Florida Property Insurer May Be Missing Mail
July 7th, 10For customers who mailed insurance payments to Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance last month, the company may not have received them. According to reports, a week’s worth of mail may never have reached the the state-backed property insurer. But despite the claim that some mail may not have made it, the US Postal Service as well as some customers aren’t so sure.
The USPS originally said that someone had completed a change of address form fraudulently, claiming they were with Florida Citizen’s Property Insurance. Another fraudulent claim was submitted via the Internet. Initially the post office thought some mail had been forwarded due to the illegal claim, but now they say that never happened. That’s because by July 1 the insurance company had responded to the USPS when prompted to confirm the change. Citizens did not confirm the change so the request was denied. “There is no evidence at this time to suggest that any mail was forwarded,” according to the USPS and ClaimsJournal.com.
But a spokesperson for Florida Citizen’s Property Insurance says the company received less mail than they normally would during the time period in question, June 14-28. That’s why the company is asking customers to make sure their checks were received and processed. “The systems designed to protect U.S. Postal Service customers did their job. Reporting throughout the state has claimed that as many as 1 million policy holders could have been affected. This is simply NOT true,” responded USPS Communications Director Joseph Breckenridge to ClaimsJournal.com, after media reports raised the prospect of lots of diverted mail. “In fact, there is no evidence whatever to suggest that this fraudulent change of address order caused any mail whatever to be forwarded. ”
The fraudulently filed forwarding address turned out to be an apartment complex and officials say the address did not receive any mail intended for the insurance company. “The quantity of mail received by a major firm like Citizens is very great. We’re talking about thousands upon thousands of pieces of mail every day. The operations of firms like Citizens are on such a scale that such an irregularity would be immediately obvious,” Breckenridge told CJ.
