AIG’s bad faith insurance practices

According to the AAJ report, AIG has been accused of bad faith insurance practices, such as:

• Using a variety of tricks to delay claims or deny them altogether, including keeping claim payment checks locked in a safe until the claimant complained, disposing of correspondence during pizza parties and fighting mundane insurance claims in court for years unnecessarily.
• Developing schemes to reject thousands of automobile warranty claims, in spite of the company’s claims representatives approving the claims for payment – all to save the company money.
• Conspiring with insurance brokers to submit fake bids in commercial insurance markets so that there was an illusion of competition, when in fact, there was not. As a result, businesses and local governments were forced to pay higher insurance rates. AIG agreed to pay over $12 million to several state insurance departments for its fraudulent activity.

FreeAdvice.com survey: 51% of AIG customers very unsatisfied

According to customer satisfaction ratings on FreeAdvice.com, 51% of AIG’s customers are not satisfied with the insurer. Here’s how survey respondents rated the insurer:

Extremely Satisfied: 19%
Very Satisfied: 10%
Somewhat Satisfied: 10%
Unsatisfied: 10%
Very Unsatisfied: 51%

Customers posted the following comments about AIG on the website:

• "Nasty to work with! Very uncooperative!"
• "I went through a terrible claims process. The adjustor was hard to get a hold of. They rarely called back. They took forever authorizing repairs to my car. I am insured by them, and my particular accident was the other driver's fault, yet I felt like a criminal when talking to them. The other driver's insurance was much more pleasant to deal with."
• "They can't settle a claim [in] 14 months [time] and I [have] still not [been] paid for a hit and run on a parked car. They lied through the whole process."
• "Raised my rates over double when I bought a new car in 2001. No accidents or speeding tickets. Terrible customer service. Not worth giving them your money."

If AIG has denied your valid claim or rescinded your policy, it may have acted in bad faith. To contact an attorney whose practice focuses in this area of the law, please click here. Consultations are free, without obligation and strictly confidential.