This company is a complete online scam. They offer shippiing insurance and their website looks legitimate and honest. They get recommended by frieght companies when you need to ship furniture or other things across the country. I shipped two antique pieces of furniture with USF Dugan (a trucking company).
I bought an insurance policy from GRW-Products (Greg Gershman) for $3000.00 of coverage. They took my credit card online and emailed me an insurance certificate from another company (Groupama). I had insured under the fine art and antique category and they charged me $40.00 for the insurance. A week later, the trucking company called and told me that they had completley destroyed both pieces! I am going to send pictures so people can see the extent of the damage. They were not just nicked and scratched, but torn apart and in several peices! Both pieces were over 140 years old and I had sold them to a customer in Florida.
Needless to say, I had to immediately reimburse my customer for his $3000.00 purchase that was destroyed in shipping.
We contacted GRW-Products and they told us that we would have to fill out a claim online. The frieght company had brought the pieces back to us, so we took lots of pictures of the destoryed pieces (I also had before pictures, as I put all my pieces up on my website). We filled everything out and submitted the claim. About 2 weeks later, we recieved a fax from Groupama Insurance.
Conveniently enough, GRW-Products is not really an insurance company, but just a shell that sells the real policies to this Groupama company. Groupama is located in London, so that makes it real convenient to try and deal directly with them - exactly what they are hoping for. The fax we recieved told us that our claim was denied, because they would not pay out for used furniture (I insured my antiques under their fine art category), and also there was a clause "C" that stated that they would only pay out on the claim if the truck was set on fire, in a flood, a war or basically blew up and my antiques were destroyed as a result of that!
Honestly, the clause was hidden in a lot of laywer fine print and I am still not convinced that it was even on the site when we bought the insurance. Who would buy such insurance? I bought the insurance to protect my pieces in case they were destroyed!
I then called GRW - Products (as they are the ones that took my money, they were the ones that had the website) I talked to Greg Gershman, who is apparently the General Manager of the company. He told me to file avery detailed appeal and he would see what he could do. I spent 3 days putting together a 25 page appeal report and sent it off to him. After talking with my attorney, he told me that is typical stalling tactics with insurance scams. He also told me that because the company is located in California and London and I am located in Illinois, that I would have a hard to filing a lawsuit against them, but we would try the Attorney General Consumer Fraud Division first.
Anyway, back to my appeal - of course this Greg Gershman would not return my phone calls or emails for weeks after that. Finally, I got him on the phone the other day (bear in mind that this has been going on for almost 5 months. He told me that they were not going to pay on the claim, because my antiques were not damaged as a result of the truck blowing up or flooding or war, etc. And that was in the fine print. I gave him a piece of my mind and then came directly to this site to file a rip off complaint. I lost my two antiques that cost me $2000.00 and had to refund my customer $3000.00. I paid $600.00 for the trucking company, who destroyed the pieces and the $40.00 to GRW-Products for the scam insurance poilcy.
I am small business, I work in my gallery 7 days a week and just barely get by, To have something like this happen to me was devistating and it is just so unjust that companies like GRW-Products can get away with ripping off people and there is almost nothing that can be done about it. It can really be a sad world sometimes. There are a lot of people out there willing and able to take advantage. If anyone is thinking of insurance for cargo or freight or household goods, be very careful and read all the fine print (which should not be fine print or deceptive or legal:)
Douglas
Chicago, Illinois
U.S.A.
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