A Staten Island couple claims they’re in not-so-good hands of insurers who are low-balling them — and adding insult to injury by using images of their ravaged home in TV ads.
Sheila and Dominic Traina of New Dorp Beach said AllState insurance is offering them a piddly $10,000 for the Sandy-ravaged Cedar Grove Ave. house they’ve called home for 43 years.
To make matters worse, AllState has had the nerve to use pictures of the Trainas’ home in television ads touting its sensitive customer service.
“It made us sick and angry,” seeing those spots, Sheila Traina told the The Post today.
The Trainas were having Thanksgiving dinner when they said they saw the crumpled green wall of their house and one of their wooden chairs — outside wrapped in police tape — in the spot. The ad is called “1,000 Thank You’s.”
“I got disgusted,” said Dominic Traina. “I said, look at the all the trouble we’re getting with AllState and this is what they’re putting on TV. That was terrible.”
An AllState spokeswoman told the Staten Island Advance newspaper that ads for the insurance giant “are produced in accordance with all applicable advertising laws.”
“Our commitment is always to settle claims fairly,” said company rep Jaclyn Darrohn.
Sheila and Dominic Traina became the faces of Staten Island’s Sandy agony after meeting with President Obama during his tour of storm-ravaged neighborhoods.
The couple had standard homeowners insurance but not flood insurance.
The Trainas heeded evacuation warnings and left early, but neighbors who stayed behind have told them that powerful Sandy gusts tore their roof off and toppled walls — long before any tidal surges came down Cedar Grove Avenue.
“I’ve been paying AllState for 43 years. And then when something happens, they don’t want to know you,” Dominic Traina said.
“It’s an insult. Especially after we were advertised in their commercial. They’re supposed to help you, not hurt you.”
He added: “They’re claiming that water took the house down, not the wind. [But] we had a witness next door who told us the house fell down from the wind.”
With their house in tatters, the couple is now living in the basement of their niece’s father-in-law’s home — his “man cave,” Sheila Traina said.
“They [AllState] have to do the right thing,” she said.