Thread by @benjaminwittes

I do not make a practice of using my Twitter feed to complain about the companies I do business with. That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t warn homeowners, particularly in Virginia, about @USAA. I have had homeowners and auto insurance with @USAA for many years.

I will be changing both. The reason is a recent disaster at our Cabin in the Woods, a site well know to viewers of @inlieuoffunshow and #BabyCannon videos. People buy homeowners insurance with a legitimate expectation that their insurance carriers will be there when disaster

strikes.

I feel particularly strongly about this in the case of @USAA, which markets itself to military families.

So I’ll put it bluntly: Don’t expect @USAA to be there for you when disaster strikes. They have left us completely fucked.

Here is what happened.

We bought the Cabin in the Woods some time back as a weekend getaway. We spent a lot of time there during the first year of the pandemic. But we hadn’t been there at all since last autumn, because a variety of professional commitments kept us in town.

At some point between late last fall and May of this year, when the resulting flood was discovered by a neighbor, a pipe burst under the kitchen sink at the cabin and flooded the place. (This is the burst pipe with about 1/10 the normal water pressure.)

It was a real gusher—with the water plume reaching the ceiling. And it went unnoticed for weeks or months—as we were in DC. By the time it was discovered, the entire house was covered in black mold.

Mold abatement starts tomorrow, will cost tens of thousands of dollars, and will involve gutting the place—which will then require rebuilding. It’s not quite a tear-down situation, but it’s close.

It’s the sort of thing you buy insurance for.

But @USAA takes the position that not a dime of any of this is covered. Why not?

Well, it turns out that, in their view, seepage is only covered if the source of the water is hidden behind an appliance or some other fixture.

Leave aside that this was a gushing flood. And leave aside as well that all seepage is invisible if you happen to be many miles away—whether the source is behind a refrigerator or (as in this case) under a sink. The company has denied any coverage. And we are stuck with the bill.

I could go into the legal details but they are not important. The company wins because, as a realistic matter, we are not going to sue them—and because of Virginia law on the all-important seepage question, we might well not prevail if we did.

So all I can do is show you pictures of a wrecked house that my insurance company considers to be not its problem, warn you to turn your water off when you leave a property for any length of time, and warn you as well that @USAA is not to be trusted with your business.

That’s all I got.