A friend of mine who has an insurance agency, said they have been having "Joanne effect" types of problems with policies due to expire in 2000. Their corporate told them everything was fixed for y2k, but they have found quite a few mistakes in billings this past two weeks. The bills are sent directly to mortgage companies and are paid out of escrow accounts. If your insurance agent isn't checking their daily logs of this direct billing, you may be billed for several years of insurance by mistake. Example you pay $360 per year for your insurance. Your mortgage company charges you $30 per month in advance for your next years premium. The "mistake", "glitch", "problem" my friend is seeing are bills going to mortgage companies for 2-10 years of premiums. So, your mortgage company will get a bill for say 5 years ($1800) pay the $360 out of your escrow account and send a notice that you owe them an additional $1440. for property insurance. My just be a pain in the ass for you to take care of, but it is a nightmare for the insurance and mortgage companies. Why? Because there may be thousands of improperly billed accounts to deal with, and each one will take hours to straighten out.

Toss in some screwed up county tax departments and tax bills, and your mortgage company voice mail systems should be overflowing this year. Keep hard copies of everything this year and next.

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), January 15, 1999

Answers

Correction, " May just be a pain in the ass .....

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), January 15, 1999.

Ditto here too Bill. My partner is fighting the same thing, exactly as you described.

-- John Callon (jcallon@gate.net), January 15, 1999.

Basically all you have to do is call up your insurance company, say hey, you overbilled me or underbiled me... they fix the mistake, end of story. Jeez, whats the big fuss over that??

-- joe camel (foo@bar.commy), January 15, 1999.

Have no way of knowing if JAE or y2k related - our business's Ins Co. is not sending out bills, yet they think they are. We noticed it when the broker called and said our coverage was in danger of being cancelled (this was the early Jan bill (!). We still haven't received a bill. I've alerted the bookkeeper to pay extra attention.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), January 15, 1999.