Need assistance with dispute related to water mitigation
Hi helpful people -
The situation:
Water damage from tenant (North Carolina). Insurance set me up with a water mitigation company through a program they have where the mitigation is managed directly between the firm and insurance. As it was explained to me, the mitigators get agreement from insurance for the services required, insurance pays the firm directly.
Fast forward a few months, mitigators have sent an invoice to insurance. Insurance sends back an annotated invoice disputing some charges, in order to negotiate. I’m not involved in this at this time. Insurance adjuster says they tried to work with mitigator but did not hear back. The invoice is ~$13k, insurance thinks it should be under half that.
Insurance starts sending me payments for the repair work that has since been happening through my contractor. I did not notice one of the payments included $5800 for the water mitigation.
Now the mitigator reaches out to me for payment. I direct him back to insurance bc as far as I know from my original conversation with insurance (which I do have documented in email) I am not the one paying the mitigators. I talked to the adjuster and he explained that after trying to negotiate with the mitigator they basically gave up and sent me what they think is a reasonable amount for the mitigation.
Mitigator is now threatening to send this to collections if I don’t pay in full.
So… my questions:
what are my options with the mitigators and which give me the best standing? I’d be fine sending the mitigators the money insurance sent me. I’d even be willing to throw in a bit more to get this over with. I am not willing to throw thousands of dollars at this without understanding if I am somehow legally obligated to. The mitigators should be paid fairly for their work, but it’s insurance who understands what fairly is, I have no way of knowing what is fair.
can I continue to lean into insurance to deal with this?
how terrible is it if this goes to collections while I try to push insurance and mitigators to work it out? I ‘m a squeaky clean credit kind of person, never had this kind of issue before.
what else am I not thinking of that I should be?
Thank you!!