A beautiful weeping willow fell on my house when I was on vacation in August.  I really am a true Tree Hugging Oregonian because I was more upset about losing the tree than I was about the corner of my roof being caved in.

The damage to my house ended up being about $6,000 dollars.  Since this is more than I’d like to take out of my emergency fund I decided it best to make a claim on my homeowners policy.  I ended up just having to pay the $1,000 deductible.

I was really impressed by how smoothly the claims process went with Farmers Insurance.  Unfortunately, working with the contractor was not quite a smooth. When looking for good contractors you can work with, the best ones we have tried are these experts in furnace repairs.

I currently don’t have a contractor that I work with so I relied on the Farmers adjuster to provide me with recommendations.  He provided me with the names of contractors that he works regularly with.

I did my due diligence and checked the Oregon CCB website to ensure the contractors were all licensed.  I actually found that one of the contract’s license was expired.  As a consumer it’s important to work with contractors that are licensed and bonded.  If something happens to where they cause more damage or if you have any other issues with them you are limited on your recourse if they are not licensed and bonded.

I was amazed to find when I called the contractor that they were willing to come out immediately to remove the tree (or so I thought).  They rushed out, but only removed the portion that was on the roof and didn’t haul away any of it.  I should have done a better job and conveying my expectations and getting confirmation from them.

Even though they were very quick to come out that first time I found it much slower to get them to come back and take care of the whole job.  But, I felt like I was trapped because I had started the process with them and was worried about being tacked with a heft bill for that “emergency service” if l did not hire them for the work.

Well, I compromised and had someone else remove the tree and then awarded the rest of the work to the initial contractor.  They did a great job and it made it much easier for me that they had a working relationship with the adjuster so when additional repairs were needed they worked together to ensure it got done.

Still at the end I did end up with a bill for that emergency service which ended up being more than what the bill for removal of the entire tree was.  Because I had chosen to work with one of the contractors referred by the adjuster I was able to just let them “hash it out” and did not have to pay any additional out of my pocket.