CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – The effects of this historic power outage are still being felt here in Northeast Ohio. At least one local business said its insurance claim worth tens of thousands of dollars was denied by its insurance company, Mesa Underwriters Specialty Insurance Company of Pennsylvania.
It was just two weeks ago that storms left nearly half a million homes in northeast Ohio without power.
Sean Watterson, co-owner of Happy Dog on Detroit Avenue, says the business lost nearly $45,000 in food and a week’s worth of sales. “The insurance company cashed our checks, and then when we needed them the most – the reason you get insurance – they let us down.”
Watterson tells 19 News that he is still in shock after hearing that the insurance company had denied him a claim: “We lost almost $15,000 worth of product that we had in the house, and a typical week’s sales here is $30,000, and you don’t get that back – you don’t get that week back.”
What puzzles Watterson is that after 16 years of insurance payments and no further claims in all those years, it is still unclear why Happy Dog was denied reimbursement for the devastating storms.
“You seem to be claiming that the power went out because of the storm itself, because the storm itself did not cause any damage, but only the power supply was interrupted. We would not insure you for that.”
Watterson says it’s like trying to survive COVID all over again: “For us, it was almost PTSD because we had to shut down at the beginning of COVID and having gone through that once is not something we ever wanted to go through again.”
The weather crisis could have literally destroyed their business, Watterson said, had they not received a grant from the National Independent Vendor’s Association that helped them meet some immediate needs. “Without that liquidity assistance, we very easily could have been bankrupted. We would have had to try to get short-term loans. You don’t sell insurance and then be denied claims when a storm hits.”
Happy Dog’s owners have now filed a complaint with the Ohio Department of Insurance.
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