may have been how you and I connected. That's right. Yeah, I saw your tweet. That's right. And then I reached out to you because I thought it was kind of wild because months and months had gone by and they weren't.

So I think you had spent some of your own money, right? And at some point you had spent some money and you were looking to get... I knew it was a very expensive... situation that I had in front of me. I didn't know how much it was going to cost. I had put off a number of things I was going to spend money on last summer.

We got the skylight fixed immediately. That was good because that was open. You looked up and you saw this huge tree across the skylight. It was terrifying while it was there. It must have been just like wild. I mean, three in the morning, four in the morning. morning you're thinking like you know the world's ending or yeah it must have been so loud it was hugely loud in fact I am not someone who uh you know is prone to trauma I've had a

Good life, more or less. But I cannot remember the noise. I think there's some sort of PTSD going on. But I know my dog and I, after that, whenever there was... I would react to it. I was getting out of bed in 2018 when the big earthquake hit. It was just like...

I had some of that too. I was like, it's all over. You know, it was so bad. Yeah. But I just, I mean, middle of the night in the tree and it was like, and you have some big trees. I mean, there's some big trees in that. I think they're your house, your neighbor. There's another really big, there's some big trees.

Yeah, I've got a tree in the front. My house was built in 1952. So you get some sense of what was around there then that the arborists have the called. It's a tree in the front of my house. called it Big Bertha. He said, you know, that's a good one. That one's nice and healthy. This tree was looked at by arborists the summer before because I had them come by because I was thinking of taking down a tree to put in an off-street driveway.

I don't have right now. And they they said it looked OK. You know, they said there's a little bit of fungus. And ultimately. And I've thought about this a lot. I'm an engineer. I deal with, you know, industrial accidents. And I think of how multiple things have to go wrong for something like that to happen. You know, they've studied for a long time aviation accidents.

Every aviation act, I think it's like seven or eight things have to go. It's like multiple. Like you said, it's multiple. It's not just one. I think it's a cascade of like several errors combined that have to happen to lead to these big devastating accidents. Something like the Exxon Valdez. Multiple things went wrong. So the three things that I think happened that day was it was a wind in a direction.

That is not typical. So I'm told by the arborist that that side of the tree wasn't as strong as it would have been. I was in Juneau, but I remember there was tons of damage with that windstorm. A bunch of trees got knocked all over the city. There was trees getting knocked over. I remember there was people were posting pictures and it was a big, big windstorm. I remember that. Yeah. So it was the wind.

It was the little bit of fungus because you never really know how much the inside is being eaten up because this broke about four feet above the base. And then – The third thing was that it was winter and that my neighbor's trees had no leaves on it too, which might have broken the wind a little bit. For a friend that I bought some property a couple of years ago, we've been working on it.

We got a guy eventually to come in with a bulldozer and excavator to clear a pad. But we were initially out there cutting down trees. And what you find out is when you cut down, especially when it's very thick with trees, and I hadn't really cut down a ton of trees in my life like that, they fall, they get hung up.

They don't fall over. They get stuck on branches. So then you're in a situation where it's like you got a tree, the trunk is cut, but you have to work really hard with ropes and stuff to pull it down. So if there's... Other trees or leaves or branches, yeah, like you said, the tree won't fall over sometimes. But if there's nothing around, it'll just go. Right. Yeah, so when this happened in the middle of the night, my tenant, of course, was woken up. She comes up.

helping me clean the water that's coming in. And then she goes down and she's got leaks in her place too. And that eventually had to be torn up her walls and fixed as well. But I'm sitting there at 4.30 in the morning going, huh, maybe I'll call my friend on the East Coast who's usually up early and knows about house construction to figure out what to do, what's next.

My head wasn't working straight. And he said, Lois, you know, get the tree, get someone to take the tree off the roof today and cover the skylight. And that's all you could do for today. And I did that. I mean, I was shocked. I mean, Alaskan. tree companies really stepped up. I thought no one would answer my phone because it was Easter, but they did. Who used? No, but I can remember that I called five or six. In fact, my D.C. friend sent me a spreadsheet immediately.

Four of the five or six called me back to help me out. We have a big association I'm on the condo board of. We use this guy, Mike, at Tall Trees. They do a great job. Yeah, it wasn't Tall Trees. I've used them before, though. Very available to come out. Yeah, it was a smaller company and two of them came and they were there at the same time.

And one had a tarp and the other didn't. So I went with them. They both gave me comparable estimates for what it would take to get it off. So the first day went really well. And after that, it was months and months of...

horrible, not sleeping, you know, figuring out and, you know, I have a lot of experience dealing with, you know, industry and how to best. you know, leverage, get them to do something. And I was just stumped. So by the time we met last summer, you had showed me like a litany of correspondence with the USA people.

What kind of stuck out to me was at one point you had an estimate, which looked reasonable to me. I have friends in the construction. I mean, I do stuff with my condo, so I'm kind of familiar with, prices have gone up, you know, everything's with COVID and materials and labor. But it seemed to be, whatever it was, it was reasonable. But then...

They said, no, we can't use them for whatever reason. And they had their own company. They wanted their own contractor, which is okay, fine. But then they weren't available until like October. Exactly. And this is, I think we were talking maybe in June or July.

of last summer and you know we all know like october it's snowing and it's cold and and they like wouldn't consider you know the company and you say okay well i'll use a different i mean we need to find somebody that can do it right and we all know right now with like

contractors and it's, it's really difficult to get people to, you know, it's hard to find people. So if somebody is willing to do the work, you know, that's great because it's hard to find people that want to do, they can do work right now with the shortages and all the, all the. All the work that's out there. Right. And the windstorms we're having. But yeah, so one really good thing I did, I didn't do everything right. Who does? But in May was I got three estimates to repair the roof.

And that meant that I was on the radar of the roofing companies. while I was debating with USAA about whether they would actually pay for the roof repair. They gave me, this was a sticking point. You know, you looked at the corner of my house and it was just smashed. I'm an engineer. I did a rough calculation. It was a ton or two of tree that fell on the house. And we didn't know how bad the damage was going to be once the...

The repair was being done once they started pulling out the materials on the roof. And the USAA estimated six hours of repair. No contractor would look at you if you put six hours of repair. So so we were at an impasse, essentially, you know, where. I said, you know, you guys need to get me a new roof. And they said, I don't think so. We're going to just repair part of it. And ultimately...

What happened is in the middle of summer, the guy I had been dealing with and I tried to talk to his supervisor and she didn't leave phone numbers for me to call her back.

all kinds of just horror stories. But then the guy I was dealing with went on vacation and I had a new guy there. And I also had... A gentleman named Gordon from Tailored Restoration who said, you know, we can do this job for the amount they estimated if they will pay time and materials for the roof repair because we really don't know what's under there. Yeah.

That was the breakthrough that we needed. And that was the end of July, early August. And so it's getting really tight in Alaska's construction season to get somebody to come, you know, before the snow comes. I got approval to move forward from this, you know, the guy that took over my case during the vacation. And I thought, OK, it's like immigration. It's like it's like up to the agent you get when you're like, you know, it's like.

Somebody could be in a good mood and it's fine. Or you get somebody to bat if you're like visiting with a visa, you know, it's just totally up to like the luck of the draw for what agent you get. That's right. It could cause you problems or not cause you problems. Yeah. And then something else we should talk about, Jeff, is.

the role of the state, which over the course of the past year, I wrote the state four times. Division of Insurance, I imagine? Yes, yes. Very... clearly laid out when I had sticking points with insurance. with USAA, and they don't do a lot, but one thing they do do is they forward your email to... Well, I talked to the director, so I was looking and doing the story, and then I was kind of had some other stuff going on, but I talked to the director, and I had made some inquiries, and...

I said sometimes, you know, when the media starts looking into things, they get fixed. I've dealt with that a lot where you start asking questions and all of a sudden problems magically get fixed very quickly. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Funny how that works. Right, right. And thank you for that because, you know.

They did forward on stuff. I don't know if they gave me any special attention. They wouldn't have done it for anyone else. But every time I did that, I made a little more progress with USAA all the way till the very... And I had to do that, you know, and the end was.

April, just a month ago. It took like a year, basically, to get all this worked out. Which is crazy. We all pay for our insurance. I said I was on the counter board. We have 116 units, and our insurance is... it's probably gone up by like 80% or something over the last three or four years.

You know, with COVID, everything's just gone up. So it's like they sure take the fucking premiums. And as one friend said to me, you know, if they're not going to deal with you when a tree falls on your house, it's just the classic case of why you need insurance. It wasn't my neighbor's tree. It was my tree.

tree, so that wasn't the complication. But every one of those letters, they took a long time for me to pull together. I had... spreadsheets, there were eight pages of line items. Yeah, I remember I came over, you showed me all the documentation. Yeah, and even, you know, as I said, I'm an engineer, I can deal with numbers, I can deal with detail.

But it was a lot of work, and I really feel for the people who don't have the ability or time to do that because, you know, magically, some light items would disappear from... the information the insurance company laid out to what they sent to the contractor. That's crazy, you know. And so there was, you know, that one, there's maybe $500, $600 difference. But I have to find that out and make sure.

that they get paid. So you had a deductible, I assume, and you had to pay that. So how much were you kind of... Ultimately out of pocket. Well, there's a couple of ways to figure it out. But the deductible was $2,000. The ultimate cost was about $60,000. They never paid the full price of the roof repair.

was about 17 they paid about half so some of that was was me you know i was the other like the the drywall and the water damage and yes it was drywall water water damage new flooring that was that was you know, damaged enough in the kitchen and attached to the living room. But the big cost was the roof, the skylight. Amazingly, the windows in the kitchen didn't break. Yeah, I remember being there and thinking like, wow, you're lucky the pressure didn't crush the windows.

Right. I guess that when it landed on the skylight with that six inch frame, which when they replaced the skylight, they said the frame was looking pretty good. That was the one, you know, it was a terrible thing to happen, but the one. positive, that that held up the tree enough that it reduced the damage. So they ultimately did pay for most of it.

Yeah, about 80% they paid for. So I paid a lot. And then if you... And it took them about a year to get along. Yeah, until April of the following year. That's just so wild that... You know, you think if something happens like that, they, okay, a few months, fine, two or three months, that's probably normal or expected, but a year to deal with something like that? Right. It just seems... Right. And the Ruth situation...

When I finally got the guy that was willing to be helpful, you know, move forward, time and materials, tailored restoration started its work. Ultimately, the and. As most people know, you have to sequence this. You're not going to, you know, fix the interior until you get the roof fixed so that nothing's going to leak in, you know, once you do the drywall and all that.

And the painting. So, yeah, ultimately the work really started in a bigger fashion in October and it was literally a week before the first snow. It was very stressful. So was it? I mean, did you have issues with the heat or snow or more or less? Fixed enough so that wasn't a problem. So I had no lights all summer, which is not a huge issue up here. But it started getting to be a problem because I had no lights. The water had come through the electrical system. Yeah.

Yeah, so I had to move lamps and stuff like that. So heat-wise... Yeah, I assume that probably I lost some additional heat than I would have otherwise because I didn't have the insulation. But once the contractor, once the roof got in and the contractor started working. It was maybe a month or two. So when it first happened, I guess for the first month, I bet you it was still pretty cold in April. But you had the tar, was it? Yeah.

The whole house ended up being cold? It wasn't terrible. I mean, you know, I don't have a very huge house. The upstairs is about 800 square feet, and I could put a space heater in rooms and stuff like that. So there was still snow. on the roof when it happened, and ice. And at one point, one of the insurance company's contractors said, we can't go up there. It's too dangerous, so we can't help you with the tarp. So I had a...

I did lay out a bunch of stuff on that first day. That actually was about $2,000 worth of things with tree companies and having... The skylight people come back and check for leaks and doing small patches. There was a guy, a roofer who came by the first day and he said, I can't can't help you. We don't do that type of roof anymore, but I can do a patch.

And even that took months to get reimbursement for. So did you, I mean, did you, I assume you may have been aware of the division of insurance or were you? Have you dealt with them before? No. At some point you figured out, oh, there's a division of insurance. Maybe I can see if they can help me or talk to them. Yeah, I mean, you have to learn that it's not a federal thing, that insurance companies are regulated state by state. And the only leverage I had was.

It was the state division of insurance. I didn't know anyone there. Well, talking to some people there, I mean, this is a thing where, I mean, insurance companies, we all hear about what we hear about with health insurance. You know, they don't want to pay, but it's the same thing. Their game is taking the premiums and paying, taking as much as they can in premiums and paying as little out as they can in, you know, payments for damages. So it's all a game. But, I mean, it's...

By law, you pay insurance. They're supposed to help you. And when something happens, an insurance event, they're supposed to pay for it. Yeah, I have huge empathy now for people that have, you know. extensive hospital bills with so many line items that they you know it's hard to know what's legit what isn't you know what they're going to pay for and what they're not um and uh

Yeah, it just takes so, so much time to go through this. But at this point, it's been a year, a little over a year, and everything's fixed, and you had to pocket some money, but it did get eventually fixed. But it took a year.

It took a year to get the final payment, and it wasn't a small payment either. It was, you know, $8,000. I was still waiting until the end. Did the original guy come back, or did you stick with the new guy? Yes, yes. That was what was horrible, you know, after the contractor had done the work. I thought, OK, I'm in good shape because I had the better guy working with me. And then I had to submit those final payments that the contractor bills.

And I was back to the old guy who was once again stalling and saying – and their strategies are interesting. They'll – it will be a bill that has – 10 different components and he'll focus on one of them. And then he'll send me a small, you know, we'll come to an agreement on that and he'll send me a $900 payment. And I'm like, what about the other 7,000? It's like in Vegas when you're winning at the table.

You know, they send in the dealer, the cooler. You're on a hot table and everything's going well. And they send in this fucking dealer. It's like totally cools off the table. They send in the other guy who's like, oh, yeah, we're going to do this guy. You know, he's your. New contact. Yeah. Doesn't want to pay. Yeah. Yeah. But they've got all these techniques. I ultimately, after the last, here's the good news, the last letter to the state that got to USAA.

I got a call from the guy that I had such trouble with, his supervisor, and she said, you know, it shouldn't be this way. I'm sorry. And I said, can you put that in writing? She said, no, but we are sorry you had such a hard time. So what's your advice to people who go through something like this, an insurance event, either fire or tree or whatever damage? It's not great advice, but it is elevate as much as you can to supervisors if you're having problems with individuals. I do think...

The effort to write the state division of insurance was worthwhile because your correspondence with the insurance company is going to be... complicated and back and forth. When you write the state, you have to be as clear as possible, as succinct as possible, so you get everything all organized.

And then, you know, it's easy to understand where you are. You're not the bad guy. Didn't you have like a portal you showed me? There was like a portal with the U.S. I remember going through, it was like. dozens and dozens of maybe hundreds of pages of emails and quotes and i'm trying to like look at it and think wow this is yeah it's one thing right one big big you know for you it's big but in the long run it's not that big of a thing but it's just

I mean, think about some big, big fire, total destruction. Exactly. Yeah, it's a bulletin board, so you can post your receipts. But when you go back and forth a number of times, you have to find where you said something previously. It's not the most user-friendly at all. It has limited...

number of characters. So sometimes you're writing and you have to do three different notes to make one point. And it was terrible. It was a bad system. So are you still with them? I mean, did your premiums go? That's another thing you think about when you use your insurance or something happens. You think, oh man, is my premium going to go up now? Because I, you know. Yeah, I am still with them because the...

The bill came last summer and I wasn't going to switch right in the middle. You know, I wouldn't have talked to you if it wasn't all resolved, Jeff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can't go. I felt like I wanted to write about it and speak about it because it was so awful, but you can't until you get that final check.

So now it's what? So it's all fixed. Yeah, the only thing I haven't done, and I will, is I got payment. Here's an interesting story. It was the end of March. I was doing my taxes. My computer was on. The table, my taxes were all on the table. They got all wet and everything. But when the skylight broke, the pieces of glass actually chipped the table in a lot of places. And I got an estimate.

For refinishing. It's a nice oak table. Not huge, but, you know, a table I care about. And so the guy in town that gave me the estimate. I did get payment for that, but I've called him since and he's just busy with windstorms and other things. And so I haven't had that fixed yet, but, you know, I have the money for it. And then I just came back just a few days ago and there was a.

a paint container on my front step. And that was the final work outside because they couldn't do the painting of the roof repair. underneath the underlying stuff until it was warm enough. So that just happened. Well, it sounds like, you know, I'm glad it worked out for you, but just, you know, real, real kind of nightmare situation nobody wants to be in. I think the other lesson is...

If you have a tree and you're not sure if it's going to be knocked over, especially these dead spruce trees a lot of people have in their yards, they're very prone to get knocked over. Yeah, I have a number of friends that have said they've had... tree people come look around their house after hearing my story because it's real. I mean, you don't want it to happen. And I actually have a different relationship with trees now, especially house trees, than I did before.

Because I had a lot of mature trees, and I was debating about whether taking two of them down to put this driveway in, and now I have no problem taking those two trees down. They're nice trees, but they're going. Yeah, no, since my friend and I have been working on a property, I've... I've got this new outlook or new take on trees. If anybody ever says...

There's not, you know, we shouldn't be cutting down trees. There are so many fucking trees. Even in our little two, three acre property, there's just so many trees. I mean, you even look at it, you don't even understand how many, so you start getting in there. and taking them down. I mean, in one tree, it's like so big and it's so heavy. It's so, there's like, you know, so many trees in Alaska. I mean, especially Alaska, there's just like thousands, tens of millions of acres of...

I mean, there's no shortage of trees. Well, what's interesting, though, is in Anchorage, because of the spruce bark beetle, there's a lot less spruce. But our neighborhood near the lagoon, we have very high groundwater. We're one of the few places that still has a lot of spruce trees.

Yeah, that one you had was in your yard. There's some big birch trees around too. That's the big scary part is all those dead trees around town. If it's going to be dry, you know, not a lot of snow and it's not been raining much. That's a scary thing. I mean, I've been covering that for the last few months. I've been talking to the Wildland Fire Chief and the podcast, and it's been covered pretty widely that, you know, if we have a fire event, it's very scary. Hillside, East Anchorage, the...

super dense areas of these, I mean, they're like a matchstick. It's very scary how quick it burns and how hot. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I really appreciate your... You know, going into this in some depth. Well, yeah, I'm glad it worked out for you. I just think it's just I kept in touch with you over the last year. And I just think it's people need to be aware that, you know, if they get the runaround, they have some other.

whether it's the media or whether it's going to the division of insurance and saying like, this is bullshit. These people need to, you know, not dodge me and not refuse to, or, or tell me to use a contractor that can't start till October. And Twitter and social media, I mean, I got responses from people around the country that said, just pay Lois. When you post the company, they see that.

I've learned, like I said before, sometimes when you start to put people on blast or when people hate negative press, and that can be a big motivator sometimes to force people to do what they should already have done, but just to avoid a bad story. Right. Well, thanks a lot, Lois Epstein. I'm glad you got your roof fixed and watch those trees in the future.

Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate your help. End of May here. It's a great day outside. So I think we're in for a pretty, hopefully we're in for a pretty good summer. No fires. We don't want the fires. Right. Right. Okay. Thanks again, Lois Epstein, a victim of a... Rogue tree in a windstorm from last March. I'm glad to have you on the podcast. And victim of the insurance industry. Bigger victim of the insurance company. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, Lois. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Tell your cousin Jeff that Jeff said hi, okay? Okay, will do. All right, folks, if you have an idea for a podcast or want to do a podcast, get a hold of me and stay tuned for the next one.