Claim Teardown6 min read

Three Tarps, One Scope: The $6,800 Miss on a Straightforward Wind Claim

The Setup

Single-story brick ranch. Wind event. Carrier received a photo package the day after the storm: three tarped roof sections, decent exterior coverage, no interior shots. Desk adjuster opened Xactimate, scoped all three tarped areas as a single roof slope, wrote a TPM line, and issued a preliminary ACV payment. Seemed efficient. Wasn't.

What the Initial Scope Included

Remove and replace shingles — one roof plane (combined SQ figure pulled from aerial)
One temporary protective measure line item (flat fee)
Drip edge, two sides
No decking, no ridge cap, no soffit

What the Field Supplement Found

Forty days later, the restoration contractor submitted a supplement. The adjuster pushed back. An IA was dispatched. Here's what the IA documented that the desk scope missed:

Three distinct roof planes — the two rear slopes are actually separate hip returns, not extensions of the main slope. Each carries its own starter strip, flashing, and drip edge run. The combined SF calculation was off by roughly 18%.
Ridge cap — full run: wind had lifted and cracked the ridge cap across the entire span, not just above the tarped sections. The desk adjuster scoped zero ridge cap because the ridge wasn't tarped.
Soffit and fascia — two elevations: the eave/soffit line at the left and rear of the structure showed impact and wind separation. Not noted. Not scoped.
Decking — two sheets: moisture intrusion through the period of tarp coverage (nearly six weeks from event to repair authorization) led to two sheets of OSB requiring replacement. The delay itself expanded the loss.
TPM — actual cost, not flat fee: the flat-fee TPM line underrepresented the actual tarp square footage by nearly 40%. Contractors charge by coverage area, not by tarp count.

The Dollar Delta

Original desk scope: approximately $11,400 RCV. Final agreed scope after IA review: approximately $18,200 RCV. Delta: $6,800 — on a claim that looked clean from the outside.

Why This Keeps Happening

Multi-tarp photos create a mental shortcut: the tarps mark the damage, scope the tarps, done. But tarps mark the most obvious damage. They don't mark ridge cap, hip returns, soffit, or the substrate condition underneath. And the longer a tarp sits, the more the scope can grow beneath it — which is its own cycle-time argument.

The Fix

When a photo package shows multiple tarps: (1) count the roof planes separately before you scope; (2) write ridge cap for the full run unless you have a photo confirming it's intact; (3) scope soffit at every eave visible in the photo set; (4) flag any tarp that's been in place more than 30 days for potential decking review. These aren't supplemental habits — they're first-draft habits.