903-525-8600

Now THIS was a productive post. I just took your advice and sent an e-mail via the USAA website about my dissatisfaction with this whole MSB thing. If EVERYONE were to contact them, they might do away with these guys. I got calls around 9-9:30pm from these jokers. Ugh. DO IT FOLKS! Tell USAA we're not happy about this, and we don't want it!  Do it!

I got a call this morning asking if I could update my information for USAA. I would never give information out over the phone. If I need to update, I will call them. It was very strange & annoying.

Just got a call at 1130pm as I'm trying to sleep.  Think i'll call it usaa in the morning.

This number called me today at work and claimed that they were from USAA.  When the guy started asking me about how well my day was going and how the weekend was for me I looked up the number here while talking to him.  He wanted to "update" any changes that I may have made, but the questions were things like, "when was your house built?  Is it a single family home?  Is it single story? Do you have a basement?"

These are all things that USAA, my insurance AND mortgage holder, already knows.  I ended up telling them I was at work and would have to take the call later.  Maybe it's just me, but the year my home was built isn't going to change any time soon.

Note that the http link cited in "Beyond Annoyed"'s posting no longer displays the page in question.  However . . . if you go to:  

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/11/a ... es_lawsuit.html

you can read the entire article about this suit that was published in the New Orleans Times Picayune in 2007.  

SHAME ON YOU USAA . . . SHAME, SHAME SHAME.  Those fancy ads on TV saying how much you care about providing excellent to ex-service members and their families are nothing but bald-faced marketing lies!!  I've been a member since 1969 and have never seen you stoop so low.  Sorry to see a previously excellent organization become just like the rest of the Banking and Insurance Mafiosa scum who own and run this country.

BTW - the suit I'm referring to was brought by the Attorney General of Louisiana against six major insurance companies . . . including USAA-CIC . . . and against Marshall Swift Boeckh, the company that provides forms and software they use to peg the purported "replacement value" of your property . . . for PRICE FIXING, alleging that they are in the business of downgrading the value of your property so they can low ball what they pay you for its replacement in case it's damaged or destroyed!  Shame on you USAA . . . SHAME!

Gee . . . what a surprise . . . I just looked up the results of the Louisiana suit against the six insurance companies (including USAA CIC) for attempted price fixing and found that it was thrown out on a technicality (based on the judges/courts involved dragging their feet).  Here's the URL for the status of the suit:   http://slabbed.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/buck- ... suit-dismissed/ 

And here's a comment from that article that's most appropriate to replay here:  

Henry DiGiovanni - Certified Public Adjusters

April 29, 2010 9:47 pm

There is no secret that all of these players are in the same bed. The question is where are there mommies?

The state legislators (mommies) are in the pillows listening carefully and making sure they don’t overly embarrass them.

The law makers (lawyers, judges and their special interest groups etc.) are keeping up just enough face to deflect any of the blame, after all they have the understaffed civil servant state insurance department employees to blame.

The bottom line is simple. Allow private right of action litigation against carriers who have proven to be repeat offenders (felons), with unrestricted punitive awards for general bad faith and egregious acts, and all of the unscrupulous insurance carriers will get in line.

Remember, three strikes and you get life. If an individual conducted business as do the insurer’s of this world, they would be indicted within a month.

Big Money = Big Criminals! Good luck breaking the circle of educated executive fraudsters. American RICO at its best. Banks and Insurers – One in the same.

And Finally in Regard to USAA CIC's low-balling tactics in estimating the replacement value of property on which the insurer carry's "current replacement value" coverage (as I do on my home), here's my experience with USAA choosing the lowest bid contractor to establish the repair/replacement cost on my home following damage from the 2002 ice storm in N.C.:  

I just phoned the contracting agency AND USAA back to tell them what I thought of this new, underhanded tactic which can only have been designed to enable them to somehow scadge a bigger profit from all of us "ex-military-service" middle class people who they want to squeeze for more profits to pay for their fancy (and false) TV ad campaign.  Sorry boys . . . we're middle class Americans and, hadn't you heard, we've already been milked dry!  

I've been with USAA since 1968 and, until the past 10 years, they were the best insurance company around.  Their auto insurance is still good, although its customer service interface is slipping badly.  
Unfortunately, their homeowner's insurance arm, which was also once a reliable agency, is now heavily into scamming by recommending low-balling, poor quality reconstruction companies like Cary Reconstruction Company out of Apex, NC, who nearly destroyed my home when they made shoddy, not to code repairs to major roof, ceiling beam, chimney, dry wall, and floor damage to it that occurred during an ice storm in 2002.  The ceiling "repairs" were so poorly done and potentially dangerous that we had to have a construction engineer come in to evaluate them.  He ordered the subcontractors (mostly illegal aliens who were poorly trained, poorly paid and barely spoke English) to tear out the ceiling sheetrock so he could see why the decorative beam they were trying to nail over it was teeter-tottering on a low point.  Turned out that a ceiling joist/beam had been pushed down approximately 2-3 inches by the top third of a mature pine tree AND a 150 pound concrete chimney cap that had fallen on the roof.  Cary Reconstruction's carpentry sub, who'd made structural "repairs" to the roof and ceiling beams, hadn't bothered to jack up the beam and reattach it by joist hanger to the side wall support point.  Instead he just planed off the bottom of the beam so it would be even with those beside it and be able to have sheetrock nailed flat across it !  Fortunately for me, he didn't plane off enough of that beam.  As a result, it formed a low point, causing the sheetrockers to be unable to nail the decorative beam running perpendicular to it in place!  When the ceiling panels were removed to reveal this not-to-code and dangerous "repair", we also found they'd crammed R-33 thick, wall insulation between the beams in the entire livingroom and diningroom cathedral ceiling, effectively shutting off the air that's required to circulate through our soffit vent / roof cap cooled ceiling/roof system.  This is just one very major example of the shoddy work this reconstruction firm provided to me.  I had so many problems with this company and its sub's that I had to take time off work to be at the house whenever they were there in order to stop them each time they did something else terribly wrong.  I have a complete, photographic record of this travesty.  And I'm not alone in this experience . . . one of my colleagues at work, and one of my neighbors, both of whom were also USAA members, experienced similar disasters with this company.  We all contacted USAA and requested they cease recommending Cary Reconstruction to policy holders in our area, only to find several years later that they were still doing so!  Of course they were . . . because that company low balls bids and uses cheap labor so they cost USAA less!

Thus I'm not at all surprised to find USAA making this latest, underhanded attempt to find a way to get its policy holders' houses either down-valued, so USAA doesn't have to pay as much to replace the properties if they're destroyed, or their rates raised so they must pay more money (which they don't have in their pockets to spare) to USAA, increasing the company's ill-gotten profits.

Shame on you, USAA . . . once you were an outstanding insurance company, now you're just as bad as all the other Big Banks and Insurance Mafiosa who have taken over our government and bled the American middle class dry while ruining the United States and Global economies!

I got my call from them at work today, called them back and asked if they were going to have a job after Christmas because of the lawsuit against them? Watch that spread through the call center rumor mill.
I then called USAA and asked if it was true that they were using this company to represent them. They replied "only for the survey". I then told USAA about the lawsuit against MARSHALL SWIFT Boeckh LLC which they did not know about and they would bring it up at the managers meeting this afternoon along with all the bad publicity that they are getting from using this company.
Hopefully that puts an end to them using that company. I'm sure they just might find another company to do the same thing. I hope not, I‘ve used USAA for Home, Flood and Car insurance since 2000 and have been quite happy with them. They cut a check sight unseen for destroyed food in my fridge and freezer after the storm we had, and sent a home inspector out by the end of that same week for the tree that fell on my house.

Thanks for all the good info here on this page.

As a long time USAA member (over 45 years), you have to be very careful whenever involved in an accident with another USAA member.  The company will always try to settle it on a 50/50 fault and that way they raise the premiums on the insurance of both members.  Keep in mind, regardless of the situation, the person that rear-ends another vehicle, is the driver considered to be at fault.  Very sad that USAA is becoming like most big companies.  They can no longer say they are all about service.

1 week later still no calls from MARSHALL SWIFT Boeckh LLC

If you haven't already registered your phone number on the Do Not Call Registry you may want to consider this.  Now, you have a means to take action when they violate your wish not to be called.  I told them tonight they were in violation and I was reporting them.  They took me off thier call list.

Technically, since the company is NOT trying to sell you anything and they are HIRED BY your home insurance so calling you isn't in violation with the Do Not Call Registry.

It is definitely about recalculating your premium.  I choose to do this online instead so that I could get it exactly correct and not what some survey attempts to capture and then what a human punches into a computer.  

SEE: https://www.usaa.com/inet/ent_utils/McStaticPages?key=usaa_home_survey

For me, I needed to update my dwelling information due to a kitchen upgrade and a missing deck.  You can see for yourself how the changes will impact your premium and you can also decided when you want the changes to take affect if you do this via the USAA online site.  You don't have to submit the changes after you play "what-if" with your premium.  You can also punch a button saying you have no changes and that should stop the survey.  After adding a 150 sq foot deck and the updated kitchen information my premium went up 90$/year.

It's the insurance survey people that USAA subs out.  If USAA needs to speak to me about my homeowners insurance they can e-mail or call me themselves.  This company called me 2 times in one day. I told the rep do not call me again.  She got all snippy and said "You do realize this is regarding your homeowners insurance, don't you?"  Just hang up on them.  USAA homeowner rates are super high anyway and this has reminded me of that and now I'm going to shop around for another carrier.

Fell for this last year. Now they are calling again. My home, bought in 2007 for $80k on three acres with a two-car garage/shop/junk storage, is now valued at around a $140k according to them. I guess they didn't get the memo that home values have fallen 30% on the average across the nation since the beginning of 2008. Of course this is not what my home is worth, it is what they say it would cost to build a new space age, oops guess we fumbled that one, home if it should burn completely to the ground like many homes do these days due to unknown elements, bank foreclosures. And so, the property tax man seems to think I have improved the property just by moving in and has jacked that rate also. It’s a vicious cycle. As everything goes up and up in cost, people make less and less and companies continue to pass the cost of doing business, vacations, bonuses that are more than a year's wages, off on the poor smuck at the bottom. The consumer pays for everything and don't let them tell you anything different; even if he/she doesn't consume, they still have to pay for the space they take up on the surface of the planet.

Ps. Thanks for taking the time to enlighten your readers. Thanks for the Salute, I was just doing what I thought was my job, coming from a long line of military veterans. Just didn't expect to get the rug pulled out from under me when I retired.

Every time I have answered their  USAA questionnaire  my premium has increased, even though nothing has changed and building costs have actually  decreased in my area..  They must get paid based on the policy increases.