Jack
Randolph, VT
Landlord
Co-op member for 25+ years
Jack
"I can't say enough about how well it went"
I've had a few claims with the Co-op, going back ten or fifteen years. But the house was the big one.
There were three apartments attached to this house, each heated with a gas heater. During the summers, I just turned them down so they didn't come on, but the pilot was still running on all of them. On July 27, one of our tenants had leaned some packages up against the heater before leaving for her overnight shift at work. That July night, it went down to 29 degrees, and the heaters came on, caught the packages, and away it went.
We were very lucky. Six people got out and nobody got hurt. Carol woke me up, and I looked out the window, and said "We're in trouble." Overall, we had 3-5 minutes to get out; even the main house was engulfed. Carol got the upstairs tenant, an 82-year-old woman, out just in time.
The tenants lost absolutely everything. We managed to get a few things out, but overall, it was a total loss; the whole house was trucked away, and we started over.
I can't say enough about how well it went. Co-op, and I say this honestly, never gave us any problem at all with what we decided to do and what the outcome was going to be. It could not have worked better, and I've told lots of people that. You hear about delays and hang-ups with this kind of thing, but there were just none. We were always looking ahead to what we had to come up with next, and there was never any problem financially. We started in November, and by May, we'd finished rebuilding our house.
My family's been with Co-op for over 40 years. My dad had insurance with the Co-op, and he was very happy with them. When I came back to Randolph and started buying property, that's where I started, and that's where I've stayed for more than 25 years. It's been a long, good relationship.