When Hartford comes a calling....

Wow..our office has recently taken a rash of calls and letters about Hartford insurance company either terminating benefits or showing up at people's houses for a "little interview," then springing the secretly taped video on them.

Here are our tips for dealing with The Hartford and their video surveillance tactics:

1. As always, you must be brutally honest with your claim. You cannot misrepresent your activity level to The Hartford or to your doctors. They are looking for a way to terminate your benefits and one of the easiest ways for them to do so is to find misrepresentations between what you say you do and what the video shows you doing.

2. If Hartford sends you an "activities questionaire" and ask you to log your activiites over the next couple of weeks, understand that there is an almost 100% certainty that you will be secretly videotaped during those two weeks.

3. If Hartford calls to arrange a "field visit" with you in your home there is an almost 100% certainty that they have already videotaped you. The claims person interviewing you will talk to you for 60-90 minutes, ask you a whole bunch of specific questions, and then spring the video tape on you.

Don't panic. Be honest. If you are misrepresenting your disability it may be that you are not entitled to benefits anyway.