Complaint Review: Antiques & Collectibles Insurance Group

This agency is the sole vendor for an insurance policy covering a variety of collectible categories. The policy is actually underwritten by American Southern Insurance of Atlanta GA and one of the problems is that they just keep passing the ball between the agency and the company in their effort to deny claims. 

My main complaint is that the insurance agency is really the company's representative and they are not the agent for clients. This is misleading and perhaps fraudulent business practice.

My second complaint is that they work through independent adjusters. In my case, the adjuster made promises, representations, and offers which were not completed or supported by the agency or the American Southern Insurance Company. My claim has been pending for more than 9 months and still no settlement. 

My third complaint is that the policy language was often vague or missing. In such cases, they enforced interpretations that were in their favor. There was NO attempt to be client centric or represent my interests or cover my losses. One example is that they often limited their coverage only to items more than 50 years old. Another example is that they claimed that bicycles were not collectibles, especially if they were ridden or less than 50 years old. This definition was NOT in the policy. There was no definition of jewelry in the policy, even though they enforced a jewelry exclusion. By their definition, a watch was considered jewelry. Loose gemstones were also considred jewelry, rather than as colletibles in their own right. Again, NONE of these limitations were in the policy.

Finally, they would not let me amend my claim to more accurately reflect the value of lost items. Again, there were no policy definitions regarding supplementary information, but they refused to consider anything beyond the original claim--very limited perspective to protect their interests.