CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Assault Mentioned
I work as a claims adjuster for auto accidents. A customer files a claim after hours, and I follow up with him first thing on Friday morning. This was a single-vehicle accident where the customer hit a large object in the road that he absolutely should have seen. He did not file a police report, and he wants to send me photos from the scene of the accident (which took place at night).
I have no information on the vehicle other than what he has reported, and I inform him that there is a possibility of it being a total loss. He immediately jumps down my throat.
Customer: “I don’t want my car to be a total loss! And I don’t want you to have it taken anywhere for an in-person inspection!”
I start to discuss an alternative with him when he starts cursing at me and berating me, constantly interrupting me to tell me to just pay the claim. If it were that easy of a job, I’d be paid less, and my job would be a h*** of a lot easier.
Me: “Sir, per your insurance agreement, we have to inspect the vehicle before I can make a payment for your claim, and we need to see if it is going to be a total loss or repairable.”
He continues to be an a**, so I inform him that I will disconnect the call and try talking to him again when he has regained his composure. I hang up and go into a meeting.
The customer proceeds to call our customer service line over and over and over, harasses a total of four women, and refuses to end the call until I accept his call. I explain that I am in a meeting and won’t be out for at least another thirty minutes or so. He continues to stay on the line with them for a few more minutes before hanging up and calling customer service again.
I finally have a chance to call him back.
Me: “We can try to work with your shop and have them submit photos. Then, we can do a preliminary check to at least see whether the car is a total loss or not.”
Customer: “I sent you photos last night!”
Me: “There were no attachments to the emails you sent me. And we need very specific photos to have the most accurate review.”
He proceeds to tell me it is my job to call the shop and request them… which is what I told him at the start of the call anyway. Then, he demands:
Customer: “Give me your cell phone number.”
Me: “I don’t have a work cell phone.”
Customer: “I want your cell phone so I can reach you over the weekend.”
Me: “I will not be providing you with that information.”
He demands it a few more times before stating that he wants to talk with my supervisor.
Me: “She has already been informed of the situation, and she will reach out to you when she is able to. I am not allowed to give out her contact information.”
Customer: “You need to have her call me immediately.”
Me: “Sir, she is my supervisor, and I cannot dictate her schedule.”
He proceeds to try to keep me on the phone until his demands are met. I inform him that I am going to disconnect the call if there is nothing further to discuss, and he ends the call.
I call the auto shop, and they also gave me attitude, stating that I am keeping a good man from his job and that I shouldn’t be wasting his time like this. I ask if they can email the photos to me just so that I can get it done, and they say they will.
Two hours before I leave for the day, I still don’t have the photos. I text [Customer] and let him know, and he tells me he will call them. Five minutes before I’m supposed to leave, I call the shop again and don’t get an answer or the option to leave a message. I text the customer to let him know that I haven’t received the photos yet, and since it’s Friday, we won’t be able to move forward on his claim until Monday.
He starts blaming me for working in a different time zone.
Customer: “It isn’t fair that you work three hours ahead of me!”
Me: “I don’t work three hours ahead of you; I’m just one hour ahead. The shop had all day to send me the photos I need.”
Customer: “Since I don’t have a rental car, I’m going to be fired on Monday, and it’s all your fault!”
He didn’t purchase the coverage that provides him with a rental. I offer to set him up with a discounted rental, and he tells me he doesn’t have a rental company in his area, but it’s still my fault for him losing his job!
Customer: “You should just pay the claim! You’re holding up my claim for no reason to make life difficult for me!”
I wonder what he thinks happens to adjusters who don’t follow due diligence on a claim and just… pay it. We don’t get cookies, that’s for sure. In fact, we face termination from our employer, fines from the state where the claim was handled, and possible jail time. Oh, yeah, and our employer can sue us for the money we paid to the customer without authorization. And if the customer knowingly cashes the check when they know their claim wasn’t supposed to be paid out, they get reported to the federal government for insurance fraud and sued by the insurance company for repayment of the claim.
On Monday, [Supervisor] calls him and leaves a message, but he doesn’t call her back. She comes to me.
Supervisor: “You have my encouragement to put [Customer] on written-only communication; you don’t have to answer his calls anymore. If he threatens you, I will get our security team involved, and you can press charges against him with his local police.”
I call the auto shop on Tuesday and speak with the owner. I explain that the representative I spoke with on Friday acted very unprofessionally, and he informs me that [Customer] was calling that representative — who is the owner’s niece — nonstop on Friday and harassing her, as well — because she somehow thought it was a good idea to give him her cell phone number when he demanded it. The owner is an old friend of [Customer]’s, but he states that after this repair, they won’t be friends anymore, and he will blacklist [Customer].
I get the photos, and several are very thorough. It is pretty minor damage, and it is clear that [Customer] ran into a metal object on the road, which got wedged in the undercarriage. They had to pull really hard to get it unstuck, and the shop sent me a photo of the very warped item, as well. He has a huge custom bed cover on his truck, which isn’t on his policy, but there is no damage to it, and even if there was, we wouldn’t cover it if he didn’t have an endorsement for custom equipment.
I run this by SIU (Special Investigations Unit), and while they agree that [Customer] is acting shady as h***, they don’t have enough information to start an investigation, and they state that since it was a single-car accident, we will still be obligated to cover his repairs even if he is lying. There are several states where we can deny a claim if the customer lies about how the accident happened, but sadly, this is not one of those states.
I text [Customer] to let him know I got the photos and that I have been in contact with the shop, but he doesn’t respond, and it’s radio silence. Either he’s really embarrassed about his actions, as he rightly should be, or he’s a ticking time bomb that’s going to explode near the end of the week when I’m my busiest just to tell me in detail how I made him lose his job.
As I expected, the quiet doesn’t last long, and the customer is indeed a ticking time bomb.
On Wednesday, I text the customer to see if he wants me to issue payment to him or the shop directly. He immediately demands that I call him as he didn’t agree to the estimate amount.
Customer: “The estimate from the shop is $7,000, and you’re only paying $6,500!”
I try to explain that we are happy to work with the shop to issue further payment as needed. Shop estimates are based on what they expect to see for the full repairs, and insurance pays what they can see and confirm. To keep insurance prices down for our customers, we try to negotiate costs with the shop to ensure what we pay is reasonable.
Before I can get two words out, he interrupts me and starts yelling.
Customer: “You lost me my job! And now you’re denying my claim since you’re refusing to pay the amount the shop demands.”
Me: “We aren’t denying the claim. This is the first of multiple payments we will be issuing, and I need to know where to send the payment. If you keep talking to me like that, I will end the call.”
Customer: “Of course you will.”
No self-awareness or apology. He’s acting like a toddler when he’s nearly forty. I continue trying to explain, but he decides to keep talking over me and yelling at me. He starts to say things about me as a person and my family, and I interrupt.
Me: “Do you want to finish that sentence for this recorded line for who knows how many people to hear?”
He stops, thinks, and then tells me:
Customer: “I hope your husband [sexually assaults] you and leaves you.”
I recently got married, and IT is in the process of changing my name in the system, so some of my systems show my new name and some show my maiden name. It causes a lot of confusion, so I have to explain it a lot while waiting for updates. I had to explain it to this customer, as well, so he knows full well that he is saying this to a newlywed.
I’ll admit, I kind of snap a bit and leave my Tour Guide Barbie voice behind real quick.
Me: “Sir, during this entire claims process, your own attitude has gotten in the way of your repairs. The way you have acted toward me, my coworkers, and the employees at the shop is absolutely deplorable, and you should be ashamed. You haven’t said a kind word to me at all, and you’ve been a nightmare to work with. Now you say awful things about my personal life, which I explained on Friday was absolutely none of your business when you demanded my cell phone number, and now you insult my husband, whom you’ve never talked to and know nothing about. My husband is ten times the man you will ever be while being just over half your age, and he knows how to treat people with respect even if he is in a stressful or difficult situation. I feel awful for your wife if this is the type of man she has to deal with at home. At least my husband doesn’t have to force me to have sex with him, but it’s telling that is where your mind went. Maybe you should mind your own home before you stick your nose in someone else’s.”
He threw a few more expletives at me, but I ended the call because I just don’t get paid enough. He called my customer service team again, and he made the poor woman who answered cry. I took the call again and explained to him that he was now on written communication with me. He could call the customer service center, but I would never answer his calls again, and I would only respond to his emails or text messages. I then disconnected the line again. I thought that was the end of it, but it turned out that he still had [Supervisor]’s contact information from when she called him on Monday, so he called her up.
She called me after she finished on the phone with him, and she gave me a summary. He told her that I accused him of sexually assaulting his wife after he questioned the estimate that I had written. (I don’t write estimates; that’s a whole other department.) He was trying to find out the next steps when I ended his call.
[Supervisor] had listened to his prior calls, so she didn’t believe it for a second. She put him on hold while she pulled our most recent call and listened. She then tore him a new a**hole for what he said to me. He tried to say that I was worse, but she cut him off and explained that I am one of the adjusters in my unit with the highest metrics from customer reviews. I’ve had my fair share of angry customers and it takes a lot to make me snap, but she stated that his conduct had pushed me to the point of snapping, which she had NEVER seen.
She proceeded to tell him that she was enforcing my written-contact-only rule with him, and that if she heard one more call where he harassed an employee, she would talk with her supervisor to press charges for harassment.
Unfortunately, we can’t fire him as a customer because he still pays us money, and the executives don’t care how we are treated as long as we get more money. I’m hoping this spurs him to cancel his policy and become someone else’s problem.
I asked if there would be any disciplinary action against me for the call. [Supervisor] said, “Call? What call? I don’t see any call. And I definitely wouldn’t have been able to delete it if the call wasn’t recorded…” Basically, she is covering my a** if the customer tries to escalate things over her head to her supervisor or something.
I sent a copy of the estimate to the shop and gave them instructions for requesting more payment from us, and [Customer] texted to tell me to send payment to them, as well. Apparently, [Customer] called the shop and they had a massive fight; [Customer] then texted me and asked me to send him the payment as the shop had just pissed him off big time. So, I sent the payment to him — with his lienholder included, so he has to mail the check to them to endorse and cash before they send him a new check, and of course, it won’t be overnighted but standard USPS mail both ways.
I got to close the claim, but I still don’t think this is the last I’ll be hearing from this guy. Thankfully, I don’t actually have to talk to him again.
