How Insurance Works With Our Scope

There is a boundary that belongs on every restoration website in California and appears on almost none of them. It is printed in full further down this page, in the list of things we do not do. Read it as a limitation if you like. It is also the reason you can trust the rest of what is here.

California defines public insurance adjusting very broadly. The Insurance Code reaches anyone who, for compensation, aids in any manner an insured in settling a claim, and it separately reaches anyone who holds themselves out to the public as doing that. Both hooks matter, and a company can cross the line with a web page alone without ever picking up a phone. Restoration companies are not exempt. So when a competitor tells you they will take care of the claim for you, they are either describing something they are not permitted to do, or describing something ordinary in language that oversells it.

The consequence is not only a fine. A contract for services regulated by that chapter, entered into with someone in violation of it, may be voided at the option of the insured, and the insured is not liable for services already performed. That is a real commercial risk for the company and a real trap for a customer, and it is worth knowing before you sign anything with anybody in this industry.

Here is what we actually do, and it is substantial. We document the loss the day we arrive, with photographs of conditions as found, a moisture map, and the water category. We take readings at fixed points every day the equipment runs, and we log them. We prepare an estimate for our own scope of work, meaning the mitigation we perform, using industry-standard estimating. We meet your adjuster on site and walk them through what we found and why the scope is what it is. And we can bill your carrier directly for our services when the claim and the payment arrangement allow it.

That documentation is the most valuable thing we hand you and it is the thing most homeowners never receive. A claim gets decided on evidence. Photographs of the loss before anything was touched, readings that establish how wet materials were and for how long, and a scope tying each line to a measured condition are evidence. A one-page invoice is not. Whether your carrier pays is their determination, and the quality of the record is the part anybody can actually control.

What we will not tell you is whether something is covered. Not out of caution, but because coverage is a reading of your policy against the facts of your loss, and that reading belongs to your carrier, to a public adjuster you hire, or to an attorney. Anyone in a restoration uniform telling you what your policy covers is guessing at best.

You remain responsible for your deductible. Anybody offering to make that disappear on an insurance-billed loss is describing something California treats as fraud, and it exposes you as much as it exposes them. We will not do it, and we would be careful with a company that offers.

We also take cash-pay work, and plenty of losses should be handled that way. When the damage is smaller than the deductible, filing does nothing except put a claim on your record. We will tell you when the numbers point that direction. We accept credit cards, debit cards, checks, and cash, and payment plans are available on some projects.

One more boundary belongs here rather than in fine print. We are a mitigation company. Our estimate covers extraction, drying, cleaning, remediation, deodorization, and contents. The work that puts the building back together is a separate trade with its own state license and its own estimate, and treating our number as the whole cost of your loss will leave you short. We say so on the first visit rather than at the end.

On carriers, we take losses insured through all major carriers, and coverage and payment decisions remain with the individual policy and carrier in every case. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a vendor of any of them. That is stated in the list below and in the footer of every page on this site.