Insurance job - Insurance only paying for work in the owners garden. Potential issues?

[Stubby]

10 hours ago, daltontrees said:

Don't give an opinion on why the tree blew down. Don't! Curtail your instinct to be helpful, it can only end badly.

This all day long and twice on Sunday .

[matt padden]

Why not refer them to an arb consultant about the reasons for the tree failure. Deferring to a specialist still makes you look professional and gets you out of the situation.

[Stubby]

37 minutes ago, matt padden said:

Why not refer them to an arb consultant about the reasons for the tree failure. Deferring to a specialist still makes you look professional and gets you out of the situation.

We had a customer who was friends with us . She also had a gardener who was friends with us and friends with her . She , the customer had a tree come down and it smashed through a flint wall and partly through the next doors boat house wrecking the building and damaging the bout . All being taken care of by the the two insurance companies . Half way through the proceedings the gardener , bless him , told the neighbor ...." I have been telling her about that tree for months , its gonna fall " Things didn't go quite so smoothly after that .

[Jon Lad]

2 hours ago, matt padden said:

Why not refer them to an arb consultant about the reasons for the tree failure. Deferring to a specialist still makes you look professional and gets you out of the situation.

That’s what I would do. 

[skyhuck]

I have learned over the years that I do any tree failure removal for the owner of the tree or owner of property it has landed on. I invoice them, they pay me and are then free to redeem payment from their insurer. The only time I will work for an insurance Co is when they contact me directly and give me a purchase order for the job.

Anything else just leads to headaches IME.

[Jon Lad]

2 hours ago, skyhuck said:

I have learned over the years that I do any tree failure removal for the owner of the tree or owner of property it has landed on. I invoice them, they pay me and are then free to redeem payment from their insurer. The only time I will work for an insurance Co is when they contact me directly and give me a purchase order for the job.

Anything else just leads to headaches IME.

Absolutely spot on. 

I remember once speaking on the phone to a customer’s insurer, to tell them the price for us to clear a lime which had gone over and taken a garden wall out between them and the neighbour. 
But it was understood that it was the customer who was going to pay, they just wanted to make sure the insurance company was going to reimburse them before we started. 

On the other occasions I’ve done insurance jobs, it was never directly for the insurer; always the policy holder. 

[William Clifford]

Thanks all for the comments. I'm still waiting on the final relatively small amount to be settled before anything else happens but good advice all through the replies 👍