Insurance Company Inconsistent About Coverage Long Beach, CA legaladvice

My whole city had a massive power outage for five days last week. I called up my insurance company (USAA, if it matters) after the first twenty four hours to see if we had any options because our renters policy is through them. They graciously replaced what money we lost because of spoiled food, which was amazing and more than I'd expected. On day three however, the power still wasn't on and we could not simply go grocery shopping and replace our food because obviously we had no power so no refrigerator, so we were having to eat out for every meal, which was getting expensive. Well, again, I called up USAA, not expecting anything, just to see if we had any options at all. The guy said we could save the receipts of anything we bought from eating out and that they would reimburse us and it wouldn't be any issue at all. He said it absolutely falls under our policy. They'd even reimburse us for staying in a hotel if we chose to do so until the power came back on. Fast forward to today, we called in to check on the status of the claim because we hadn't heard anything since emailing them a copy of our receipts three days ago. At first they said they couldn't cover certain items like the liquor store, even though we had only gotten water and soda from there, but no big deal, that's reasonable and I could understand them not doing that. But then all of a sudden they completely changed their minds and said none of it was covered under our policy. The adjuster I was talking to said she'd never heard of anyone ever getting reimbursed for eating out during a power outage. I said that'd be fine if that's what they had told me from the beginning, that the guy I talked to assured me it would absolutely be covered, but they conveniently don't have any notes from that conversation so as far as they're concerned it never took place. Is there anything I can do? I'm not expecting a handout, but literally the only reason I ate at all that weekend was because I was told, by them, that it was covered under my renters policy. We didn't have the money to be eating out every meal but it was fine if we were getting reimbursed, and now we're just screwed because they don't honor what their agents tell people. I understand it's an insurance company and they actively avoid paying out, but they flat out lied to me about the whole thing and I'm confident they just deleted the first guys notes just so they wouldn't have to pay anything.

Submitted July 24, 2015 at 06:00AM by baconlion http://ift.tt/1ekI8ux legaladvice