auto insurance southern

We have all heard enough frightening stories over time to know that a parking garage can be a very dangerous place. It certainly doesn’t help that many movies tend to use underground parking garages in terrifying scenes. But there are ways to eliminate the need for fear. Nobody should have to live their life looking over their shoulder all the time. Being prepared is always the first step in conquering potential danger. It’s also very important that you do not live your life as if you are expecting to become a victim. It makes you a target.

Try not to be alone in a parking garage, especially after dark. If it’s possible to travel with another person, then do so. If not, consider having someone meet you before you get out of your car. If you must park in one of these places for work, your employer should have some kind of security in place for your walk to and from your vehicle. If you see someone that makes you nervous, stay in the car and prepare to drive away if necessary. Never leave your doors unlocked.

Always trust your gut instinct. No matter how unreasonable it might seem, if your instinct warns of danger then pay attention. It’s always better to drive away and park elsewhere than to risk being cornered by someone threatening. Don’t pass through a parking garage with little consideration of what is going on around you. Predators know the signs of a victim and if you exude them by being ignorant, you may find yourself in trouble.

Carry something for self defense like pepper spray. It’s best not to carry things like knives or guns which can be turned against you. Have your spray ready at all times, even when it seems that no one else is around. Most predators do not announce their presence until they make their move. Having pepper spray handy may be something they do not see coming. When you are prepared to fight back, physical attacks are less likely to occur.

Stay alert at all times. The best thing to identify a hidden person in a parking garage is sound. Most noises echo in such a vast space. The littlest thing can tip you off if someone is lurking around. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything that seems unusual. If you feel it necessary, call the police. Taking action is what will keep you safe.

Park your car in a garage that uses security cameras. This may not always deter would be predators but in many cases it does. Nobody wants to be caught on video harming another person. It may be enough to keep the parking garage peaceful for all to use. If anything, it certainly cannot hurt to have cameras present.

A parking garage is yet another place that people should feel safe but don’t. Make it a point to exercise your rights by doing what you must to ensure your safety. The first step is refusing to be a victim.

It is difficult enough to sell a visible product or service; it is even more difficult to sell a concept or convincing a customer to pay in advance for some eventuality which may occur sometime in the future. Though insurance is an excellent safeguard against mishaps it is often difficult to get people to believe in it to the extent of investing their money.

Under these circumstances, to see your insurance business grow, it is very important to go about marketing various products offered by you in the right direction and be successful and adept in lead and prospect generation. Any business requires extensive advertising. Making your product or service visible to as many people as possible is one of the most important aspect of business.

Today, we are lucky to have the powerful medium of the internet to explain about our products or services whatever the case may be to a large number of people all over the world. Here we have a host of sites offering promises of enhanced business opportunities on payment of a minimal amount. With the amount of competition on the internet, it often becomes difficult to distinguish between a genuine and a bogus claim.

It is also impossible to call so many clients on the telephone, explaining various insurance products on offer on a continuous basis. You may have excellent products and schemes but may not have the time to make hundreds of phone calls.

Choosing an effective advertising medium is sure to make your insurance business grow leaps and bounds. You could target the right customers and generate a huge volume of business. Lead and prospect generation has never been easier. The auto recruiter software is an innovative voice broadcasting lead generation system which actually brings customers to your doorstep. You do not have to chase your clients. All you have to do is to become a member of this incredible system, sit back, relax and wait for your customers to come searching for you.

Just as there are a lot of insurance companies looking for the right customer, there are a lot of customers looking for the right insurance agents. To bring both in contact is what the auto recruiter system does. You need to just pay a negligible amount for a voice broadcast offering information on your service which will call a huge database of prospects.

Customers who are looking for insurance companies are sure to then contact you. All the auto recruiter system does is to bring the right buyer and the right seller in contact. Lead and prospect generation becomes as easy and effortless as this. This is a great opportunity to take off on your insurance business.

So, what are you waiting for? You could be one of the most successful insurance agent or company….join this incredible system and wait for your phone to keep ringing asking you for your insurance solutions…

The most well respected route to a career in English home surveying is via the graduate entry courses administered by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. You learn the core skills and competencies and at some point need to choose a specialism to earn your particular qualification.

Others have tried to enter the marketplace as Home Inspectors, a competent persons scheme, whilst the RICS have also introduced a lower tier of Chartered Surveyor one assumes to counteract the potential threat, if one exists at all, of Home Inspectors.

I am a General Practice Chartered Surveyor but one that has specialised in residential housing matters from day one, starting 35 years ago. I am also proud the say that I actively immersed myself in RICS matters and always had an interest in cutting edge methods and technology associated with the mechanics of surveying.

During my career I have worked with bodies associated with change – ABBE, SAVA, RICS plus several corporate Employers of Surveyors. These experiences placed me high up the ladder of residential surveying and it was natural for me to move into Expert Witness work. I focus, in this respect, upon Valuer and Surveyor negligence usually acting against Surveyors.

These experiences have well placed me for analysing why Surveyors occasionally under-perform and are accused of professional negligence.

I am attempting to “get noticed” by Universities and other Educational Establishments who deliver Surveying courses. I believe students and newly qualified Surveyors who want to specialise in residential surveying and valuation need the benefit of somebody like myself. I can teach such people the craft of surveying. Whilst being available for top-up lectures I wish to deliver tuition to those students who have that certain something extra and what to get a heads-up lead on their employment rivals.

I am very practical: I train surveyors and home inspectors to deal with people. I train surveyors how to maximise their potential on-site. This process involves the six phases of property master craftsmanship, namely these phases:

1. Taking an instruction

2. Post instruction, pre-inspection

3. On-site inspection techniques

4. Post-inspection research

5. Report generation

6. Helping the client post-survey-report

Master these phases and you are in business bigtime. Ignore any one phase and your Professional Indemnity Insurance cover will be taking hits. Your career or business may go off rail.

If you are any of the below categories then I firmly believe the marketplace will fairly soon open up to you and your skills will be in high demand:

1. A Graduate about to start a career in residential surveying.

2. A Residential Surveyor (qualified) in the first few years of professional life.

3. Wishing to spread their wings and become self-employed.

4. Wishing to improve their customer relation skills.

5. Seeking to improve their professionalism.

6. Seeking to join a growing surveying band creating new standards for this budding 21st century.

7. Seeking to attain a truly new and improved level of work satisfaction and lifestyle – if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

So why am I so confident of better things tomorrow?

My main strands of confidence are associated with the constant fact that

• only 1-in-12 homebuyers bother to take private survey advice.

• HIPs focussed our attention on the potential benefit of Seller Surveys but the Government interfered and ill-advisedly withdrew this product, in 2008, for political reasons.

• For HIPs to survive it obvious to me that some form of Seller Survey must be introduced – such as has already been successfully introduced in Scotland.

• Surveying is about quality and the highest customer service levels, something that the big businesses cannot produce or reproduce in volume.

• Green issues will now rapidly become highly relevant in surveying circles. House Surveyors will need to respond accordingly so full advice can be given about energy, water and waste matters as well as construction and defect advice.

The future is not orange, it is green. If you can take time to understand these issues then your surveying future will be enhanced. Green in the sense that energy issues are rising to the top of the importance ladder. But, also green because efficiency in all things is important.

Gone are the days when Surveyors can travel massive distances because Employer Companies have somehow dominated the instruction marketplace. Expertise must refocus on local knowledge and experience plus energy knowledge and business acumen.

If you believe you have the potential for such a future role then you need to get the academic skills and then talk to us for a greater awareness of how you can proceed. How will you get extra experience and the wherewithal needed to thrive, to build to accept such a business challenge. Do it soon and before it is too late and your competitors have the momentum.

Do you want to build your own Property Professional Services business? Take positive action NOW.

Most of us are good citizens and purchase liability insurance to cover us in case we cause an accident. Some people purchase minimum liability coverage and some people purchase more.

When you buy this insurance you are doing it to not only comply with the law, but to protect you and your assets in case you cause a car, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle accident.

Now let’s say that you get into an accident that is your fault; you report the accident to your insurance carrier; you think that your insurance company will cover you pursuant to your insurance policy right? WRONG!

If you read the fine print in your insurance policy you will notice a bunch of language that most non-lawyers would not understand. The gist of the language in plain English is that by accepting the insurance policy, you agree to cooperate with the insurance company if they decide to litigate, and the insurance company is the one who decides whether a case will be settled, not you.

The insurance companies are all about making tons of money and paying as little as possible. Since the advent of legally mandatory insurance coverage (Proposition 213 in California) the insurance companies have become very cavalier because their coffers are full of your money.

Instead of settling meritorious claims, they are forcing claims to be litigated in Court in an attempt to stop personal injury lawyers from obtaining a just recovery for their clients. They know full well that personal injury lawyers do not have as much money to litigate as they do, so their ploy is to starve out the personal injury lawyers and ultimately make it harder for people who are injured in accidents to obtain a recovery. In the end it is the consumer and persons injured in accidents who are hurt, while big business makes more profit at your expense.

Even people who cause accidents and have proper liability insurance to cover the claim are being victimized by the insurance companies.

The insurance companies are experts at deception. With your money, insurance companies contribute money to politicians, and run media ads which blame the personal injury attorneys for making insurance rates so high. What they don’t say is that the backlog in Court is due to the insurance companies not settling claims like they should in the first place.

Now let’s go back to the example of you causing an accident. If the insurance company is unreasonable and refuses to settle a case at or below policy limits, you will then be dragged through the legal system. You may have to answer discovery, appear for depositions, and even take time off to go to trial. This is a long and arduous process that you did not think that would have to deal with when you purchased liability insurance. Surprise!

If you lose at trial, the insurance company will in most cases pay the judgment, but guess what; YOU WILL HAVE A JUDGMENT AGAINST YOU ON YOUR CREDIT REPORT, and in the Court file! Thanks to your insurance company your credit has just been dinged due to no fault of your own.

Is this fair? I submit to you that it is not. You paid for insurance; the insurance company could have settled the case for you within your policy limits; instead, they decided to litigate in an attempt to minimize what they have to pay out so that their profits remain high. They did so without any regard for your credit report, or having your name appear in the public record as having a judgment against you.

Many insurance companies have in-house lawyers; some use outside lawyers. These lawyers are supposed to have a duty to you to do what is in your best interest. The reality is that they do what is in the insurance company’s best interest. This is the ultimate conflict of interest. Ethically the attorney that the insurance company uses to represent you has a duty to you, not the insurance company. The reality is the attorney gets his marching orders from the insurance companies.

A worst case example is the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster. Have you read about all of the poor people who are getting screwed because they are not being covered by their insurance companies for insurance that they paid for?

It’s time for America and consumers to wake up and smell the roses. It is not the trial attorneys that are the problem; its big business wanting to screw the little guy so they can obtain more profit at your expense. Some have made this a political issue. I have even heard President Bush talking about Tort reform, and blaming the trial attorneys for the nation’s health care woes.

Anytime you here tort reform remember one thing; you are about to be screwed! Anytime your right to recover for damages in a Court of law is infringed upon, you will be the victim, while big business rakes in the mula!

By Norman Gregory Fernandez, Esq., © 2007

Secret One: Rigid legal timelines can prevent a victim from going to court. The insurance companies count on these time deadlines, known as statutes of limitations. The failure to act in a timely manner may be a complete barrier to your right to recover compensation for injuries suffered as a result of the negligent actions of another. In California negligence claims against private entities must be filed in court within 2 years of the date of the discovery of the injury.

A special claim must be filed against government entities within 180 days, or else the victim may be precluded from even filing a lawsuit.There are many entities, such as hospitals, and recreation facilities that may not appear to be associated with the government.  However, if they are owned or operated by a government entity, a victim only has 180 days from the date of  injury to file a claim.

Secret Two: Immediately after the insurance company is contacted about an accident, it will assign an experienced adjuster to investigate the accident and gather evidence that will provide the insurance company with grounds to dispute your claim and to minimize your money damages.

Secret Three: If you were injured by an uninsured motorist your own insurance company will be your opponent even though your policy requires you to cooperate with the insurance company.

Secret Four: Many auto insurance companies now use the Colossus computer program to evaluate the claims of accident victims.  Colossus is software used by insurance companies to aid in predicting the settlement value of injury claims.  According to the program’s designer, Computer Science Corporation, it is used by more than 50 percent of the nation’s claim adjusters and by more than 300 insurance companies. Out of the top 20 U.S. Property and Casualty Insurers, 13 are using Colossus. Colossus is kept secret by the insurance companies that use it; the adjustor will not tell you if the company uses the software.

The insurance industry maintains it is a useful tool.  Personal injury attorneys know the software favors the insurance companies.  First, the values one receives are by definition a function of the data input. One never knows what data the adjuster has input.  Also, the program does not consider subjective elements of the case that are impossible to quantify such as the interference with normal life activities which results from an injury. At trial these indications of pain and suffering are proven through the testimony of the injured parties and witnesses.  A computer program cannot quantify emotional distress or the loss of enjoyment of life? A Colossus valuation is an inaccurate valuation because it attempts to reduce a victim’s injury to a dollar value based only certain facts, which do not reflect the totality of the victim’s condition or the accident events.

In a trial, a jury determines the value of a claim, and juries listen to and consider many of the factors that Colossus ignores. Colossus has no way to evaluate any of the subjective elements that may increase the jury’s award. Each victim is merely a compilation of numbers in the Colossus program.  Hardly different than thousands of other claimants.

Experienced personal injury attorneys know how Colossus works and how to obtain the best settlements when working against insurance companies that use the program. The key is to ensure the adjustors understand that you, the victim, are an individual, not a number, and that your accident is unique, not one of thousands identical events.  The adjustors need to believe that your attorney will take the case to trial if necessary.  Earnestly preparing for trial is the best way to ensure top settlements.

Secret Five: Insurance companies have enormous legal advantages over the average person: great wealth, thousands of trained adjusters, sharp lawyers and experts, and more than 20 legal defenses which they use to minimize or deny victim’s compensation.  Insurance companies are profit driven corporations. The goal is to make money. Insurance companies do everything they can to minimize claim payments.

Secret Six: The insurance companies do not want you to hire a lawyer. The reason is simple.  Except for minor cases, victims are consistently awarded more compensation when they are represented by counsel.  Auto insurance giant Allstate’s own documents show that accident victims who retained attorneys received 2 to 3 times more than victims that were not represented.