Very shady business practices
I applied for a homeowners insurance policy and was sold a split policy through Magnolia Home and Auto in Metairie, LA who sold us a Citizens policy, which covered wind and hail, and an Allied Trust Insurance Company policy which covered everything else. I was never told that Allied had $200 policy fee. They canceled my policy due to "underwriting concerns", with the cancelation going into effect 3/21/2024. I had no choice but to seek coverage elsewhere. I found someone to cover us so we didn't risk the higher cost of lender placed coverage, and also to make sure we were covered. We set our new policy up right away, and were told by an Allied rep that since we did not wait it out until their cancelation date, we would not be getting our $200 back. This makes no sense to me as they didn't want our business anyway. They are the ones that gave us a termination date only because the law requires them to do so.
We paid them $712, and were told via email that only $454.00 would be returned. They charged us $712 for the year, of which is a $200 policy fee then charged us in "day increments" with each day costing $1.40, so our total fee was $57.40 for the 41 days insured before they canceled us - we are now still owed $200.00, which is our desired settlement - just getting our policy fee back of $200 (the uninsured portion) It's heinous that they would keep that money when they did nothing. An Allied rep told us that the only way to get the money back is to get our prior agent to lobby for us. There's no way he's going to do that as we are not friends, but I did try to call him and send an email and no one's responding there either, as I expected. It's a sad thing that an insurance company can accept you as a client, and then within weeks cancel your insurance and claim that $200 of the premium is a nonrefundable filing fee. It's nothing for these insurance companies to say they write in Louisiana, take our money and cancel us. I don't know what their rules say, but this is a very shady business practice.
Date of experience: February 20, 2024
