“There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper,

and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey.

It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all.

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot — it can’t be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run,

and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

 This is a rule that I apply to my life in almost everything that I do.  I consider myself a “value buyer”.  You will never find me walking into a store and making a purchase on a whim.  For almost any purchase that I make I try to research the product or service before hand, so I know exactly what I’m getting and what I’m NOT getting.  As the above law states, it’s rare that you will pay a little a get a lot.  Now this doesn’t mean that I automatically purchase the most expensive product or service, this wouldn’t be wise either.

For example when I purchase a car, I will narrow down the car to the type of style that I need (it is important to distinguish a need from a want) and then I will compare all of the Makes and Models of  cars that fit that type.  Then I have to determine if it makes sense to purchase a used car that has low miles, but no warranty or purchase a new car that has a 5 year 60,000 mile warranty.  Do I prefer a certain brand of car over another because it has lower maintenance costs or better safety ratings?  I need to know what’s important to me and my family  and ultimately what will fit my budget.

I take this similar purchasing strategy, when I’m shopping for insurance for my clients.  It is my goal to make sure that my clients get the best VALUE for their money.  We take the time to understand our client’s needs and pair them with an insurance policy that will meet their needs and their budget.  Everyone loves to save money on their insurance and we love to save people money, but we’re not going to do it at the expense of reducing someone’s coverage or selling someone a policy that isn’t going to cover what they need.

For example, when we shop for homeowners insurance for a client, not only do we consider the cost of the insurance and the major coverages of the policy, but we consider the quality of the Insurance Company, the claims service of the Company and the actual language of the policy.  If you are an investing in a stock and reviewing the Company’s Annual Report to determine if you are going to invest, any savvy investor knows that not only do you have to look at the numbers on the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement, but the most important part of the report is probably the Footnotes.  The Footnotes are going to give you all of the details behind the numbers on the financial statements, this is similar the policy language of an insurance policy.  The policy language is going to tell you what’s covered and what’s not covered and what is restricted or limited.  This is the VALUE that we bring to the table is knowing the policy language.  If one homeowners policy is $40 cheaper it may seem like a good deal until you compare the policy language and realize that that $40 savings is going to end up costing you a heck of a lot more if you have claim.

I’ve never had a client tell me that their insurance policy wasn’t a good value after they’ve had a covered claim.

If you would like us to review your auto, home or business insurance policy, give my office a call at 585-663-2004.

The wood pile would be what the insurance and legal industry call an “attractive nuisance”, this something on your property that would attract young children to your property that wouldn’t understand the danger involved.

In our example, even though the child was trespassing on the neighbors property, the neighbor could be held responsible  for the injury to the child because the wood pile would be considered an attractive nuisance and the neighbor didn’t adequately secure the wood pile so children couldn’t get to it by putting a fence around it or some other barrier or having it removed.

A wood pile is one example of an attractive nuisance, some other examples are: swimming pools, trampolines, abandoned cars, horses, construction equipment, old refrigerators, etc.

It’s always a good idea to survey your property to see if you have any attractive nuisances that would attract children to your property that could potentially injure them.  If you have a pool make sure that it is adequately secured so children can’t get to it.  If you have a trampoline place it in a spot on your property that it can’t be seen from the road.  If there is equipment on your property make sure that it is disabled so it can’t be accidentally or intentionally started by a child.  If there are any other hazards like abandoned cars or appliances have them removed from your property or store them inside a locked shed or garage so children can’t get to them.

It’s important to keep your property safe to prevent injuries and eliminate potential claims against you.

If you find value in our blog and would like us to be your agent, give us a call to review your current auto, home or business insurance at 585-663-2004.

Now I live in a neighborhood that the houses are much closer together,  I’m sure I’ll have to move to a yard that has little more space as Kaci and Jack get older or I’ll be shelling out a lot of dough for rogue baseballs, lacrosse balls, soccer balls etc that my find their way through a neighbors closed window.  So this brings up the question, would my homeowners insurance cover cost to replace a neighbor’s window?  Lucky for me and a number of other parents out there, your homeowners insurance will cover cost to replace the neighbor’s window.

The liability section of your homeowners policy will cover most unintentional acts committed by a minor child living in your home.  The key to having your homeowners policy provide coverage is that the damage must have been unintentional.  There usually isn’t a deductible, so your coverage would kick in at the first dollar of expense.  I don’t know if baseball is as popular as it was when I was growing up, it seems like more kids are getting into Lacrosse.  The same rules would apply if your child accidentally breaks your neighbors window with a Lacrosse ball, soccer ball, football, etc.  Your homeowners insurance would even provide coverage if your child is riding their bike at a neighbors house, loses control and slams into the neighbors car.

Remember, every policy/company can respond differently to a claim, so in order to be sure a claim is covered by your policy, you will have to consult with your insurance company.  If you would like us to review your Home and Auto insurance give us a call at 585-663-2004

So based on my first question this scenario of a squirrel damaging your house would seem like it would be a covered claim, but we need to dig further into the policy to find the answer.  The first section I usually turn to is the “Exclusions” section, I don’t have to go far to find that homeowners policies exclude damage caused by “termites, insects, vermin or rodents“.  Now we need to determine if a squirrel is considered a vermin or rodent, for this we will have to turn to the Webster Dictionary to see how broad they define these two, see the definition below:

Definition of RODENT

If you have a smart phone or digital camera it’s easy to walk around your house and take pictures of each room.  Open your closets, drawers and cupboards and take pictures of everything in them.  When you purchase new stuff it’s easy to pull out your smart phone and snap a quick picture for your records.

Now that you have your receipts and pictures accumulated, it’s important to protect them so you can access them after a disaster.    I am the king of back-up at work.  I back up all of my data in triplicate and most of it happens automatically so I don’t need to think about it.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take this much care with my home computer.  Christine and I recently had a  minor incident this past week.  Well at least it was minor to me!  Our laptop computer crashed, it wouldn’t even start.  I couldn’t even get to the operating system screens to run any diagnostics on it.  To me this wasn’t a big deal, I only used the computer to surf the web and check e-mail, I didn’t store any data on the computer.  Christine on the other hand, kept the majority of her work files on there and most importantly all of our digital pictures.

After that incident I decided to develop my home back-up plan and below are the essentials to my plan, that I believe everyone should implement some if not all of the elements of the plan.  Whenever I develop a plan I try to automate it as much as possible.  I know that if I need to think about backing up my data or take a step to initialize the back that it’s just not going to happen.

Fire proof safe  - every home/apartment should have a fire proof safe that you are able to keep your important documents (birth certificates, passports, social security cards, copies of credit cards, bank statements, loan documents, back-up hard drive).  These can be difficult and expensive to replace.  You can get these at a reasonable price at the warehouse stores or even an office supply store

Back-up hard drive -Christine and I bought a  1.5 Terrabyte external hard drive for under $100 to back-up our home computer.  This is way more space than we need, but we’d rather have too much than too little.  After we back-up the home computer on this drive we keep the external hard drive in our fire proof safe.

On-line back-up program - I recommend purchasing an online back-up program.  I personally use Carbonite On-line back-up.  What I like about this program is that it works in the background and automatically backs-up any new information on my computer.  You can probably use this instead of the external hard drive, but I like to use both because I have trust issues.  I worry that if I just use the external hard drive, that it my get ruined and I lose my data.  On the flip side I worry about something going wrong at Carbonite where they lose my data or the company is sold or goes bankrupt and my data is gone.  We purchased a 1 year subscription to Carbonite for around $60.  I believe you can get a 3 year subscription around $150.

Google+ - now that you have all of the pictures of your belonging on your smart phone, you need to back them up in case you lose your phone or it is ruined.  I’ve found the easiest way to do this is with a Google+ account.  Once you’ve signed up for Google+ you can download the Google+ app to your phone and it will automatically upload all of the photos on your phone to your Google+ account and automatically send any new photos you take as well.  What’s nice about this program is that it doesn’t automatically share your pictures with everyone in your circles and it’s easy to go in and download the picture later if you need to.  What I like about this program is that it’s free and it happens automatically.

On-line e-mail account - If you don’t want to sign up for Google+ another option to back-up your pictures is to e-mail them to your yahoo, gmail, hotmail or AOL account so the pictures will be stored on their servers.  This option is also free, but you have to manually take the step to back up your pictures which I don’t care for.

The time to prepare for a disaster is before it happens, so I hope you are able to take the time to implement some if not all of the elements of my back-up plan so you will be better prepared for the future.

If you found value in this blog and would like VanScoter Insurancy Agency, LLC to be your agent working for you give us a call at 585-663-2004 for your FREE No-Obligation Quote.

The answer is yes! (But you will want to keep reading to find out your real exposure)  Any New York State auto insurance policy will extend to cover you while you’re driving a rental car.  But there are a couple of catches to be aware of, you must be a listed driver on your insurance policy and the coverage extended will be the same as what you have on your current auto policy.

So if you drive an older car and don’t carry collision or comprehensive coverage on your vehicle, you only carry liability coverage, that is all that will extend to your rental car.  If you are in an accident and it is deemed your fault you would be responsible for paying for the damage to the rental car yourself.

The good news is that your auto policy extends  to cover your rental car, the bad news is that there are potential gaps in coverage that the rental company could hold you personally responsible for, that your auto insurance would not cover.  The first gap (yes there is more than one) is the loss of income that the rental company will incur when the car is being repaired.  Obviously when the car is in the shop it can’t be out on the road making money for the rental company, so they have the right to charge you for the time (loss of income) that the car isn’t operable.  The second gap is that rental car companies sell their vehicles every year or two, and once a car has been in an accident the resale value of the car is less.  The rental car company has the right to charge you the difference in the resale value of car before and after it was in an accident.  So if a car sells for $1,000 less because it was in an accident, you would be on the hook for the $1,000 difference.

Your insurance policy treats a rental car just as if it was your own, so it is going to just pay for the expenses to get the car back on the road.  The additional expenses that the rental car company incurs above you would be responsible for.  So yes, your insurance policy extends to a rental car, but there a potential gaps, so you should think twice about turning down the rental car companies insurance.

What if you are moving and need to rent a truck?  The same rules apply, so choose your options carefully.

If you see value in our blog posts and would like us to be your insurance agent, give us a call at 585-663-2004 for your FREE no-obligation insurance quote.

Parents always want to know what is the cheapest way to add their new driver to their insurance policy and I’m here to help you.

The first thing I tell parents is not to buy your kids their own cars.  As tempting as it may be provide them with their own car, by doing so will increase your insurance premium drastically.  Because your teenage will have access to their own car they will have to be listed as the primary driver of that car, instead of a part-time operator of your car.  The premium difference between a part-time driver and a principal driver is substantial!

Second I recommend parents have their children take drivers education.  Not only will you get a discount, but hopefully your child will be better prepared for the road and be able to avoid potential accidents better.  This will hopefully save you from future premium increases.

Now if you just have to buy your child their own car, my third tip is to narrow your search to older cars that you are comfortable not purchasing collision coverage on so you can help keep your premium down.  Comprehensive and Collision coverage can account for almost half of a newly licensed drivers premium depending on year, make and model of the vehicle.

Fourth, I recommend in addition to taking drivers education your child should take a New York State approved Defensive Driving Course.  You will save around 10% per year for 3 years on the car that your child is named as the principal driver.

It’s actually a good idea for everyone on the policy to take a New York State approved Defensive Driving Course, so everyone can take advantage of the discount.

If you’ve found this information helpful and would like us to be your agent, contact our office at 585-663-2004 and we would be happy to provide you with a FREE no-obligation quote.

With the high winds that we had just over a week ago I had a number of people ask this question.  I had two situations, the first a tree fell not only on a clients house, but also his neighbors car and his car as well.  The second scenario was a tree on a landlord’s property fell on his tenants car.  In both cases the trees fell due to the high winds.

So the question remains, will your homeowners’ or landlord policy cover the damage to your neighbor’s or tenant’s car?  In both of these cases the answer is a resounding no.  The neighbor and the tenant would have to rely on their own auto insurance to pay for the damage, and they have hopefully purchased comprehensive coverage to cover this type of damage.

The homeowners’ and the landlord policies wouldn’t respond to the damage because the homeowner and the landlord did not cause the damage.  The damage was the result of “an act of God” A.K.A. “mother nature”.  They cannot control the weather.  The trees were otherwise healthy trees that had been around for a number of years showing no apparent signs of deterioration.

Now this case would be different if the homeowner knew that the tree was deteriorating and would pose a potential risk to property around it.  Say for instance the neighbor or tenant mentioned to the homeowner or landlord that they were concerned for their property because they can see that the tree is infested with termites and woodpeckers and other insects that are slowing destroying the tree.  And the homeowner or landlord’s response was “I don’t care, it’s not endangering my property and I’m not paying to have it taken down, I’ll just wait for it to come down on it’s own.  Now if the tree fell on the neighbor’s or tenants car, the homeowner or landlord policy would provide coverage to the neighbor and tenant.  The homeowner or landlord would have been aware of the situation and did nothing to remedy it.

So if you are a homeowner or a landlord be sure to inspect the trees around your property that could pose potential danger to people or their property and have them pruned or taken down if necessary.  If you are a neighbor or tenant of someone that has a tree that you see as a potential danger due to the deteriorated state of the tree, notify the neighbor or landlord in writing of your concerns so they can properly address them.

If you would like a FREE no obligation auto or homeowners insurance quote, give us a call at 585-663-2004.

This is a question that I get more often than you would think.  It’s usually regarding someone who has bought a plot of land that they plan to build a home on someday or a hunter that owns land that he just uses for hunting.  My clients will call me and say that they need to buy an insurance policy to cover their liability in case anyone gets hurt on their vacant land.

I’m always happy to tell my clients that there is no need to purchase an additional insurance policy to cover this exposure (which is rarely the case when it comes to insurance).  Their liability is automatically extended from their current homeowners or renters insurance policy.

Insurance policies can be difficult to read and understand, but I would recommend to everyone that you read and understand the “Policy Definitions” section of any insurance policy.  The “Policy Definitions” section helps you clarify coverage questions you may have.  It gives good insight into how broad or restrictive your policy may be.

In the example above with the vacant land, if you wanted to determine if it was covered under your current homeowners policy, you just need to go the “insured location” definition under the “Policy Definition” section and you would find this:

“insured location” means:

1. the residence premises;
2. the part of any other premises, other structures, and grounds acquired by you during the policy period which you intend to use as a residence premises;
3. vacant land, other than farmland, owned by or rented to anyone we protect;
4. cemetary plots or burial vaults of anyone we protect.

Now this wasn’t a complete list of “insured locations”, I just summarized it to keep it brief.  You would want to refer to your own policy for your own policy’s definition of “insured locations”, since they may vary from above.

If you have a policy question or would like us to quote your auto or home insurance, give us a call 585-663-2004.