P&C Insurance

Worked with business insurance agent Carol Binette on a business policy and workers’ comp insurance. This person was so incompetent, and the mistakes she made so egregious, I absolutely am shocked that she was able to pass the licensing exam, or whatever it is that insurance agents need to do to hang out a shingle. You probably won’t believe this story, but here goes anyway; it is true.
For our small business, we needed general liability insurance as required in our lease, and workers’ comp insurance as mandated by the state. After going back and forth for literally weeks, with her sending us quotes and policy drafts reflecting pretty much the opposite of what we were specifically asking her to set up for us, we finally got something we thought would work. Problem is, she told us that owners of the business could be covered on the Workers’ Comp policy at no additional charge. We said, great, let’s go with it.
After our year-​end audit from MEMIC, we discovered that what she told us was completely false, and in fact any corporate officer in Maine can either waive WC coverage or be covered at a minimum of $ 36K salary — resulting in over $ 1K higher in our premium. So much for «no additional charge.» We had already switched insurance companies by the time we learned this, but when we wrote to Binette to tell her this, her only reply was, «Too bad, let me know how it turns out.» SERIOUSLY. It’s her JOB to know this, and fortunately we were granted a retroactive waiver to have it taken off the policy in time, before we were due to pay, but only due to our working extremely quickly with the help of our competent and friendly new agent (at a different company) and the benevolence of the Maine WCB.
«Oh like geez I almost cost you $ 1000. Oh well.» = not a sufficient acknowledgement of the wrongdoing. Again, I have no idea how this person manages to stay employed as an insurance agent if she is this ignorant of Maine law in the field in which she claims to be able to help people.