Hey Mike,

 Sorry for your loss. May your sis rest in peace. I lost my dear bro a couple of months before that but will always have the many vivid memories. Also, he comes back to life in dreams. Even when I’m awake, I talk to him especially when praying. By the way, he got shingles few yrs ago. Pain was awful. That got me to get Shingrix vax (2 shots).

 And eerily similar to you, I got a call about sudden leak in water heater in my rental house that was found day after my bro’s funeral during holiday weekend! Prop. mgr said tenants came home from vacation to H2O covering half the house. So, prop mgr had to call water mitigation co. (something I wasn’t familiar with).

 It turned out tenants fortunately had vacuumed ALL standing water before the co. arrived. But co. still needed to put in fans, dehumidifiers, and wetness monitors. They ran them for ~8-9 days. I thought the bill was going to be ~4K. It’s good I was sitting down when they told me it was 17K! Much of their charge is for “renting” equipment. Surely they already owned it all. They could have bought all of it for only 6K!

 Meanwhile, my insurer told me immediately they wouldn’t pay anywhere near that. They asked for months to get breakdown of work done. Finally, they said they’re sending me check for only 4K. I wish insurer would pay them directly. They’re probably a little low but the most it should be is ~6K. I’m worried co. will be coming after me for rest. I’ll go to court if I must.

 I initially tried to go after manufacturer, Rheem, as I had bought WH only 2 yrs before! The plumber said relief valve seal was defective. I got credit under warranty toward tankless replacement. But I wanted Rheem to also pay for water mit. plus damage. However, they made it too difficult and thus I filed insurance claim. Insurer said they’ll be subrogating against Rheem.

Great to read  from you Mike!

Sorry to read about the bad things and your losses. Stick around and keep us posted with your extraordinarily interesting views.

Larry, sorry to read about your flood. That's a ton of money for doing that work/drying out the house. People in that business typically price gauge customers who are vulnerable after a tremendous loss, which often includes losing many personal items.

Over a decade ago, we had a massive flood that filled our basement with water. It happened because the power was out during a 4 inch rain and the water all came up thru the sump pit in the corner of the basement. Horrible design to the house.

I was told by insurance that we needed a separate sump pump, supplemental insurance to cover a failed sump pump and were completely out of luck. Insurance offered $0.

We had a huge fire 10 years before that, with the same insurance company going over and above to replace things and in the end, it cost them over $400 thousand(we lived in another location for a year and they paid for that).

The builders handling much of it for us,  stated at one point that it would have been cheaper to build a new house from scratch than to tear out the damage and repair/rebuild those areas. 

This new flood bill was only $15,000 but I was livid that they would not pay and blamed my agent completely for not properly informing me about the special sump pump insurance because I was positive, with us living on the top of a hill that we would never have a flood and did not build the house, so how would I know about sump pumps and this one's retarded design.

 This one is actually IN THE  BASEMENT. It takes water surrounding the foundation well below the surface in a heavy rain and diverts it INTO the basement sump pump.

The water below the water table outside the house,  just flows by gravity INTO THE BASEMENT sump pit. The insurance company's conventional flood insurance did not cover this. We needed special sump pump failure insurance.

NOT acceptable!

My position was that it's the job of the insurance agent, who came out here and accessed our house to inform us about what our risks are and what all the coverage policies are. I could never have imagined that all that water would be intentionally diverted INTO the basement by the horrible design. And even after it happened, I assumed our flood insurance would cover it.

I appealed their decision and lost initially.

Then, I got serious, knowing that they should pay for this because THEY were negligent as the sellers of my insurance to inform me properly.

I contacted the attorney general and proper state insurance, watch dog organization. I put together a 10 page professional presentation, using the blue print and legal jargon of attorney's when they go to court (I was also going to file in civil court for the losses).

It included all the extreme rain events in our area the past 20 years to show our vulnerability (this is what helped the most it-thank you meteorology). 

Funny thing is that I USED CLIMATE CHANGE and showed the increase in heavy rain events with time for our area WITH DATA. 

The position was to show that there were enough previous similar but increasing heavy rain events, that can feature power outages for this to have happened and the insurance company, that insures for extreme weather should have known what I found myself AFTER it happened because that's their business. 

The clincher was that I told the insurance company that besides the complaints(businesses do not want unsettled disputes on their record with the attorney general)  and plan to go to court, I was going to issue a press release to major tv and newspapers in the state of Indiana and copy my 10 page document with it. 

This is where being on television for 11 years helped me to understand the value of press releases.

If you think there's a story worth covering, good or bad,  write the story up, including the detailed evidence, including the impact on people/you, including the reasons that v viewers/readers would be interested in it, then go online and get the contact information for the ASSIGNMENT editors/new directors, consumer advocate reporters and others at each media source and send out a press release to ALL OF THEM at once.

1. You are doing them a favor. These entities are looking for interesting stories to cover all day, every day. That's their business.

2. The more information you provide, the less investigating they have to do and the more compelling your story might be, to the point of them deciding to use it.

3. You can use them, as well as your state's attorney general to force somebody screwing you over to be held accountable. I've done it with the attorney general half a dozen times and won every time except once. I did it for my elderly Dad in Detroit after Stan's garage ripped him off and got him $500 back. These business would much rather pay you, than to have your complaint on their record at the attorney general 

4. I did a press release to get a tv station and newspaper to cover this story about me and my dad's chess playing.  Sent it to around 10  local Detroit area media contacts at once and got 1 from tv and  1 from print to cover it(I was hoping maybe more but those stories from almost 8 years ago are on the internet.........FOREVER and I've shared them with thousands of people).

When these media sources cover and share it online, there's the chance that it will get passed on further by others who see it.  With the chess story, the most famous women's grand master in the world, Susan Polgar searching for chess stuff to put on her site, found it and posted it. 

                Re: Re: Re: Chess Tournament March 2, 2024                        

MIKE SAID: "Over a decade ago, we had a massive flood that filled our basement with water. It happened because the power was out during a 4 inch rain and the water all came up thru the sump pit in the corner of the basement. Horrible design to the house."

GOOD ON YOU! I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM. THE INSURANCE COMPANY KNEW THE BASEMENT WAS A FINISHED ONE... FULL BATH & KITCHEN  THEY REFUSED BECAUSE THERE WAS NO MENTION OF A SUMP PUMP.  LOL  IT TOOK JUST A FEW VERY BLUNT WORDS TO GET THEM TO CHANGE THEIR MIND.

AFTER THAT, I GOT A GENERATOR, JUST FOR THAT PUMP.  I'VE OFTEN THOUGHT OF AN AUTOMATIC BACK-UP SYSTEM, BUT... TO ME, IT'S NOT WORTH THE $$$$ & HASSLE.

THE BASEMENT HASN'T FLOODED AGAIN, FOR OVER 40 YEARS.

MIKEMPT... GOOD TO "SEE" YA.

SORRY ABOUT ALL YOUR WOES & ALL IN SUCH A SHORT TIME FRAME.

PRAYERS YOUR LIFE RUNS SMOOTHER, FROM HERE ON OUT.

GIVE YOUR MOM A BIG HUG 

Good for you, Jean!

I forgot to mention that I got a back up battery operated sump pump immediately after that event and showed the receipt as evidence that this is what I would have done, had the insurance company did their job and alert me. 

I not only got that, but in the agreement for them to pay,  the insurance company required me to back pay for numerous years of sump pump insurance with the assumption that if they did their job, I would have been paying them for those years for the coverage.

Interestingly, after a couple of years, I cancelled the very expensive sump pump insurance because of having the battery back up sump pump. 

Last month, we would have had a repeat huge flood, when the power company shut off our power because we were late on a bill and the warning came in an email bill..........an hour after they shut off the power.

I assumed it was weather that killed our power for awhile because we had storms that day.

Turns out, that it rained 3.5 inches and the only noise we could hear during the extreme rain event (with no power) was the battery backed up sump pump in the basement pumping out water EVERY SEVERAL MINUTES.

It took almost a decade to use it but it was the best $300 investment ever!

I looked back at my emails and this happened in 2017, not as long ago as I thought. It also had more pages than I stated earlier.:

++++++++++++++++++

To: Farm Bureau 

Regarding: Claim Number 8210024177 

Policy Number: XXXXXXX 

From: XXXXX  XXXXXX 

This document is an appeal to a claim that was filed by the policy holder for an April 29, 2017 incident. A power failure during a flash flood resulted in the claimant's basement sump pump failing to function and water backing up to cover the entire basement with several inches of water. Claimant is not contesting whether her policy covered this event.........it didn't but that clearly, her insurance provider was aware of this specific risk in homes like hers but failed to convey that in a manner consistent with minimal standards followed by other local insurance companies familiar with this risk.  It's clear that the intent of the insured was to have this coverage, had that risk been discussed and/or the special endorsement needed for coverage been discussed.........even 1 time in the last 18 years. Hopefully, this can be resolved quickly without the need to forward the appeal to the Indiana Insurance Commissioner and filing a complaint with the Consumer Protection Division’s, Department of Insurance at the Attorney General's office as well as forwarding copies to media contacts in Evansville and Indianapolis with a suggested story title:  “Climate Change hits Indiana homeowners with no coverage”. 

Below, is a summary of the contents for Exhibits A-I. Because some of the information is voluminous, Exhibit D for instance has 15 pages, the entire appeal will need to be copied and sent by fax or mail upon request. This summary is intended to start the appeals process.   

Exhibit A: Claims letter response denying claim, noted as CL062 by Farm Bureau.  

Exhibit B:  Results of interviews(named sources)  of similar Evansville area insurance providers which clearly shows the well known risk of these events occurring by them and their coverage policies.  

Exhibit C: Scientific evidence of the significant increase in flash flooding in the last 3 decades, the period in which the Maguires were insured by Farm Bureau. (1) Record of 12 events similar to the April 29th extreme rain event in the Evansville area from the local NWS archives since 2000. (2) Statistical analysis of Evansville Spring precipitation over the last 120 years that shows that 6 of the top 10 wettest have occurred since 1983, including the top 4. The 2 wettest ever since 1897, have occurred in the last decade. (3) Comprehensive report from a team of 300 experts guided by a 60 member Federal Advisory Committee and the National Academy of Sciences showing a 37% increase in heavy downpours in the Midwest during this period.  

Exhibit D: Evidence that Farm Bureau has been this customers house insurance provider since 1993.  The current home was purchased in December 1998. Farm Bureau has also insured a 2nd home owned by the Maguire's, purchased for Debbie's parents(Otis and Shirley Dart) during that same consecutive time frame.     

Exhibit E: History of this insurance policy. XXXXX XXXXX and her husband, XXXXX XXXXXXX who  managed the policy, were never properly informed of the risk and appropriately offered the endorsement required to cover this particular high risk event, based on their clear intent to have the best comprehensive coverage offered by Farm Bureau with their Homeowners Platinum Policy H0 00 03. A 1 hour long care review was conducted in March 2011 by Keith Powers, the 4th of 5 agents who managed this policy. Keith contacted the homeowner, Mike Maguire to advise on what he insisted was excessive coverage at the time. Changes made, reduced their premiums by almost 50% from roughly $3,300/year. None of those changes effected coverage pertaining to this particular claim. However, the homeowners were extraordinarily pleased with the much lower premiums after that as well as what Keith indicated was still their best coverage.  After this, Farm Bureau contacted them by mail about the need to add additional roof coverage, which they finally did in June 2014 based on the recommendation of Farm Bureau. There have been no changes to the structure or otherwise since 2014 that would necessitate the Maguires adjusting existing coverage based on their knowledge. An offer to do a basic care review on March 30, 2016 was declined as a result of this.  

Exhibit F: Evidence of the occurrence of the severe storm that hit. Time stamped picture of hail, using a flashlight at the time. NWS data showing the severe thunderstorm warning, radar and rain amounts which led to the power outage and water coming up from their sump pit into the basement.   

Exhibit G: Summary of actions following the event, including purchasing a battery back up sump pump at the first opportunity and adding the endorsement coverage the following week.   

Exhibit H: Losses from the event.   

Exhibit I: Conclusions. Large insurance companies that use actuarial statistics to determine risks have comprehensive data that dials the increasing risks, like those proven above into the cost of insurance. They are well aware that the risk of flooding events similar to the one associated with this claim has been greatly increasing. While no individual agent or company can be an expert on climate change or sump pumps, they sell property insurance coverage,  based on the assumption(and trust) of clients in them having a higher level of expertise/knowledge than a person outside the industry.  This well documented increase in heavy downpours and flooding is especially relevant because it has also been accompanied by a large increase in basement sump pumps flooding in Evansville. This is common knowledge in the local insurance industry based on the investigative results of Exhibit B.  The claimant and spouse prefer not to take an adversarial position with Farm Bureau but instead hope that it will be a learning experience for them both. The Maguire's quickly purchased a sump pump back up and added the endorsement coverage that they should have had prior to this incident. Farm Bureau of Indiana serves thousands. How many of them have basement sump pumps with no endorsement? How many customers now have an elevated risk for flash flooding that was minimal just 20 years ago and are not covered? 

There were numerous photographs ruined by this flood. Those can never be replaced. However, the other items can be replaced. That's what the Maguires have always assumed Farm Bureau would do.   

Special attention should be noted for Exhibits B, C and E as they impart a just level of accountability to Farm Bureau in applying standards to protect the insured based on reasonable expectations in seeking Platinum level coverage from a trusted and competent provider.   

 XXXX and XXXX XXXXXXX    

++++++++++++++++

I used this for an additional appeal of the first denied appeal to get them to pay.

Again, they made us back pay for this coverage, I think for at least 10 years, which was not cheap and they took that off the settlement but the check they cut several months later was huge and the biggest part  was working really hard to get a business to reverse themselves AND DO THE RIGHT THING!

Use this as an example to do the same thing in your lives!

Met Mike said:

“If you think there's a story worth covering, good or bad,  write the story up, including the detailed evidence, including the impact on people/you, including the reasons that v viewers/readers would be interested in it, then go online and get the contact information for the ASSIGNMENT editors/new directors, consumer advocate reporters and others at each media source and send out a press release to ALL OF THEM at once.”

——————-

Hey Mike,

 Thanks for the suggestion. The problem is that unlike you, I am and have always been a very private person. That’s how I’m wired. Thus I could never see me doing this even if it would help. It wouldn’t be worth it psychologically. Heck, I won’t even start a Facebook page! I live where there’s no HOA and am glad. I’m cordial with neighbors (by saying hi or waving) and exchange holiday gifts with my next door neighbor. I told them about my bro passing. But otherwise, I avoid socializing with all neighbors. But here and at other similar BBs I can be anonymous.

 I sometimes wonder why I’m this way and used to feel embarrassed about it. But I’ve learned that this is how I’m wired and to not feel ashamed of my tendency to keep to myself much of the time. I need to avoid worrying what others think by asking myself, who cares? After all I’m not causing harm to anyone in being this way. I’m being myself, which limits stress.

 It isn’t like I have no friends. I have some very close friends and love spending time with them from time to time. But none are neighbors and they’re mostly out of town.

 I’m mainly an introvert when I’m not with friends or immediate family. Part of it is because I tend to not be too comfy around people in general. But there are always exceptions like when advocating for my bro. I rarely held back with medical and other people. So much so that I’m sure some of them thought I was a PITA in being persistent/asking lots of Q’s.

 My being so introverted was why after working in a normal job for a number of years, I seeked an alternative that would stress me out less and that would also allow me to utilize my strong analytical skills as well as use my wx following hobby to make a living. Amazingly, a mass mailing by Ken Roberts (guy in cowboy hat) in the 1990s turned the lightbulb on for me.

We really appreciate you sharing so much on this forum, Larry!

Especially knowing how private a person that you are. I totally respect that as somebody with the opposite personality. 

When Deb and I go places, even mostly with strangers, she'll warn me ahead of time "now don't go getting started with conversations with people because I don't want to be here forever"

I remember Ken Roberts extremely well.

I personally thought that he was a fraud when I was making more money than I knew what to do with(my wife found things to buy with it) and understood his strategies and decided that if I had to use them(without weather)...........that I would quite immediately!

But I was being to harsh because there were clearly some principles in their of great value. 

I think that a very analytical person like you, Larry can use those principles to trade for profits. However, non analytical people bought his products in order to get rich, without doing all the research that most traders here do and ALL successful traders use. 

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24224523M/The_world%27s_most_powerful_money_manual

He got into trouble with the FTC for misleading people that purchased his products:

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION v. KEN ROBERTS COMPANY (2001)

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dc-circuit/1004844.html

++++++++++++

I was self taught, after predicting weather for this agricultural community and watching corn and beans shoot higher from the 1988 drought(and lower ahead of rains) while I was forecasting that weather BEFORE the market reacted. 

I got a library card to use the 2 university libraries to take out every book they had on commodities. I wrote the CBT to send me all their historical prices charts, which I compared to weather patterns at those times.

I got a satellite dish on my roof to have the weather information delivered and printed out at the same time the NWS got it(before the internet). It was the same system I used at the tv station as chief meteorologist for a decade prior to that. In the beginning, I would drive to the tv station to get my weather for trading that day until I made enough trading to buy my own system at our house.

Hey Mike,

 You’re welcome. I need to clarify how Ken Roberts caused the lightbulb to go on. It had nothing to do with his methodology. I’ll explain.  When I got the mass mailed booklet ad in the mail, I casually looked at it out of curiosity rather than just trashing it. In casually browsing through it, I noticed there was a small section on weather’s connection to commodity prices.. There were several commodities mentioned. I know the grains were mentioned and possibly energy (heating oil??) among other things. I’m pretty sure this was 1996 or 7. Too long ago to remember details.

 I had already been a lover of following the wx since I was a kid. Besides watching local wx, the local NWS radio broadcasts really got me going. And then I started watching AM Wx on PBS (Wayne Winston, Carl Weiss, Barry, Joan) in my teens. When WGN’s Tom Skilling became available nationally on cable in 1980, I would watch regularly (my roommates used to make fun of me watching “Chicago wx” lol). Also, CNN started in 1980. Then TWC started in the early 80s. I was in heaven! 

 A few years later I bought a short wave radio, decoder, and printer to print out stuff from that. My roommate teased me about that! That turned out to be mainly a disappointment as the little bit of interesting info that came through wasn’t that exciting. The best thing were the cloud satellite pics.

 *continued in next post*  

*continued from prior post*

 But a few years later, I bought my first PC, an IBM PS-1 ~1992. There I found Prodigy’s wx BB, my 1st one! Soon after that I started getting mainly textual wx data via Delphi using Gopher protocol. Also, I was calling Accuwx (Joe Bastardi) for paid for prerecorded national extended forecasts. Then came WWW (Netscape ~1995-6), great graphics, and a whole new world!

 That’s when I randomly got the Ken Roberts mailing. I had never thought about investing in commodities. But after reading the couple of pages addressing how wx affects pricing, the lightbulb went off. With my then 25 year love and knowledge of wx along with the WWW, would it be possible to somehow make some money investing in these?

 The next two years were filled spending a lot of time researching this idea via library books and internet research. In the late 90s, I stumbled onto the ads of Freese-Notis/WxTrades showing trade by trade performance in ~1994-7. NG and KC to a lesser extent especially caught my attention due to larger aggregate profits. I then put in tons of time comparing US temps (using WWW) and NG performance. That’s when I discovered I even had a chance to start making a living trading commodities.

I LOVE IT, LARRY!!!

Many similarities to me.

Loving the weather since 2nd grade. 

TV meteorologist that stumbled on commodities and realized that using the weather trading could make a lot of money.

I was also getting Freese-Notis and Jim Roemer/Craig Solberg's (Trade Winds) views for several years, though I made my own trades.

Funny how 3 decades later...........here we are. Good friends at MarketForum. 

Not a coincidence that its where both of us came to around 2 decades ago because of the trading discussions.

MTP

 Thanks for sharing and im very sorry to hear of your losses of such a personal nature..

  John

A comment about the Ken Roberts experience..

 I am familiar with his literature and maybe his methodology is flawed,but his work is very valuable for teaching the machinations of futures markets.

 John

john,

I believe you and will look at his stuff again if I get a chance.

Ken Roberts Settles FTC Charges

https://www.turtletrader.com/tedwarren/

Trading Scam : Ken Robert

https://klse.i3investor.com/web/blog/detail/cpteh/2012-07-25-story-h46857113-Trading_Scam_Ken_Robert

My thinking is that brokers that give advice but make a living by charging for their services/commissions must not have very good advice or they would use that to make a living, not selling it for money.

Broker is a great name for that profession because most of them make their clients BROKE-ER than they were before paying them and using their advice.

I had a couple of brokers that refused to close my extremely successful accounts. I suspected that they were adding their own orders(piggybacking)  to do the same as me and didn't want to lose their cash cow.

One of them in my earlier trading days,  kept insisting "we make such a good team" Right, I call the orders in and you rake in $40 in round turn commissions.

Another one actually offered me a position to manage money/trades for his clients. Sorry, I didn't want the added stress and always thought that I don't know any of these people. I traded a 50K account for my wifes business, with no expectations of a commission or payment. Just wanted to help them out........and it messed up my frame of mind.

Same with the ones that make a living from their book sales. Books that give people the so called blue print of trading for a living and getting rich.

Why don' they just use their own advice to make a living and get rich instead of selling books?

I GOT BACK IN THIS THREAD TO  ASK MTP IF HE'S KICKIN' ANY BETTER.  THEN, I SAW ALL THE POSTS I'D MISSED.

____________________________________________

MIKE:  GOOD ON YOU FOR FIGHTIN' THE WRONG.  GLAD YOU'RE HAPPY WITH THE BACKUP PUMP.  HOW OFTEN DO YOU CHARGE THE BATTERY? (NOW A DAYS, MEBBE THEY CHARGE THEMSELVES?) IT'S BEEN 42 YEARS SINCE THE BASEMENT HAS FLOODED & HAVE YET TO USE THE GENERATOR FOR WHAT IT WAS BOUGHT FOR,  LOL  IF I NEED POWER BEYOND THE LENGTH OF AN EXTENSION CORD... I USE IT, TO MAKE SURE IT'LL WORK WHEN NEEDED. 

________________________________

LARRY... GOOD ON YOU!!

_______________________

MTP... ARE YOU STILL AMONG US? PRAYERS YOU'RE OKAY