A large client of ours is a property owner. One of his tenants is a megachurch. Megachurch is required by terms of lease to insure the building for full replacement cost. Our client finds out they're wildly underinsured (only $1m coverage on a 30,000' building) with shitty coverage. Gets pissed, asks us to rush a quote for coverage in our client's name (since they own the building) to be paid by the tenant (since they're obligated to purchase cvg.)

We jump through hoops and get two other firms to do the same for us; we offer a proposal; our client accepts and the pastor of the church confirms in writing "we are good with your policy." Direct quote. I also spoke with him on the phone about what other coverage he would need to purchase elsewhere. So we bind coverage.

We issue invoice to the Church a few days later. Our client emails the pastor immediately asking for confirmation that Church will pay us directly. Pastor, interestingly, does not respond.
Church calls and asks if they can pay on installments; the insurer requires payment in full, and we can't arrange premium finance for the Church since the insurance contract is with the building owner.

Church then asks for a binder (which is proof of coverage *bound*, meaning already in effect). We provide. Pastor responds with 'We are working diligently on this.' (direct quote.) We assume this means he's working diligently on getting us the money he paid us. In retrospect it was pretty damn intentionally ambiguous.

No further word.

Three weeks later he sends the landlord proof of coverage showing different insurance (at corrected, but still not preemo, limits).

WTF?!?!?

So Rev. FM is now refusing to pay us anything at all, even though he confirmed our policy was acceptable, even though he never gave us any indication that he was looking for other solutions AFTER okaying us to go ahead, even though he never communicated ANY problems or concerns or ANYTHING AT ALL to us or to the landlord before pulling this shit. A full month had passed between 'we are good with your policy' and finding out that no, he wasn't good with our policy.

At best it's a very disingenuous move. I'm inclined to think of it as worse than that. And the dude is a pastor!

Anyhow - worst thing about it is that 1) the policy includes a minimum earned premium, which is going to be in the vicinity of $5000. Since we had two other firms jump through hoops for this, we simply can't dodge it. And 2) Since our policy is for the building owner, we can't even sue the bastard, I mean pastor, since the church is not a named insured and technically not part of the contract.

Building owner is going to split the difference with us but basically this winds up costing me about $2,700 on a policy I would have only made $750 on in the first place.

Doesn't do much to boost my confidence in this pastor's ability to divine the right and moral course of action. (Interestingly, the church's website indicates that their founder found God in prison. Go figure.)

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so I'm in a band now:
album ---> http://greenwoodburns.bandcamp.com/releases
Soundcloud ---> http://soundcloud.com/greenwood-burns

my own stuff -->http://soundcloud.com/lonesomedstringband

avy by buckshot_defunct