Pay for my insurance cert?

[Erik Sine]

I keep getting calls from a business that has apparently been hired by various property managers that I use to do signs for their tenants. I'm not really in the sign game anymore and for the most part I've been ignoring all these emails and packages sent to my house but apparently if I want to continue to do business in these shopping centers I must pay to play. Basically their insurance certificate tracking services, and if you don't play to play "you will get the hammer dropped on you".

But today I answered the phone and had a weird conversation with a strong arm man. I have to laugh, they said quotes to vendors are anywhere from $10 a year to $600. Haha, right. Apparently my name will be taken off the vendor list if I don't pay and sign up.

Well, good riddense if this is the new era of doing business where I have to pay a third party to track my insurance certificate and make sure its up to date. Really? Have property managements gotten this laxed that they have to have a third party take over? Maybe I'm missing something, maybe the plus side for them is they don't have to hire anyone, the service for them is free because the company MyCOI http://www.mycoitracking.com/

will do it for free as long as they can get subscribers.

If this becomes the new norm lot's of luck. Can you imagine if you have to have multiple subscriptions to a service like them, or multiple various services like them?

You can add that service to all the other costs of doing business right there on top of the contractors licenses, business licenses and listing lab costs and your general overhead.

Anyone already get suckered into doing this?

These days it's all about "Preventive Care, Identity Protection, Safety products" and now another racquet.

Good Luck with that "protection money" extortion!

[bonehead]

I got a call from Dun & Bradstreet, wanting me to become a member. The ploy was that I have a couple of derogatory things on my listing, and that if I was a member I could see who was posting what, and I could respond to them. I had to laugh, and I told the guy it sounds like a kid's game - "Somebody said something bad about you, but I won't tell who said it or what they said unless you pay me".

With the COI thing, I reckon all the 'Suits' in corporateland will be scared of missing something, and naturally if it's free they'll sign up. Then the vendors can get charged for the reporting service. Suits are happy, COI is happy, vendors are screwed (again).

Sounds sort of similar to Angie's List.

My Dad used to say 'If the bad guys don't get ya, the good guys will'.

[Sero30]

If these property managers realized the requirements for city licensing, then these services would go out of business. My small town requires me to have a contractors license just for putting vinyl on a window. That license requires me to show proof of a minimum amount of insurance yearly, and each job (even window lettering) must have a permit approved by the city and the city's design review committee (to make sure my colors don't clash, and my art is pretty) as well as me showing proof of insurance per job as well as my contractor's license number.