35 years working with insurance companies from the POV of the guy who fixes the damage.
Companies, regional offices and individual adjusters vary tremendously in how they will adjust a particular claim. Regardless of how the policy is worded there is a great deal of room for interpretation.
I’d like to recommend against your initially hiring a public adjuster. While fully ethical public adjusters may exist, I must say I never ran across one. Many have side deals for kickbacks from contractors who will “fix” your damage, seldom doing the job properly.
Adjustment of a claim can be handled on a “fair” rather than a legal adversarial basis. Once you hire a public adjuster the company will drop any attempt to “treat you fairly” and everything becomes adversarial.
My point is that you can always go to adversarial, but once you’ve gone there you can’t go back to “fair.”.
If you must go to adversarial, I agree with those who suggest retaining an attorney. I believe they generally provide better results than a public adjuster.
I also suggest independent itemized estimates for the damage.
When it comes to calculating the bottom line, big differences between estimates are more likely to be related to the number of line items than to the unit price. IOW, are they including the same things? However, direct comparison is extremely difficult, since estimates are arrived at using different methods.
Freepmail me if you have specific questions.
Interesting. I will remember this when and if I need it.