We’ve been doing a lot of testifying lately. The main difference between other appraisers and Diminished Value Method, LLC is our dedication to principals and integrity. Most of our competitors are providing appraisals nationwide. Although we have wanted to do this, we’ve refrained because we cannot provide the same accuracy as we do now by staying in the local Louisiana market. We’ve reviewed all of our competitor’s reports and testified in an adverse position whether from plaintiff or a defense perspective. One thing that we notice is that our competitor’s reports are extremely low for insurance companies and extremely high for individuals. Our reports will be the same amount whether we’re working for the customer, a plaintiff attorney, or an insurance company. As opposed to our competitors, we actually follow USPAP and BOCAA guidelines.
We will not change our numbers depending on our client. You might be able to find an appraiser that’s going to skew the numbers in your favor to be abnormally high, but think of the problem you’re going to have when the insurance company says no and you have to go to court, then go up against an appraiser that isn’t providing abnormally high numbers. You’re going to spend a lot of time and legal expenses, and then you’re going to lose. Our insistence on remaining unbiased limits our market, but we truly believe that by doing things the right way, we will prosper.
What We’ve Witnessed:
One of our competitors is providing reports nationally and states the names of dealers they’ve allegedly spoken with in the area. Our company knows all the dealers in the area and knows the numbers this appraiser states are not factual. They are extremely low when they’re working for an insurance company and extremely high when they are working for the individual or plaintiff. Some of the dealer names didn’t even exist in their early reports. In fact, we have gone back behind their work multiple times for litigation purposes and confirmed that the information they provided from these sales managers was not true. The other national appraiser that we’ve testified against works for two of the large insurance companies and says whatever they want him to say. We’ve beat him repeatedly because the things he says on the stand are preposterous to a Judge in comparison to our testimony. It disappoints us that our colleagues in the industry choose greed over integrity. There’s little we can do about their actions, except to stand proud in knowing we are right, and proving it every time in a court of law.
