A Test Case For My Agent

Three weeks ago, my house almost burned down – no joke – and the incident was a perfect test case for my State Farm property-casualty agent.

The incident took place one evening when the air was heavy and thunderstorms were audible in the distance. It was a typical summer evening for this time of the year in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where I’ve lived for 15 years.

I walked in the door at 8:30 p.m. and flipped on the light switch. One after another, four or five light bulbs in the living room of our ranch house (an expanded bungalow, really) blew out.

As I walked down to the basement to turn the breaker switches back on, I was met with the distinct acrid smell of burned wires and melting plastic. The metal surge protector box was smoking and molten plastic was dripping onto the carpet.

This was not good.

I played around with more breakers on the panel and more light bulbs popped around the house. I figured it was a power surge, perhaps from a downed electrical box on a utility pole, or maybe the house had been hit by lightning.

Then I turned off the main breaker.

The next morning we were on the phone with our State Farm agent, who asked questions about the incident.

She filled out an online document to prepare our homeowners claim, should we eventually need to file one.

Two days later, we received a call from the claims adjuster.

Part hand-holding exercise, part reassurance that we had someone we could turn to, our State Farm folks served as a psychic crutch on which we could lean.

Never having lived through a power surge, we were grateful that we had someone who seemed to be on the ball and knew what questions to ask, and checked in with us daily.

My agent called every morning the rest of the week for updates. We were able to complete the damage assessment more than a week later, after our heating and air conditioning contractor found some time to stop by and confirm no major damage to our systems and compressors.

For the moment, we decided to hold off on filing an insurance claim and instead submit a claim first to our local utility.

It turns out there was a surge of power into the house, but not from a storm or from a malfunctioning outdoor transformer.

Our “neutral” or “ground” cable had become detached from the utility feeder lines running along our backyard.

With the two “hot” cables still attached from the feeder, 240 volts of electricity were flooding into the house. But with no ground cable, the current was zipping around in search of a ground, which it could not find.

This event could have turned into a major property loss. Worse still, it potentially could have been fatal, so I’m told.

A utility linesman who came to the house the next morning hadn’t bothered to go to the end of the yard to see if our lines were properly connected.

Had he done so, and asked the right questions in the first place, we would have solved the issue by 8 a.m. on Wednesday, or 10 hours after I walked into the house on Tuesday.

Instead, the matter was finally solved by 8 p.m. Thursday, two days after I noticed smoke pouring out from the surge protector.  A second utility technician took all of 15 minutes to reattach the neutral cable to the feeder cable and solve the problem.

Even if we don’t end up filing a claim with State Farm, my agent comes out smelling like roses, which is more than I can say for my local utility.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].
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