Pensacola News Journal reporter Louis Cooper tried to pin down BP VP Darryl Willis, who heads the oil giant’s claims processing, on how close is “close proximity.” It was all part of the 2:30 press conference that BP held to stem the criticism over how slow claims are being paid.
Willis has said that BP would pay all substantiated claims for business in close proximity to the oil spill. Cooper wanted Willis to say how close is close, but the BP VP kept dodging the question and would never give a definitive answer…which is always the problem with BP. They use all the right words, but say very little.
BP doesn’t just do something….they actively do it….they always give huge numbers before they say anything…the numbers can be feet of boom, number of ships, checks written, but they always start with the numbers…they say every question is a “good question” before they answer…unfortunately there is rarely any real information being given.
I did get a couple questions in. I learned that BP will be turning over all claims to the Feinberg team on the third week of this month. Any claims not paid by then will be “seamlessly” handed over to Feinberg. Willis said all claims by individuals are being processed within five days; small business claims under $5,000 are processed within nine to ten days. I told him that we have heard large business claims are averaging 36 days. Willis didn’t deny that average and said he hoped they could improve on that over the next two weeks.
In his opening remarks, Willis said that BP set up over the weekend an Immediate Action Claims Team that expedited 2,600 claims and approved $9 million to be paid this week. This sounds like a lot, but BP paid out $142 million in July, according to Willis, which is $4.58 million a day average. They only paid at last month’s daily rate. The average check was less than $3500.
See what I mean? The numbers are huge until you break them down.