OT: Insurance/Warranty Question/Legal

In November I had a 2 week old Plasma TV hit by lightning(along with a bunch of other stuff). Insurance paid for everything that was damaged minus deductible, including the extended warranty I had bought, which was not transferrable. Question is, after nearly 6 months who technically owns the damages pieces. If I own the stuff, am I able to try to make a warranty claim (legally) Is it a form of fraud or in some other way illegal? I would assume if I own it I could pay to get it fixed but just not sure on the warranty issue. The insurance said to just buy new stuff to replace the stuff, which is why it was never fixed. I hadn"t bought a surge bar yet and the lighting was unexpected. Thanks for any input.

All I can tell you is. Warranty does not cover lightening damage unless your extended warranty stated so (accidental damage that type of thing) so to get it fixed under warranty you would have to be unethical. Legaly if you had it replaced under warranty I would suspect you"d owe the insurance company the money they gave your for the TV as you would not have incured the loss they paid you for. If you pay to have it repaired I"d call no foul. It"s all a matter of ethics. I have and use a Bose system that was my mothers that was claimed and replaced by her insurance after a lightening strike at her house. I repaired it and use it in my house.

Most warrenties only fix defective stuff, won't cover a lightening strike. And they look for that as a cause soas not to pay out....

If your extended warrenty is one of those that covers 'everything' then it becomes grey area to me anyhow. If they offer that coverage for an extra fee, then what are they expecting as to homeowners insurance, they are the one's offering to double cover the item. If they don't pay out, then why did they accept your money for the extra coverage?

At first blush I was thinking it would be unethial to double dip; but depending on how this extended warrenty ws structured, it becomes much greyer to me.

Then we fall to the warrenty money being covered by your insurance co - if you actually claim the warrenty, you are using that so probably shouldn't have taken the insurance money for that portion.

All in all probably wouldn't do it, seems like double dipping to me, but I can see the grey portion of it.....

--->Paul

At first blush I was thinking it would be unethial to double dip; but depending on how this extended warrenty ws structured, it becomes much greyer to me.

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I tend to agree. If you paid for double coverage you get double coverage. If they didn't want to give you double coverage then they shouldn't have taken your money.


My first call would be to your insurance company that already paid you to see if they want "their" stuff. If you get it fixed and next week they decide to pick it up you get the pleasure of handing over the freshly repaired items.

If lightming strikes a couple miles away your "surge strips" will help If lightning strike is less than200 yards nothing is going to help. When fire is shooting out the outlets that's more than a surge.
When those thunderstorms appraoch unplug everything you want to save.!

Whatever the legality its sleazy...

We can all guess all we want on this, but until the warranty is read and understood in full that's all they are is guesses. Not quite sure why you would ask without some attempt at reading it and trying to tell us what it says.

Once insurance company pays for it , they have right to it for salvage (if they choose) if they leave it with you, its your salvage, try to get warranty repair and insurance payment called insurance fraud. If you pay to get it fixed (if possible) thats OK, like others said, make sure they dont want it first.

One thing I can guarantee you--if you try to have a lightning damaged TV repaired under an extended warranty, you will immediately have your sorry butt hung for insurance fraud.

Believe me, the adjuster at the warranty company isn't dumb, he's (or she) probably had someone try to pull this on him a couple hundred times already. To him, you will have been so predictable he'll have to mute his telephone while he quits laughing. Then he'll start talking about insurance fraud.

When I was an adjuster handling vehicle service contracts, people in the automotive service business were equally predictable. For some reason, most of our used car contracts didn't cover heater cores. So--if a shop called in to initiate a claim for a heater core and was informed it was not listed as a covered item, you could predict with close to 100% accuracy that a half hour later the same shop would call a claim on the same car for an alternator, or something approximately the same cost as replacing the heater core. Like the car was just sitting there with the heater core leaking and the alternator just happened to go kaput. Then when we informed them we had a rep in the area that would stop and check the alternator, it was amazing how all at once they found it wasn't the alternator after all, it was a bad battery connection. The predictability of it all made our day.

My advice is leave it alone. The adjuster with the warranty company has already seen it all and can smell a phony claim a mile away. He'll laugh about how stupid you are to even try.

You know its wrong, thats why your asking, hoping somebody will say its O.K. and ease your conscience.

If you would read the question better, I did not ask for a way to go about it without getting caught, I asked If it was legal. I have the replacement TV so if it's not legal, I'll leave it alone.

Click on the link below. It contains a THOROUGH explanation of how to deal with this situation.
ARNOLD explains the situation

I would do it, they'll just deny your claim if it's not covered. When our TV was hit we had to take it for repair and then the insurance paid. Some TVs have a natural lighting protection with just a transformer or fuse box getting wiped out.

ITs fraud! You have been paid for the damages!

So was it fraud for the warranty company to accept his payment for coverage he already had?

I'd say if your ins co doesn't come get it, you ought to be able to PAY to repair it if you want. Sounds like the ins co bought out the extended warranty contract. I'd say not much different than keeping a car that has been "totaled" by insurance. The title gets branded as salvage, and you pay for ALL future repairs.

About half of the answers are not reading his post accurately. The extended warranty is not an issue cause it is only a few weeks old. Since the ins. company did not take the damaged items, they are the owners to do with as he pleases. If he goes to the manufacturer and tells them it was hit by a surge, and they agree to fix it, then no foul. However I doubt lightning would be considered a "manufacturing defect". So I doubt they will cover it. BUT...

Now, want a tip? Lots of those TV's have an internal fuse. My son had the same thing happen. Repairman came out and for $90 put in a new fuse in about 10 minutes. Search the web to see if that model has such a fuse.

Gene

I used to put in fuses in tvs in the home for five bucks. Course that was 50 years ago. And my boss got half of that $5. Dave