The Insurance Game: What Every Homeowner Needs to Know Before Filing a Claim
Filing a homeowners insurance claim sounds straightforward — you pay your premiums, something bad happens, and your insurance company takes care of it. Right? Not exactly. The process is more complicated than most homeowners realize, and that's not by accident.
Your Insurance Company Is Not On Your Side
This is the hard truth that most people don't hear until it's too late: your insurance company is not in the business of paying claims. It's in the business of paying dividends to shareholders. Every dollar paid out on a claim is a dollar not returned to investors — and that fundamental reality shapes every part of how the claims process is designed.
When you file a claim and an adjuster comes out to inspect the damage, they aren't there to help you get a fair payout. They're building documentation to protect the company — documentation that could be used against you in court if you ever decide to push back.
And here's something else worth knowing: insurance claim resolutions aren't called "payments." They're called settlements — because that's exactly what they are. When you accept the amount your insurance company offers, you're agreeing not to take them to court. That settlement figure isn't based on what's fair. It's based on the lowest number they can reasonably get away with.
A System Designed to Confuse
Insurance companies have spent decades making the adjustment process as difficult to navigate as possible — for homeowners and contractors alike. The goal is simple: if the process is complicated enough, people give up and accept whatever they're offered.
Here's how it typically unfolds after a hail event:
You call your insurance company and report the damage. They assign an adjuster and schedule an inspection. But the person who actually shows up to your home is often not a licensed contractor or an industry professional — they may be a third-party "picture taker" trained by your insurance company to document damage according to the company's own standards and expectations. Even when the inspector is employed directly by the carrier, they're frequently not the adjuster actually assigned to your claim. From the very beginning, the chain of communication is tangled by design.
A week or two later, you may — or may not — receive your adjustment.
This Is Where Sonners Contracting Comes In
We recommend that homeowners avoid signing any contracts until they have a claim approval in hand. That said, Sonners Contracting is willing to take on clients on a contingency basis — meaning if you have a legitimate claim and your insurance company is dragging its feet, we'll help get things moving without requiring you to commit upfront.
What sets us apart is experience on the inside. Our founder, Dave Sonner, spent years working as an independent insurance adjuster. He's been negotiating with insurance companies for over two decades, working storms across the Midwest with the roofing company his family worked with prior to the inception of Sonners Contracting. He knows how adjusters think, how they communicate, and what it takes to get a claim taken seriously.
That insider knowledge is your advantage.
We help homeowners communicate in the language adjusters actually respond to. We prepare documentation that's clear, professional, and built to hold up through negotiation. We even use Xactimate — the same estimating software most insurance carriers use — so our estimates are formatted in a way adjusters recognize and can't easily dismiss.
When it comes time to negotiate your settlement, you won't be going in blind.