Anderson Insurance Company Steals Sandy Victims Money .

A letter from Diane DeWitt Mazzacca Sandy Victim and and more importantly Fema and Insurance industry Victim 

I am looking for feedback with this letter to the media...If you know of any media sites please let me know...or an office which needs to see this. Maybe I am overlooking one or two...

My family and I are Super Storm Sandy Survivors...kinda! Everything that could have gone amuck, has, after Sandy waltzed through our home! A home of modest proportions. No bells or whistles, just our home. Our home is what we are fighting to save. We are not asking for handouts, nor what isn’t due us. We are proud to do it all ourselves, but we draw the line on how we have been treated by so many people. We aren’t to sure if it is employees poor work ethic or are these people being told to lie and cheat homeowners in order to make the all mighty buck by their employers??? And is our government and it’s employees turning a blind eye from the lies and cheating so they don’t have to loose money they misappropriated? We need answers, We are voters and We have paid all the bills to these elite companies that are stealing from us.

For the past eighteen months the same, supposedly comforting, phrases have been part of every conversation that I have had with the DCA about the inept New Jersey “Grant” system, anything having to do with flood insurance including FEMA/NFIP, and my fabulous mortgage company. The phrases in which I am referring to are, “If you (add something that will cost more money out of my pocket)” or “Don’t worry (and poof, they are going to fix something)”. I find these phrases extremely derogatory and I am over the smoke screen, have been over it for some time but I just can’t seem to find someone from ANY office willing to step up and to do the right thing! I cannot be alone in this sinking boat so I am willing to put forward my voice. I have to say, I am LOUD. Let me explain...

I will start by our Flood Insurance debacle...
Every year our flood insurance bill is due on April 9th. It has been around $575.00 for $250,000 building and $14,000 for content. This bill has been paid every year by my mortgage company which is Wells Fargo. I would be in contact with the insurance department at Wells Fargo every year making sure that the bill was paid and there were not bumps in the road. After Sandy hit in October, sleep deprived and very freaked out I do remember receiving our bill and passing along the information as I have always done, then I moved on since there were so much going on at the time, which I will get to in a moment. I did receive our bill for flood insurance with all the same coverages but it had gone up to $627 with all the same coverages. Alright, not a problem and I kept moving. My mortgage company paid the bill, I know this because I did check on it. Then a letter dated June 5, 2013 from Assurant arrived. I refer to this letter as the “extortion letter”. This letter stated that we needed to pay the insurance company another $4,492.00 within 30 days or our coverages would go down to $10,300 for building and $1,500 for content. Needless to say, I did not pay! I couldn’t have paid since the flood insurance gave us pennies on the dollar in order to put our home back together. Yup, the company American Bankers (aka...Assurant which is owned by Wells Fargo but I will get back to that) that I have been paying for years for full coverage decided that their math of putting back our lives would only cost 1/3 of what the reality of it was/is. But back to the extortion letter, I filled a complaint with the State of New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance Consumer Protection Services. They in turn sent a letter to the NFIP which I received a copy of, that says in effect, she is your problem! Thanks, so again the same people that want to steal from us are policing themselves. Great! This to me was nothing more than...extortion with the governments approval. I received a new deck sheet from Assurant (American Bankers) by August reiterating the premium for the lesser coverages. I stuffed it in my bag of goodies for our Sandy home...thinking that I just can’t deal with every stupid thing right now. And at this point there really wasn’t anything to cover anyway, so we were good. In around February we received our new policy deck page and the premium is now $5,188.00. I called our insurance agent at Anderson Agency, giving her all the information that I had. I called back a number of times over the corse of two weeks finally getting her the response is the best. I was told that she has no idea what happened it must be a mistake but ‘don’t worry’ she will get back to me. I waited.... Then called back because now the dead line to pay the premium is approaching and I am getting nervous thinking that I will have to stop the work on our home, loose all the money that we have already put into it out of pocket, because we couldn’t afford that kind of money! And I don’t pay something, anything, if I feel I am being ripped off...sorry! I was told that we have been rated wrong since we have a basement!!! WE DON’T HAVE A BASEMENT! We have a crawl space which the flood waters came in the front and washed out the back taking with it sand which my husband while we had no floors needed to make nice and neat, leveled it. But all the same this is a basement??? So I was told after giving my agent this information to “if you get a new elevation certificate” you will have this all corrected. Which I did and handed it in as soon as I received it. Then I was told that “if you add more venting” the premium will go down but they never changed the fact that I am at grade level in the back yard which in FEMA’s world means that I don’t have a basement as long as you are level with one side of your home! But I suppose the underwriter at Assurant aka American Bankers didn’t really care about that. So now on to flood venting which we took care of and again “if you have a new elevation certificate”, “don’t worry” your premium will go down. Any one doing the math on elevation certificates because that all came out of our pockets...because now we needed another one to show the vents but this time I also included pictures. Handed that one in and NOTHING! I got reduced, just like a pat on the head, for a whooping...wait for it...$75.00!! After putting out thousands of dollars that we could have used fixing out home. Makes sense right? Doesn’t end here...I called the insurance agent again...now dealing with the manager since I wasn’t getting anywhere at all even after spending money like it was water, to say I needed help with this and I needed answers, NOW! Needless, to say I got no where...well, I did get yes, we are sending this...and we are sending that...hang on...we are working on it! All during this time I was in contact at least every other day with my mortgage company telling them NOT TO PAY unless I give them the ok. They paid the $627.00 and we left it that way so that there wouldn’t be a lapse in the flood policy but they knew that I was looking into alternatives to save money since this was extortion! OK we are all on the same page...not so much! Apparently, someone from Wells Fargo calls my old flood insurance woman and together they “ok” paying the $5,188.00 all by themselves without my knowledge!!!! I only find this out because I called Wells Fargo to let them know that I was working on private flood insurance with Lloyd's of London with all the coverages that I needed but dropping down the coverage of building to $200,000 in stead of $250,000 because that is over paying for something that wasn’t paying out! The paid it! I know I went nuts...almost blacked out! I got “don’t worry we won’t do an escrow search until December” and that was supposed to be alright? I sent an email to the manager at Anderson since if I spoke to her I would NOT be nice. I was told that they were ‘allowed’ to do that. Not with my money your not!!! And besides how would anyone know what I was doing about private flood insurance. After that I got nothing! So lets follow the bouncing ball...Assurante aka American Bankers which is owned by Wells Fargo, are you seeing the problem here? As I see it they have stolen from us! The last conversation that I had with both the insurance manager and Wells Fargo they both comforted me by saying “don’t worry if there is a mistake you will get a refund.” Sure, are you kidding me? I have been lied to for 18 months and counting by everyone involved with flood insurance so I should be comforted...hint, I am not an idiot nor would I be allowed to do this to one of my clients! I would be out of business. I have spoken to Senator Menendez’s office who put me in contact with a gentleman from FEMA/NFIP who was supposed to help. Not so much, nothing has changed. Now he has moved on as per his boss’s. Senator Menendez’s office now tells me to call them and get another contact. I called three weeks ago and still no call back. I will be calling EVERY DAY and waste my time calling them so they can tell me, “don’t worry it will be fine”. So lets continue.... As per my settlement with Assurante, American Bankers they never included a proof of loss statement which I needed if I were going to fight them on the settlement. When I called to inquire about getting this proof of loss, I was told that I didn’t need one. And that it was only for people that weren’t happy with their settlement. Who told them that I was happy with my settlement? I sure didn’t. I found out later that it was supposed to be in the settlement papers that I received but they weren’t, conveniently. They knew that the deadline to file was coming and they just dragged their feet on sending it. I had to call and email to push it along. They would have sent it after the deadline but the deadline was extended, luckily! Yes, this will be the next issue that will need my attention, to get what I paid for! Why is it that we need to fight for what we have paid for? Primary homeowners and secondary homeowners have all paid the same but have been shorted. Secondary homeowners are getting seriously shorted! Why? No really, WHY? No matter what the answer is, it is WRONG! Normally, you pay in, you get paid out! Unless, you got involved with a ponzi scheme...why is Bernie in jail? Why hasn’t anyone been called out with all of this flood insurance mess? Who is getting the kick backs from all of this? I hope that I didn’t loose you with this bouncing ball...cause it continues. I was told the other day that their in-laws home was hit by Sandy also and they received a check from FEMA for $50,000.00, they had NO FLOOD INSURANCE! I was told by FEMA at the beginning that that FEMA doesn’t help anyone without flood insurance. And I was told that FEMA wouldn’t help us since our insurance company gave us more money then $27,000.00 to fix our home. WHAT? Yes, through all of this I found out that FEMA/NFIP are working in dysfunctional tandem. Then the insurance company really is NFIP but are managed by these companies which are owned by the banks. So lets get this straight, FEMA/NFIP work together, they have managing company to do paperwork for them, everyone gets a piece of my flood insurance money, nothing comes back to me...and if your paperwork is “wrong” they all have it wrong and they WILL NOT correct it! I now and have been in contact with a large number of other homeowners both primary and second homeowners that have encountered similar obstacles preventing them from rebuilding their lives, through a group called Stop Fema Now. This group has now grown to outside the Sandy hit areas to almost every state in the nation, not a good sign for our country...just sayin. The dysfunction of our government agency FEMA/NFIP is appalling to say the least and no one is being held accountable. FEMA/NFIP and the banks that own the managing insurance companies are all in bed together leaving the rest of us at their mercy. Bernie Matof’s attorney’s should take a lesson from our government if so that man wouldn’t be in jail. He would have been able to continue to rip people off just like our federal government.

By now you may think that the only issue is with the federal government...not so much. Lets go over the states handling of these so called “Grants”. During the first year of putting our lives back together Governor Christie was running the show on these “Grants” which I call loans, I didn’t know anything about them. We were busy putting together what is left of our lives and trying to move ahead. We were living 2 hours from home and traveling to and from not reading, not hearing what was going on until July. So July 27th I sat by the computer and filled out every one of the applications and when I went to hit the Summit button I received a message back saying that “sorry at this time we can not accept your application”. I called the DCA in Trenton and a lovely woman on the other end told me “don’t even bother filling out the applications because there are 8,000 other homeowners ahead of you that aren’t going to get a dime. Your are wasting your time”. Awesome! So I let it go for a moment...a moment to long because when I came to my senses I tried again only to be told that the DEADLINE had past by a week! DEADLINE? What deadline??? Yes, Governor Christie had a deadline to fill these application out. I was appalled yet again. Here we are running like fools and who in their right mind would implement a deadline? Someone that knew really what we were going through would have never done that! So off I went to start rocking the boat. I called Trenton yet again and explained what had happened and I got the woman that I was transfered to after being transfered by someone else will look into it. NOTHING! Some time went by and I decided to go to one of Governor Christies photo op, I mean town hall meetings but was not called on to ask my questions. I tracked down a man who is in charge of the DCA and explained what had happened he told me to go to the desk with the DCA people at it and let them know. I did and I am so sure that they put my information in the round filling cabinet. I called when they had let the first company go that was helping with the grants and they were having people reapply. I had no file number so couldn’t fill out the normal papers so I sent and email. Never to hear back, so again I called and went through it all with a young man on the phone, he had no idea what to say to me and asked me to hang on. Then he came back to the line and said, “we will have to look for your email”. I said that I would hang on. He came back to the phone and said “don’t worry we have it and will get back to you”. Sure you will...nothing yet! And by the way that deadline has past also. So here we are left yet again to fend for ourselves and figure out what we should do...many times my husband and I had conversations have dealt with should we just walk away and give them the keys to our home. I know of only one of our neighbors receiving the Grant money of $10,000.00 for the resettlement grant. With this Grant aka Loan he will always and forever have to have flood insurance on his home. Even if he raises his home 30’ in the air. Even if he sells his home...as long as his home is still on this property the home/land will always have to have flood insurance. They can’t seem to tell you how much it will be, but you will have to trust that it will be less then if you left it on the ground! Which brings me to lift or not to lift. We decided to lift since that would be the only way we could, maybe afford the flood insurance premiums. No Grants/Loans just on a wing and a prayer! My husband and myself are now on the ‘feet first program’ which means that we will never be able to retire, we will drop dead working to afford our home. Perfect! Our American Dream along with thousands of others got washed away with Sandy and then our own inept stealing government. I have a friend from Stop Fema Now, she lives on Long Island, who is disabled and she has made it clear that if she dies before she gets home to sue FEMA. They have yet to help her in anyway...is this a land grab? Is it to purify the weak out? Is it done to keep us occupied while the government steals more in other ways from us? Most of us are hanging on by a thread while our government beats it’s chest and says how wonderful things are going and thousands of dollars are going to help those of us that need it. And money that is going to other countries that have had disasters...are they really? What I have learned through all of this is that I trust no one in politics. They say that we are run by the constitution, we are a free people. No we aren’t. Not even close. We are a society that has become complacent. The government has taken full control of us by telling us what we want to hear and how we should do just about everything. Voting doesn’t mean a damn thing since the so called electoral votes are the only thing that counts. So why vote? They calculate all that can be done to run the country they way they see fit. Well, not fit, so they can put the all mighty dollar in their own pockets. I have no faith in our government elects...I need to know is there anyone out there that will stand up and take this on so that we can keep our homes?

In conclusion I need to know is there anyone out there that will not use the phases “don’t worry” or “if you do ....” in order to do something to help us? Just do it! I do not expect one super human to be able to do all of this but at least do the job your getting paid by us to do with the best of your ability. Give us our life back...no hand outs just what is due us! I don’t want to hear, “I have a bill that is going to congress” which doesn’t help at all, just makes it seem like it will. We need help now! Not in a few more months...NOW! The legal nonsense of these “bills” is just a drawn out bunch of garbage that gives them time to work to cover negate what it is supposed to do! We are all not ignorant or complacent. Thank you to social media most of this is going end some long and drawn out political careers...just sayin! Even if I am living in a box somewhere I will still have the voice I was given and will not stop until my very last breath...I am calling you all out! Stand up or pack up!