Take Videos Of Your Homes

FTC-Hater

FTC-Hater

As Seen on FTC.gov
Sep 12, 2009
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Long day working + too much family time + a few, or 7, beers = Wickedfire thread!

Anyway this is a kind of serious one. You should listen up if you own a home.

Around 9 years ago my Dad got a video recorder for Christmas and I decided to take it all around the house videotaping my family that was over, my room, the pool room, everything. I thought it was the coolest thing going - keep in mind I was 11 or 12 at the time.

A few weeks later, January 21st, my house burnt completely to the ground. Nothing was saved, but everyone was okay. It was, of course, a total shock and having a rather big home when State Farm requested a list of items in the house everyone was left scratching their heads.

My Dad just a few days before the house burning taped a hockey game of mine and the video recorder, with the tape I made on Christmas walking through the house, was still on it (he left the recorder in his truck).

Because of this you could literally see almost everything, that wasn't tucked inside drawers in the house. It ended up getting at the time the biggest settlement in our area awarded.

...A few years ago a relatives house burnt down also to the ground, que the "That's not a trend" jokes, their house was beautiful and full of stuff - stuff they didn't know they even had. Their settlement shouldv'e been much higher but they had no idea what they had kept away.

Anyone who owns a home should, every six months or so, do a quick walk through with a video recorder of some kind. It'll take like ten minutes or so and in the end can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars saved.

I just bought one of those flip things so that's what I'm off to do now.
 
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Deliguy said:
wow never thought about that. Plus they can't claim you didn't own something if its on video.
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Exactly, my relatives were actually my great, great grandparents farm home - a cousin and his family were living there. 80 years old, 9,000 square feet, and years and years of old unopened Christmas gifts from the 8 kids and countless grand and great grand kids in the basement.

But how many people know how many lamps, dishes, etc they have?

Their insurance company dicked them around big time and basically said if you think you had a 100 glass cups I'll let you claim 50 since you probably had that many for sure.

Anyway for how much effort it takes it's well worth it. Glad some people found this handy. :)
 
idk if this was said already, but you should upload the video to your web server, email it to yourself, or store the tape in another location or something. Because if the video burns down with the house that is kind of useless.
 
I know this all too well as a close friend of mine had his house burn to the ground last year, and the pain and suffering he went through with the insurance company was an eye opening experience.

To make it even worse, whenever a house burns to the ground. you are always treated as a suspect and must go through a mini interrogation with about 2-3 different police, who immediately grill you with question after question, checking your facts with everyone's elses. What nobody understands is you are usually an emotional ball of jelly after watching your kingdom go up in smoke and not always thinking coherently. Interrogations where you have to repeat the same story 10 times in a row is the furthest thing from your mind.

On top of that, you get the insurance broker "vultures" who spend their days and nights listening to the police radios and looking for fires. The moment one hits, they drive to the scene, and confront the owner with "I know right now you are watching your house burn to the ground, but our company specializes in everything. We will act as a middleman between you and the insurance co. We will handle eveything for you. You dont have to worry about doing anything. Our fee? Oh, 5% of your settlement"

Nothing worse than having salespeople pitching in your face in front of your giant bonfire.

The biggest tip I can offer anyone other than FTC's great advice is to contact your insurance company now, while everything is good, and find out your max coverage. Does dwelling coverage include contents as well or just "dwelling"? You would be surprised how many people have basic coverage which is jack shit.

It also takes another 10 minutes at most to open the drawers as you walk past each, so everything is recorded. When done with the tape, drop it off in a safe deposit box or with a relative. Or upload the video to Wicked Fire, we'd love to see your home.
 
Very true, if the recorder was in the house it would've been gone for sure. E-mailing it to yourself and family is a great idea.

To add to what Roundabout said the insurance company said that nearly 30% of all homes that burn to the ground are arsons or intentionally set. Whether this is true or not I have no idea but given the supposed statistic they will interrogate you heavily.

The best thing you can do is after something happens to call a collected family friend to calm you down and talk you through the process because the police will not have the same sympathy.

It took many months before the "investigation" was done and many months before we could actually clear the house and re-build.
 
Good info man. I go through State Farm as well and my agent actually recommended we do this and give the video to a couple of family members. This thread reminded me to get off my ass and go through the house again with the video camera. We just finished our basement and would hate to leave all that shit out in case of a disaster.
 
+ rep to this... I've never had a house burn down, but i do have general Umbrella insurance which I recommend to anyone. I paid like $400 to get 1MM worth of insurance ON TOP of what I already have on my home.

This way in case you incur some more damage over top of what your home insurance covers ( or auto, boat, plane for that matter ), this kicks in to cover the rest. Oh did I mention it also lowers all your other insurance premiums when you get Umbrella added on? Basically works out to FREE. No sense in not having it if you can shell out $400 a year.
 
r3p1v said:
idk if this was said already, but you should upload the video to your web server, email it to yourself, or store the tape in another location or something. Because if the video burns down with the house that is kind of useless.
Click to expand...

Great idea. I take a lot of photos. When I offload them to my Mac I copy them to a second drive. After I go through them I burn them onto two DVDs. I kep one in my fireproof filing cabinet and another in a safe at my parents.

If you have something you can't loose protect it. I've seen to many people loose all their digital photos because of a drive issue.

Great idea FTC-Hater
 
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