Liberty Mutual Insurance Claim Review

I recently had some water damage to my property due to a leak from my upstairs neighbor.  According to the coverage on my homeowners insurance plan, the damage should have been covered.  First, I sent them an email to make sure it was covered.  A couple days later, they reply and tell me I have to file a claim to get this information.  Ok, so I file a claim.  A few days later I get a call to discuss the damage.  I am instructed to take pictures of the damage and send it in.  I do this.  A couple days later they call me up and tell me it will not be covered because they think it is long term damage based on the pictures.  I explained that it just happened recently and how it was from a cause covered in the contract.  They would not change their mind.  I really tried to make my case, but they would not have it.  So basically, they refused to cover anything even though I believe it should have been covered based on what the plan covers.

I ended up repairing the damage myself at my own expense.  Overall I am not very please with Liberty Mutual after this experience.  I'm not very pleased with insurance in general.  These companies do not exist to help people in need.  They exist to make money. And because of this, the consumer will never come out ahead or even.  The consumer will always lose money.  This is frustrating because insurance is required on things like cars and homes with a mortgage.

There is an option to file a complaint to the Department of Insurance.  I seriously was considering this, but given the fact that my deductible is $500 and the cost to fix the damage probably wouldn't be much more than that, it didn't seem worth the effort.  Still I am not very pleased with my experience and I would not recommend this insurance company.

UPDATE: 7-28-12
So each year my renewal statement comes along, the premium inevitability goes up.  I decided to call them up to get an explanation and try to get it back down to where it was.  After being on hold for about 10 minutes I finally get to talk to someone. They guy was nice and answered my questions, but he wasn't able to lower my premium without making significant drops in coverage amounts so I ended up keeping it as is.  Still I am not happy with this company.  I plan on shopping around today to get some quotes from other companies.

Update 8-5-13
Once again they raised my rates on my insurance for the new year.  This time I decided to get some quotes from other companies.  I ended up getting a better rate from State Farm for similar coverage.  I thought if I mentioned that I was canceling my insurance the Liberty Mutual might try to match the quote. They did review the policy but could not match it so I ended up canceling and switching to get the better rate.