I spoke with a homeowner today who has been working through a State Farm claim, and his experience reflects a pattern I see consistently throughout the industry.
A roofing company inspected his home and confirmed storm damage. State Farm then hired a third-party inspection group, Seek Now, to examine the property and take photographs. When the results finally came back, the estimate showed around twenty-five hundred dollars in total damage. With a two-thousand-dollar deductible, the homeowner would receive close to five hundred dollars. In practical terms, the insurer was indicating that the storm caused minimal impact.
The homeowner was not convinced, so he requested another inspection. The new adjuster climbed onto the roof, stayed there for just a few minutes, and returned with the conclusion that there was no more damage. This stood in direct contrast to the findings of two local roofing companies that had already documented what they considered clear signs of hail impact.
The roof is seventeen years old, and the homeowner has a Replacement Cost Value (RCV) policy. For homeowners unfamiliar with the terminology, an RCV policy requires the insurer to pay the full cost of replacing the roof if hail damage is confirmed, rather than paying only the depreciated value as an Actual Cash Value (ACV) policy would. Because RCV claims create significantly higher financial exposure for insurers, they often undergo more intense scrutiny and additional inspections. This is a well-established industry trend and explains why these types of claims frequently turn into long, frustrating processes.
What complicates this situation even further is that one of his neighbors, who also has a State Farm policy, experienced the same storm and was assigned the same adjuster. Their roof was approved without any difficulty. Two nearly identical cases produced completely opposite outcomes.
The homeowner has been attempting to reach someone at State Farm for clarification but has had little success. He asked me to visit the property once the snow melts. As the third roofing contractor at the property I will take photographs and prepare an accurate estimate. However, I explained to him that I have no authority in the decision-making process for his claim. What he is experiencing is the familiar "delay, deny, defend" cycle that many Wisconsin homeowners face after hail events.
This is exactly why so many people feel powerless during the claims process. You can have multiple professionals confirm damage, you can provide clear documentation, and you can even live in the same neighborhood as someone who was approved. Yet your outcome may still be entirely different.
The industry will continue to operate this way until cases like these are documented in a consistent, transparent system. HomeHudl exists to make those inconsistencies visible. When claims are tracked at scale and the patterns are placed side by side, the disparities become impossible to overlook. Better data leads to better accountability, and better accountability leads to better outcomes for homeowners.