Insurance Companies: Still The Worst

Everyone knows what it's like for an insurance company to get under your skin. But 73-year-old Andres Carrasco now has a story that beats them all: After agreeing to a settlement after an employee allegedly physically assaulted him, Adriana's Insurance paid Carrasco over $20,000 in coins, in seemingly an effort to be as difficult as possible. It isn't sitting well with him, or, for that matter, basically anybody who hears about the story — I mean, really? Buckets and buckets full of change?

Carrasco filed his lawsuit against Adriana's Insurance back in 2012. While details of the suit haven't been widely reported, and likely won't be known due to the settlement, this much seems clear: The folks at Adriana's weren't happy about it. This is laid especially bare by the fact that they didn't cash out Carrasco's entire settlement in coin form — they actually gave him a check at the same time, presumably making up the rest of the money. The $21,000 sum in coins would seem, therefore, to have been a deliberate decision — is it that hard to write a new check for the full amount?

According to NBC News, this harms Carrasco to a considerable extent. The coins were reportedly delivered to his attorney's office by eight Adriana's employees, which makes sense — $21,000 in loose change has to be quite a heavy lift.

So heavy, in fact, that Carrasco can't even lift them, having recently been treated for a hernia, and being of an advanced age, and it doesn't even make sense why he has to deal with all this, what the hell?

If it's becoming obvious how much this distresses me, rest assured, it's nothing compared to how Carrasco must be feeling. In a statement from Tuesday, he had the following to say:

Adriana's Insurance, is this the way you treat everyone? Why don't you like your clients? I am disappointed by the way Adriana's treats their customers and the elderly. We might be poor, but we are people too.

The public relations nightmare for Adriana's, which anyone with a scrap of common sense could've seen coming, is now underway. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution observed, their Yelp page has been inundated with negative reviews citing Carrasco's story, including one claiming to be from his nephew.

With this story sweeping through social media, it feels like a foregone conclusion that Adriana's will have to apologize for this, or at least address the situation publicly. So far, though, they've done neither. Maybe it's time to get some damage control experts on staff?