Andy McCabe of Claims Delegates — @benddadlife on Threads — just published a seven-slide “Claim Survival Guide” for homeowners. On its face it’s written for the policyholder side. But read it from the mitigation side and something interesting happens: the advocate’s advice and the good contractor’s playbook say the same things.
That’s worth paying attention to. When the other seat in the room independently teaches your playbook, the playbook is right.
What the guide tells homeowners
The seven slides walk through the claim from the homeowner’s seat: document and mitigate first, never narrate causation, understand RCV versus ACV, watch the proof-of-loss deadlines, know that appraisal exists. It’s the fundamentals, stated plainly — the kind of thing most homeowners never hear until they’re already behind.
From a contractor’s perspective, three of those land especially hard:
Document and mitigate first. This is the contractor’s opening move and the homeowner’s best protection. Water keeps moving and mold keeps growing while everyone debates coverage. The guide telling homeowners to mitigate immediately — before the paperwork is settled — is the advocate co-signing what every good mitigation company already does: stop the damage first, argue about it later.
Never narrate causation. Homeowners love to theorize about what caused the loss, and every theory they write down becomes material an adjuster can work with. Contractors have watched claims die on a homeowner’s casual sentence in an email. The guide’s instruction to stay out of the causation business protects both the homeowner and the contractor’s file.
RCV vs. ACV. The gap between replacement cost value and actual cash value is where most homeowner confusion — and most contractor friction — lives. When the advocacy side teaches homeowners the difference, the contractor spends less of the job explaining why the first check doesn’t cover the full invoice.
The line that should make contractors proud
A week earlier, McCabe posted a video with a sharper point: the word “stabilization” in a contractor’s file red-flags it for audit — and the contractor, not the adjuster, decides what happens on the job.
Read that twice. It’s the mitigation-side truth stated by an advocate: scope of work is the contractor’s professional call. The adjuster’s job is to evaluate the claim, not to direct the drying plan. When a claims advocate tells homeowners that the contractor decides what happens on the job, he’s drawing the same line every experienced restorer draws — just from the other side of the table.
Why this belongs in your forward folder
Most contractor-to-homeowner education has a credibility problem: it sounds self-serving coming from the company that wants the job. A survival guide from a claims advocate doesn’t have that problem. It’s third-party, homeowner-facing, and it teaches the same fundamentals you’d teach if you had an hour with the customer before the adjuster showed up.
Share it with homeowners at first contact. It does the advocacy talking so you don’t have to — and it sets expectations (document, mitigate, don’t speculate, know the money mechanics) that make your job easier for the rest of the claim.
The advocate and the contractor are supposed to be on opposite sides of the table. This guide is a reminder that on the fundamentals, they’re not.
Andy McCabe’s Claim Survival Guide is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@benddadlife/post/DdsoFJdCqnt — Claims Delegates.