We have 5 important tips to protect your home during the holidays.

1. Make sure you lock all doors and windows and close blinds to prevent people from looking inside your house. You want to hide view to your Christmas presents.
2. When disposing of holiday wraps and packaging, destroy all signs of product labels such as “expensive” TVs. You don’t want to “advertise” to the neigborhood of high dollar purchases.
3. Don’t forget to arm your security system, without fail when leaving the house even for a moment.
4. When any and all delivery people deliver a parcel, you have the right to ask for identification, this is a must! It could be a burglar.
5. If you plan to travel during the holiday season, make sure you have a trusted neighbor take in your newspaper deliveries and take in your daily mail. Also move the car occasionally if your car is parked outside the home.

You can never be too careful when protecting your home from burglary. Remember to be aware of your surroundings and watch for suspicious people that appear to be “out of place” in your neighborhood. They could be “staking out” your street. Be liberal with reporting suspicious activity to the police.

If you should have a burglar incident, explain all the precautions above to your insurance adjuster that you took to prevent theft and break in of your home. They will look more favorably on your claim that you took every effort to prevent an incident.

We wish you and your family a safe and fun holiday season.

For a quick, no obligation quote on your auto and homeowners insurance needs, call Doug Seide at 480-443-1952.

Make sure when you consider any insurance company, whether it is for property/casualty, auto, homeowners, commercial, that it is rating financially solvent with reputable insurance rating companies like Standard and Poors, and most importantly, AM Best & Company. You can go to the AM Best company website at http://www3.ambest.com/ratings/advanced.asp

When you get to the AM Best rating site, enter the name of the insurance company in the “text” box and click on the “search now” button. You will see how well it is rating withing their parameters. It should be a guide to help you make your purchasing decision regarding your insurance company.

AM Best is the most important rating system for insurance companies that there is. Even insurance companies insuring other insurance companies or “reinsurance companies” look to this guide before the underwriting department will even consider covering a risk.

When purchasing a car with financing, you will be required to get, at minimum, collision insurance. The finance company has the right for protection of the vehicle they are covering. Of course, they want their “property” covered while in your possession until the loan is paid off. Here is a brief video explaining the reason of mandatory collision coverage.

Auto Insurance : What Is Full Coverage Automobile Insurance?

Of course you also are required to carry liability insurance too. In our next post, we will go over some details on liability insurance.

Call 480-443-1952 and let Doug Seide give you a no obligation quote on your auto insurance.

There are many things you can do to avoid high auto insurance premiums. Here is a short list of those things:

1. A safe driving record. It certainly pays to have an accident free driving record. This is the first thing the insurance underwriters look for when approving a hefty discount on premiums.
2. If all your cars are with one insurance company. The all famous “car discount” is when all vehicles within one household is covered with the same insurance agent under the same insurance policy.
3. Additionally, if you home insurance is also included with the property casualty insurance company, will also add to an overall insurance discount. This is called a “multi-line” discount.
4. If your household does not smoke, this qualifies for another great discount.
5. Usually if the youngest driver age in the household is is at least 25 years old, this also qualifies for a discount.
6. Lastly, raising all your deductibles is a great way to decrease premiums. This enables the insured to take up more of the financial responsibility, thus giving a discount from the insurance company to the insured.

What is most important is to compare premiums with one company to another. There can be great differences between companies just because of the unique underwriter requirements or state rulings over each insurance company.

Whatever the case, it is buyer beware.

Feel free to make a comment on how you saved money on your insurance coverage.

For a quick, no obligation quote on your auto and homeowners insurance needs, call Doug Seide at 480-443-1952.

We found a very interesting video that completely explains auto insurance coverages and how a claim is made. Please feel free to give us comments below after viewing it.

Here is a video of a TV news show featuring Kirk Tweedy, executive director for Farmers Insurance. In this video, he answers questions on filing claims for storm damage. Pay attention to the details of this video as he explains many important points of properly making a storm damage claim.

Scottsdale Insurance Agent, Doug Seide also provides Institutional Insurance Coverage. Arizona is certainly abundant with many cultural and social service organizations, schools, and churches. All of these entities are in a special class of insurance that only insurance agents with specialty coverage plans can supply.

There are specific requirements that these types of entities have to have regarding insurance protection.

All real and personal property must be insured at 100% replacement cost. Because of the uniqueness of some specialty properties such as rare stain glass windows in churches, or pipe organs, or one of a kind ornate construction of an old school, valuation has to be done very thoroughly. Quite often, in the appraisal process, several specialists that can appraise different items will be called in.

If a particular building such as a church or old school that is over 50 years old, an insurance carrier may require the entity to upgrade the structure to modern day safety and fire codes. So these entities may have to spend much more than just the insurance premium on the property.

The good news is that an insurance company can often make recommendations that can make the building and personal property rise in value because of the strict standards imposed on them.

In either case, institutional insurance coverage in Arizona is a very valuable item that is needed for any non profit organization.

For all your insurance needs, call Doug Seide Insurance at 480-443-1952.

There is a right way and wrong way of buying homeowners insurance. Too many people are just not prepared in knowing what questions to ask or what companies to approach for a quote. As mentioned in a previous post, you have to be very careful in the selection of the insurance company in the first place.

We found a great video that explains how to purchase homeowners insurance in “plain english.” Enjoy!

For all your insurance needs, call Doug Seide Insurance at 480-443-1952.

When purchasing insurance, for the most part, it is a safe bet to secure your policy from a reputable insurance agent. But there are some people out there that want very cheap rates, and will seek this cheap insurance in other than obvious places.

Here are some tips on how to avoid getting scammed from an unscrupulous agent.

1. Be aware of companies or individual agents that say they can insure you no matter what your past driving record or past claims history has been. Under normal circumstances, even if you were to be insured with that profile, you would be given a fairly long waiting period and an extremely high premium quote.
2. Make sure that the company name is correctly spelled. Quite often scammers will make up a company name that sounds very similar to a well known and reputable company.
3. Be very suspicious if the agent (scammer) will take money by wire or direct deposit into an account right away.  You should take your time to investigate the legitimacy of the company by checking in with the department of insurance in your state and do some simple research on the internnet. Being “rushed” is certainly a “red flag.”
4. Be suspicious of getting mailers soliciting “great insurance” deals. This also applies to insurance sales pitches that you receive via fax. A lot of scammers don’t advertise in the Yellow Pages or “legitimate” publications because they know it is against the law to publish in them.
5. Also, check with references, friends, family and business acquaintences about a particular insurance company you are interested in. Talking to someone who already has a policy with the company being reviewed is the best way to go. That way, you can find out how the company performance is, claims service, and most importantly, how legitimate the company is.

Of course, there are many more ways to “filter” out a scammer from a legitimate company. Just make sure you investigate as thorough as you can.

If you would like a quote on your auto, homeowners or specialty equipment, call Doug Seide at 480-443-1952.

I have been asked by many people, “why are the insurance policies so hard to read and understand? Is it because the insurance companies are trying to “hide” something from us?”

The answer is no. You have to realize that an insurance policy is made up of a collaboration from the underwriters, agents and attorneys. It certainly feels like the policies are written only by the attorneys! Truth is, it is a true partnership of the above parties deciding what type of risks are going to covered, at how much a premium should be charged for each risk, and how the risk will be paid. A lot of thought goes into this process so that the insurance company makes a little profit, but mostly, that the named insured is protected to the point of having “peace of mind.”

Remember too that the insurance companies are under strict regulation from the state and Federal governments. So therefore the insurance policies have to be worded in simple legal language so that there is no “gray” area as to what is covered and for how much.

When I first looked at an insurance policy during my basic training days at insurance class, I looked at it with total intimidation. Then, as I went over the specific parts of the policy, I began to see a trend of recurring things in each section. There are “definitions,” “conditions,” “what is covered,” and “exclusions.” Beyond that, there is the actual verbage that explains what is covered and under what conditions.

Believe it or not, many people do not take the time to read the policy from “cover to cover.” Of course, it can be “boring” text to say the least! But if you clear your mind, read and take in all that the words describe, it is not complicated to understand. Try it! Then, if you have any questions, or “what if” questions, you can call your agent and he or she will gladly find out if something is covered or not and under what circumstance.

Answer: Insurance policies are really not too complicated!

For all your insurance needs, call Doug Seide Insurance at 480-443-1952.