Having your identity stolen, is a fear at the back of most people’s minds.  There is a great deal of our personal information in electronic form that is held by companies.  If these companies are hacked into our information can be compromised.  Before you know it you are suddenly receiving collection notices for credit cards that you don’t have and for services that you haven’t received. 

Now if you have a homeowners or renters insurance policy with Erie Insurance they have a Identity Recovery Coverage that you can add to your policy for $20/year.  This coverage provides you with $25,000 to help you cover the cost of restoring your identity.  The $25,000 includes $5,000 for loss wages that you may have to incur because you have to miss work to go to legal hearings associated with recovering your identity.  The $25,000 also covers the cost of re-filing applications for loans, grants or other credit instruments, certain legal fees, notarizing affidavits, ordering credit reports and actual costs for supervision of children, elderly or infirm relatives or dependents. 

This is a nice coverage to help you recover your identity, but it’s not going to help you prevent your identity from being stolen or help you identify if you identity has been stolen.  If you are really concerned about having your identity stolen, I would recommend one of the companies like Lifelock, Identity Guard or Watchdog, which are going to actually help to prevent your identity from being stolen.

Everyone sooner or later will have a contractor come to their house to do some repair work.  It can be as small as fixing a leaky faucet, adding a few new electrical outlets or larger jobs like re-roofing your house or building an addition.  It is important to always get 3 quotes for any major repairs to make sure that you are getting the best value for your money. 

When you are getting your quotes you will have the common questions that will help you determine which contractor will get the job, like what materials will you use?, how long will it take to complete the job?, when would you be able to start?, do you offer any type of warranty?.  These are all valid questions, but the question that most people will overlook is whether they have insurance or not. 

Now most contractors will volunteer their insurance information to you and show you a piece of paper as they’re going through their presentation showing that they have insurance.  I would ask you to go a step further and ask them to have the insurance company send you a certificate of their insurance listing you as a “certificate holder” or even better an “additional insured”.  This will allow you to get a certificate directly from the insurance stating they have insurance and the amount of insurance that they carry. 

You wouldn’t want to find yourself in a situation that a contractor caused damage to your house, but you weren’t able to repair it because the contractor didn’t have insurance or they did have insurance at one point, but they were late on a payment and it cancelled the week before they started your job. 

I decided last week that this week’s blog post would be about contractor’s insurance because I had a prospect call looking for insurance for his business.  I asked him my usual questions learning more about his business and himself.  I usually ask if they have a website and he did, so I went and checked it out.  All over his website it stated that he was fully insured and bonded.  He seemed to be advertising this for quite a while because I googled his company name and I was able to find old promotional flyers on-line from previous years that stated the same thing. 

The funny thing is that when I was asking him about his business he said that he didn’t have prior insurance, so I called him back and asked when was the last time that he did have insurance, thinking that he may have just let it lapse for a month or a year.  He said that he never had insurance that he bought the business from his uncle in the 90s and he thinks that he may have carried insurance on the business back then. 

That is why it’s important not to rely on the ads that state that the contractor is fully insured and to actually take the extra step to have the insurance company send you a certificate verify their insurance coverage.  Now most contractors’ are honest, but it’s important to make certain that you are covered.  If someone comes in with a super low bid for your job, it might be a good indication that they’re not properly insured.