Hi,
First of all, thank you in advance for your help regarding this matter. I’ve been fighting this for about 2 months now, and any advice is greatly appreciated. To sum up, in 2022, I contacted my insurance agent to cancel flood insurance for a current policy I have with the NFIP, telling her that I’ve gotten a better deal with a private flood insurance company with the same amount of coverage. The agent responds with “policy will be cancelled upon non-repay”. I took this as everything is all good, and made an upfront payment to the private flood insurance company, assuming they would notify the mortgage company, since my flood insurance is currently being escrowed. I did also call up the mortgage company telling them I was switching flood insurance, but do not recall sending them any documents.
Two years later, I realized that the mortgage company is still making payments to the NFIP policy that was supposed to be cancelled, and this payment comes out of my escrow. I managed to get a refund for the year 2023-2024, but could not get a refund for 2022-2023, since they told me it was their company policy that they can only refund this year’s effective flood insurance premium. Technically, I paid 2.2k for a duplicate policy.
I tried to reason with my insurance agent with the NFIP, saying she should have notified the NFIP I wanted to cancel so a formal cancellation process could have occurred, thus preventing them from billing my mortgage company. She told me since the flood insurance was required by my mortgage company, she couldn’t cancel my policy. She also stated I should have known that the policy would not be cancelled when she notes that the policy will be cancelled upon “non-repay”, meaning that my private flood insurance should have notified my mortgage company that they will be the new provider, if I wanted the policy to be cancelled.
I then called up the private flood insurance company, and they said they could not refund me due to the same reason of it being the past year’s policy, and that my agent should have cancelled it when I asked. I called my mortgage company and they said the same, that when I wanted to cancel the NFIP flood insurance, my agent should have cancelled it. I called my mortgage company, and they also agreed with the notion.
So my question is, how can I get my refund, and if it was my fault, the agent’s fault, the private flood insurance company’s fault, or someone else’s and what advice would you have?