Miguel Suarez
1/5
I was with the Hartford when I started my business. They were transparent, communicative, & personable. Unfortunately, in the span on one month I had one employee t-boned from a driver running a stop sign & another employee who claimed to have slipped and dislocated his arm on his 2nd day. So, being a business, Hartford dropped me from their coverage when my contract was up.
I scrambled to find a new worker's comp carrier. ADP is my agent as I use them for payroll. They claimed they had trouble finding coverage for me because of the two claims, which were serious. As a result, I was ready to take what I could get. That ended up being AmTrust. I figured, that's a relief. I got covered before any lapse occurred & AmTrust sounds like a good name for a company. Good enough for me.
My company has, knock on wood, not filed any more claims with worker's comp. I practice safety & reinforce defensive driving. As a result, you would expect my rates to start to go down after a year. Not with AmTrust. With AmTrust my rates were high, they stayed high, then they went even higher. Oh that's a standard rate in NJ & it's your Experience Modifier that's the problem.
I shrugged and kept paying their rates. I had ADP pay as you go so that every single payroll automatically paid my worker's comp rate. This came out every week. To my disdain it was close to 1k more a week more than my original rate with Hartford. I bit the bullet for a year.
Audit time. "Oh no we don't do in person because of COVID" they claimed. This was a year after all the closures. So it was within the timeframe that it was plausible, but fast forward to 2024 & they still never came to my office to conduct an audit. They simply piggy backed off a crisis in order to say, do the audit yourself. Yep, you literally have to do it by yourself.
Ok. Done. I always got a refund with Hartford. Let's see... Oh what? I owe 4k? What?! How is that possible when Im deducted automatically every single week with every single payroll that I run!? Skip forward to year 2 audit. 4k owed again. WHAT? How is this possible?! This seemed like they literally just wanted 4k and decided to bill me each year.
Year 3. Ok, listen Mr. Auditor... I'm going to save you some time. Bill me 4k. You literally do it every year. It makes no sense. I never had this issue in the past with Hartford & you guys literally always bill me 4k. Go ahead. "Oh um, sorry sir, your audit says you owe $35,000".
You can imagine where it went from there. I learned everything there was to learn about Experience Modifiers, State Rates, Employee Codes, Clerical Positions vs Driver vs NOC codes. The whole show. They literally asked me for over 35k with a straight face. My bill was always about 50k for each year. I asked them, how could you possibly take 50k from me & have the audacity to try and charge me 35k in an audit on top of what you already charged!
Well, I was stuck with them for one more year. They claimed this was the year that my Experience Modification dropped dramatically and all my rates and charges would plummet. I told them I did not care. I was already shopping around. "You will still be getting the same rate regardless of where you go," they explained. LOL NO THANK YOU.
AmTrust is the most ironic name I can think of this for this company. I believe they charged me incorrect amounts. When I called out their auditor it was laughable that they tried to tell me I owed 70% more on top of the 50k they already got. It's insane to me that something like that could happen & that they had people telling me there wasn't a problem.
50k every year in workers comp to suddenly over 85k? Did I hire double my staff? Did someone get hurt? Did I flirt with the CEO's wife? No, no, & no. This was egregiously wrong as were my original audits that I believe were also incorrect. I do not trust this company. I will not work with this company. This company is NOT to be trusted, regardless of what their name says.
If faced with having to use them again I would rather pay a higher rate to the state of NJ's WC fund. Never Again.
