u/wittywander

Hi everyone!

Disclosure first, because I'd rather lead with it than have someone find it in my history: I'm a co-founder of a home inventory app. I'm not here to pitch it, I'm here because you all know something I need to know and I'd rather ask than guess.

Here's my problem. The standard consumer advice is "photograph your belongings before a loss." Everyone repeats it. But almost nobody says what the output is supposed to look like, and I suspect the advice is being given by people who have never received one of these on the claims side.

So, genuinely asking the people who process these:

1    When a policyholder hands you a pre-loss inventory, does it actually change anything? Or do you still walk them through itemizing from scratch regardless of what they bring you?

2    What's on a useful line item? Description and photo? Purchase date? Serial number? Original price? I can capture almost anything, but more fields means people quit halfway through their kitchen, so I'd rather capture the four that matter than twenty that don't.

3    What format do you actually want to receive? PDF, spreadsheet, printed? I've heard "anything but a link to a cloud folder" from one broker and I don't know if that's universal.

4    What's the most common reason a contents claim gets reduced or drags on? I assume missing proof of ownership, but I'd rather hear the real answer than my assumption.

5    Do photos alone carry weight without receipts? This is the one I'm least sure about and it drives a big product decision for us.

6    ACV vs replacement cost — is there documentation that meaningfully changes which one a policyholder ends up arguing for?

For context on where I'm coming from: I'm in BC, where every summer there's another round of evacuations, and the pattern I keep hearing is people reconstructing a whole household from memory weeks after the fact. That's the thing I'm trying to make less awful. But I'd rather build what you'd actually want to receive than what a marketing page says.

Happy to write up whatever I learn here as a plain summary and post it back for anyone who wants it. And if the honest answer is "pre-loss inventories don't help as much as you'd think," I'd genuinely rather know that now.

Hi everyone!

Disclosure first, because I'd rather lead with it than have someone find it in my history: I'm a co-founder of a home inventory app. I'm not here to pitch it, I'm here because you all know something I need to know and I'd rather ask than guess.

Here's my problem. The standard consumer advice is "photograph your belongings before a loss." Everyone repeats it. But almost nobody says what the output is supposed to look like, and I suspect the advice is being given by people who have never received one of these on the claims side.

So, genuinely asking the people who process these:

1    When a policyholder hands you a pre-loss inventory, does it actually change anything? Or do you still walk them through itemizing from scratch regardless of what they bring you?

2    What's on a useful line item? Description and photo? Purchase date? Serial number? Original price? I can capture almost anything, but more fields means people quit halfway through their kitchen, so I'd rather capture the four that matter than twenty that don't.

3    What format do you actually want to receive? PDF, spreadsheet, printed? I've heard "anything but a link to a cloud folder" from one broker and I don't know if that's universal.

4    What's the most common reason a contents claim gets reduced or drags on? I assume missing proof of ownership, but I'd rather hear the real answer than my assumption.

5    Do photos alone carry weight without receipts? This is the one I'm least sure about and it drives a big product decision for us.

6    ACV vs replacement cost — is there documentation that meaningfully changes which one a policyholder ends up arguing for?

For context on where I'm coming from: I'm in BC, where every summer there's another round of evacuations, and the pattern I keep hearing is people reconstructing a whole household from memory weeks after the fact. That's the thing I'm trying to make less awful. But I'd rather build what you'd actually want to receive than what a marketing page says.

Happy to write up whatever I learn here as a plain summary and post it back for anyone who wants it. And if the honest answer is "pre-loss inventories don't help as much as you'd think," I'd genuinely rather know that now.