What if your insurance company ignores you?

You feel like it should be easy to contact your insurance company and file a claim. After that, they should get in touch with you and tell you if they are accepting or denying that claim. You obviously believe that they should accept it, but you also know that even a denial should be related to you fairly quickly.

But what if they just ignore you? For instance, maybe you have a disability insurance policy. You feel like it’s fairly simple. If you become disabled, then you file and provide medical evidence of your disability, and the insurance company pays out the proper amount.

But you do reach this point and try to file your claim, and they simply don’t respond to you. Maybe they do respond eventually, but not to everything, and it takes an extraordinary amount of time. Are they allowed to do this?

They may be acting in bad faith

People often think of bad faith insurance claims as scenarios in which the insurance company simply refuses to pay for something that is obviously covered. The insurance company is acting in bad faith because they’re obligated to pay that money since you held the policy.

But making the process take a long time or failing to respond promptly can also count as a bad faith act by the insurance company. After all, you need the money that you were owed, and you also need to know that the insurance company isn’t just dragging its feet in hopes that you will simply drop the case. If something like this has happened to you and you believe they’re making it take too long and become too complicated on purpose, then you may need to look into your legal options.