True Lies

Saturday's Tampa Tribune is reporting that "Citizens Property Insurance Co. will try to have all hurricane-related claims settled by the end of the year, according to a report submitted Friday to the state's top insurance regulator."

The report itself does not appear to be available on the web sites of either Citizens Property Insurance or the state's Financial Services department.

According to reporter Baird Hegleson --

To handle the backlog of claims and to curb complaints, Citizens pledges to:

* Overhaul its call center to speed claim processing.

* Add 30 staffers by Monday to review claims.

* Streamline the internal claim review process, which is expected to cut in half the time it will take for customers to receive their checks.

There are 19 days until the end of the year, counting Christmas Day, weekends, and New Year's Eve. It's been widely reported that Citizens had received 4,100 complaints by December 4. More have been rolling in every day since then. And that's just a fraction of the total number of pending hurricane insurance claims which haven't yet resulted in a customer complaint.

Pardon me if I file this report under "Fiction."