- If home repairs crop up, FPL subsidiary offers a back-up. But, just like insurance policies, not everyone is happy.
The story has been updated.
Your chances of getting struck by lightning in any given year are much better than winning the lottery, but living in the lightning capital of the world — Florida — makes it a greater probability than the usual one-in-a-million chance.
That’s one of the reasons Alex Soleta, 44, has been buying surge protection, called SurgeShield, from a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, as long as it has been available. The subsidiary of the state’s largest utility, called FPL Home, was first introduced it in 2004, and now it’s become FPL Home’s most popular home protection product, company officials say.
SurgeShield customers get a protector installed on their electric meter and, if that fails, a $5,000 limited manufacturer’s warranty for each covered appliance for each occurrence. More recently, at a time when property insurance companies increasingly exclude non-weather-related water damage, that same FPL subsidiary in 2017 began offering programs that protect your exterior water service lines, exterior sewer/septic line, water heater repair and replacement and interior plumbing and drainage system.
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So far, though, it looks like the Boynton Beach father of one child says he would have been better off putting that SurgeShield fee — now at $10.95 a month — aside to replace the televisions he says got fried when lightning did strike in September.
Four months after discovering his TVs on the fritz following a storm, he still hasn’t been reimbursed for the damage.
“The whole thing is a joke,” wrote Soleto, who works in insurance. “I wouldn’t trust them with an Etch A Sketch.”
An FPL Home spokesperson cited customer confidentiality when she declined to comment about the situation Soleto described on a Facebook page called “Boynton Beach Raw.” The day after The Palm Beach Post asked FPL Home about his claim, though, he heard from a company representative after months of silence.
“We were told our case was being reviewed again,” he said.
FPL Home’s spokesperson said loss claims with the paperwork completed properly are honored.
Still, the situation brings up a question: Doesn’t property insurance cover these items? The answer is, in some cases, yes, and, in other cases, especially those involving water, no.
Lightning-caused property damage, including power surges that cause damage to appliances and electronics inside the home, is typically covered by a standard home policy, said Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications for the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute.
“A standard home policy covers electrical system damage caused by a sudden and accidental event like a lightning strike or other severe weather hazards,” Friedlander said. “It does not cover damage due to wear and tear of the electrical system, improper maintenance or faulty workmanship.”
For Soleto, though, the cost of repairing or replacing three televisions was far below his homeowner’s insurance policy’s $2,500 deductible. There’s no deductible on the the SurgeShield coverage.
The exterior water service line coverage FPL Home offers is advertised at $3.74 a month and conveniently added to your FPL bill. It will cover an exterior water service line’s normal wear and tear, which the standard home insurance policy doesn’t, according to Friedlander.
“You need to purchase optional sewer and water backup coverage as an endorsement to have protection from this type of loss,” Friedlander wrote in an email.
For interior plumbing and drainage issues, FPL Home’s coverage will cover copper pipes, as many insurance companies won’t if they discover them during an inspection.
The water damage the typical home insurance covers is quite specific. A sudden pipe burst, for example, is covered under standard homeowner insurance. But if the damage is the result of an ongoing situation, more than 14 days, the water damage would not be covered by a homeowner’s policy.
Meanwhile, the policy FPL Home describes on its website doesn’t limit the time the problem has been developing, like homeowner insurance typically does for it to be covered. But the maximum $5,000 per year service would not likely cover the kind of catastrophic damage water can cause, as home insurance would, in the right circumstances.
Getting satisfaction in the event of a loss, however, can be a challenge in both kinds of coverage. Still, home insurance companies are regulated through the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, and the state’s Department of Financial Services officially takes property insurance company complaints.
FPL’s regulator is the Public Service Board and the website advertising the FPL Home coverage makes it clear that the policies are offered by FPL Home, “an unregulated subsidiary” of FPL.
Soleto, who has made three trips to Best Buy, as instructed by his FPL Home handlers, in the effort to get his televisions repaired, said he’s spreading the word far and wide about what he’s encountered.
That his Facebook post blew up with hundreds of comments — some similarly irate about FPL Home’s payout record — proves to him this coverage is not as advertised, or at least not as easy to access as a customer might assume.
He contrasted his experience with submitting a claim on some Christmas inflatables he bought at Walmart when they stopped holding air. He submitted his claim, along with the proof they weren’t filling up. He said he immediately received an apology and, 14 days later, a check for the full price of the products.
“That’s how things should work,” Soleto said. “You prove something’s not working, you prove that it wasn’t you who broke it, and then you get paid for it.”
Anne Geggis is the insurance reporter at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.