Keep us up to date on how this goes. Perhaps your next adjuster will be great, but you shouldn't play ball with the current one any more. In fact, it might be wise to issue a complaint in writing for the records. I hate to resort to public shaming (e.g., posting a detailed complaint with names here on your blog), but there's probably a time and place for that.

Here's the tally so far:
- drying out the carpet and walls: <$5K
- plumbing: >$13K
- cleanup: ??
- new flooring, walls, bathroom vanity: ??

We're having to eat the cost of a new kitchen spigot, ruined by the plumbing work, as well as the countless personal items that were destroyed by the sewage flood, concrete dust, etc.

The insurance company is still jerking us around. They're not returning our calls. They've had a week, and they've done nothing but lie to us repeatedly. Thanksgiving is two days away and we have out-of-town company arriving. I pray to God the insurance company lives up to its obligations soon; barring that, I pray for Divine restraint for myself, so I may avoid any escalation other than legal.

If they're response is anything less than absolutely stellar today (and I mean today), I will publish their name along with a strong recommendation that they be avoided at all costs. I'll also publish the lying adjuster's name (and phone number!) and the details of his lies and other unethical behaviors. All this will be included as evidence in the lawsuit, too. If this kind of behavior is at all typical, I would not be surprised if there are others who have been scammed by the same insurance company.

Here it is, another week where we're living in cr@p (I pray not literally, but given the problem was in the drains, likely), and there's been no contact with the insurance company. Pleading messages were left last Wednesday, but calls were not returned. The house is a freakin' disaster, but we haven't been given authorization to have it cleaned up. We don't even know what flooring is allowed to be replaced and what isn't. We don't know who is going to fix our walls--the ones with holes and the ones with concrete splattered on them, not to mention the ones with workers' hand prints.

We managed to replace the kitchen spigot--at our own expense even though it was destroyed by the plumbers. Nothing fancy, really. In fact, we've had to replace and fix a ton of things, all at our expense. No checks from the insurance company are forthcoming--no communication at all in the past week.

My whole family has been sick for past couple weeks. Telephone consultations with clean-up people (whom we've not yet been authorized to employ) lead us to believe the illnesses are due to the yet-to-be-replaced carpets.

If the performance of the insurance company so far is any indication, the only resolution we may find might be in the courts--we pray the Lord saves us from this possibility. In the meantime, we'll be out tens of thousands of dollars and living in half of a hellhole.

We have caught Leland in yet more lies. Clearly, it's pathological at this point. I think he's got it in for us, presumably because of some value or other we demonstrate with which he disagrees; and without a moral compass, he has no compulsion to do the right thing.

"The check's in the mail," has been the mantra for the past week or more. Nobody has seen any checks, though; not us nor the contractors.

On the plus side--hopefully--we finally got a new adjuster. He's an outside contractor and a long-time professional at it. Our first meeting started coolly, but he seemed to warm as he, presumably, learned we weren't the crackpots Leland billed us as. The jury's still out on actually seeing any results, though, especially since this new guy's findings are still reported to the sociopathic Leland. Now that we've been in touch with Leland's boss, though--much to Leland's chagrin (he refused to give us his boss' name, but we're resourceful)--perhaps a bit of accountability may be in order.

We have confirmed that such claims typically take about 2 weeks, whereas ours has been dragged out for 4 week so far, and yet we've not seen any money whatsoever, and no progress had been made cleaning or repairing our home for 3 weeks.

I still covet your prayers that I might not kill Leland the instant I see him should I ever be so unfortunate as to see him. It is an especially difficult temptation to resist knowing countless others would benefit from his premature removal from the business (we're already screwed, so it doesn't do much to help us now). [For the Homeland inSecurity agent monitoring my blog, that last bit is dry humor. I know you don't have a sense of humor, so you can just call it an untruth and get over yourself, moron.]

Mercury has seen fit to cheat us by nearly $10,000. That's a lot of money to absorb for having a supposedly $500 deductible. The new adjuster, while more empathetic and seemingly recognizing Leland Quon's pathology, was still subject to Quon's authority. It was obvious from the very beginning that Quon was intent on outright lying to us--repeatedly--and hurting us as badly as possible. The whole thing was protracted for nearly two months (normally takes two weeks). And in the end, he managed to cheat us out of a lot of money.

We still don't have the old carpet taken away, let alone new carpet installed. It still looks like a war zone. Due to being cheated out of so much money, we will have to resort to doing all of the cleanup and restoration ourselves, except the carpet. Of course, the new carpet (I should say "flooring" since more than just carpet must be replaced) is being totally absorbed by us. Technically, they "covered" the new flooring, but they cheated us out of so much of the plumbing bill (they paid about a third) that it's the same as us eating the entire cost of the carpet four times over.

We hope to get the new flooring in this coming weekend. Over the next many weeks, I'll be doing the rest of the cleanup, beginning with moving the important furniture (the stuff I can't trust to being moved by the flooring people who refuse to take responsibility for any damage they cause!) back downstairs. This includes my desk, which is very large and heavy (6'x8', quarter ton?). It'll take us days to restore all the little things the flooring people won't move (baskets, drawers of stuff, wiring, etc.). Then I need to work on restoring the bathroom, all but building it out again from scratch including drywall, painting vanity, sink, and plumbing, all new hardware, blinds, toilet, and scrubbing the tub for hours; then comes the laundry room, more drywall, painting, baseboards, and all new bi-fold doors; then the office wall needs to be patched, baseboards restored, and both painted; then the hallway doors, baseboards, and trim need to be stripped and restained--if possible--or replaced, and the walls need cleaning and repainting (there's concrete slapped up on all these surfaces!). All of this must be done at our own expense--and we must do it in short order or we don't get the rest of our paltry settlement (

I forgot to mention the icing on the cake. As you know from this blog, there's been nothing that anyone could do to help us in our plight with the insurance company--that is, unless they have ten grand they just don't need anymore. Nevertheless, our sister-in-law, with whom we converse semiannually, got upset with us for (a) not asking for their help and (b) refusing to meet them for dinner during this holiday and disaster season. (None of my extended family, or family-of-origin, has ever seen fit to keep up with our goings-on anyway. It's all pretty much on this site, but they never visit it.) We told them there was nothing that anybody could do to help us (which was most frustrating for us even without being bitched at by family). We also said we'll likely be available for dinner--and be able to relax thereat--in January. This latter offer was outright ignored repeatedly. We then learned our sister-in-law had "tattled" to my mother about this and about how we never call them, despite the fact that any relationship we have had with my sister-in-law and family (my brother and their two girls) has been completely initiated and maintained by us. This, despite the fact that we are always the ones who call, yet they frequently fail to return our calls. There's just no follow-through on their part.

My family's values and my brother's family's values are almost diametrically opposed, a fact of which they don't even seem aware. There's very little in common except our family of origin, with whom I parted ways (values-wise) years ago. My sister-in-law claims to value family, but it seems to be so only on her kids' birthdays and Christmas. We are pleased to be there for them when we are able, but this holiday season has been a disaster, so it just couldn't be done reasonably.

As a result, we expect our sister-in-law to hold a grudge against us--like the rest of my family-of-origin has done for years--and be even colder to us than usual. (I won't go into the nasty comments she manages to slip to us now and again.) As remote as our relationship has always been, and as disparate as our values are, I'm afraid it's no great loss to us. (It's not like our witness to them over the years has done any good, prophet-in-home-town and all.) As I've documented before, such division is all but inevitable, despite our best efforts to the contrary.

We're now fully moved back into our downstairs. Our master bedroom is fully together. My office is now fully restored (well, the one baseboard is still not quite right). And lastly, our bathroom is back in working order. We're still a ways away from being complete (we still have wall work to do, plus bifold doors for the laundry room), but at least we can live as we did two months ago (aside from the massive, unreimbursed expenses).