Hello Mr. Hooper,
First let me apologize for the time frame for this response. It is extremely unfortunate and very frustrating when the adjusters refuse to explain how replacement of items actually works, and the deadlines involved. As a previous desk adjuster, I will tell you that you have 36 months from the time you received a ‘substantial payment’ which State Farm deems to be 50% of your policy limit. This means that if you in fact received at least 50% of your Coverage B – Personal Property policy limit in April 2021, then your 36-month deadline is this month (April 2024). You may be able to look at your Summary of Loss that details all your payments and be able to determine when you received Coverage B payments, and the amounts.
For your personal property, if you are familiar with Microsoft Excel, you can request that your adjuster send you the ‘Excel export from the Contents Collaboration program’. The Contents Collaboration program is what State Farm entered all of your content’s items into, then when they make a payment to you, they send you a ‘Payment Tracker Worksheet’ that is probably 100+ pages long with font size 6 so it is virtually impossible to read. This is unacceptable, and they then expect you to look thru each line item to locate the item you want to replace. So, if you are familiar with Excel, it is much easier to filter thru the line items and see which items are holding the most depreciation. It’s all about strategy.
When you look at the Payment Tracker Worksheet, the quickest way to identify line items that are holding the most depreciation is to look at the very last column on the right side, ‘Estimated Remaining’. This is the amount of Depreciation State Farm held out on that specific item. Then you will want to look at the headings ‘Replacement Cost Total’ which is the cost to replace the item which includes tax. Here is an example that may help: Let’s say you had a sofa that had a Replacement Cost of $3,000.00 and State Farm had paid you Actual Cash Value (ACV) amount of $1,000.00. You go shopping and find a comparable sofa and it is on sale for $2500.00 including tax. When you submit your receipt for that sofa, State Farm would pay you $1,500.00 (the difference between the purchase price less the ACV they previously paid). Now, let’s say you found a comparable sofa, and due to everything being higher priced these days, the cost is $4,000 to replace that sofa. When you submit your receipt to State Farm to receive the depreciation, they should pay the increased cost, and they should pay you $3,000 (difference between the cost $4,000 less ACV $1,000). In this scenario, before you submit your receipt, I would highly suggest you write the word ‘Comparable’ on your receipt along with the corresponding line-item number that is reflected on your Payment Tracker Worksheet. Please also realize that if you purchase an item that costs less than the Actual Cash Value amount listed, then you will not receive any additional monies for that item. Therefore, you would not need to submit a receipt for that item.
Also, look through your items and if you had any antiques that were 100 years old or older, make sure State Farm did not hold any depreciation. I have seen numerous claims where they hold depreciation in error. Policyholders usually do not look thru the Payment Tracker Worksheet and are unaware that errors are made. It is unfortunate that the playing field is not level.
Hopefully this will help you in moving forward with your claim and replacing your personal property. All our best to you!
Selina Clark
