What are my rights if a Georgia carrier delays my short-term rental claim?

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Quick answer: Under the Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act (O.C.G.A. 33-6-30 through 33-6-37), your insurer must acknowledge a claim within 15 days and decide a completed property claim within 30 days. A bad-faith refusal can expose the carrier to a penalty under O.C.G.A. 33-4-6 of up to 50 percent of the loss or $5,000, whichever is greater, plus attorney's fees.

Georgia law sets specific deadlines for how a carrier must handle a claim, under the Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act at O.C.G.A. 33-6-30 through 33-6-37. A carrier must acknowledge receipt of a claim within 15 days, and once a property claim is complete, meaning the carrier has received the documentation it requested, the carrier has 30 days to decide it.

These are procedural deadlines, not a guarantee of payment. The statute controls how fast a carrier has to act and respond, not whether the claim is ultimately approved or denied. A carrier can still deny a claim within the 30-day window and be in compliance with the timeline; the deadline governs the pace of the decision, not the outcome.

A separate statute addresses what happens when a carrier's refusal to pay is found to be in bad faith. O.C.G.A. 33-4-6 allows a penalty against a carrier found to have acted in bad faith in refusing to pay a claim, up to 50 percent of the loss or $5,000, whichever amount is greater, along with the policyholder's attorney's fees. Bad faith is a specific legal finding, meaning a court determines the carrier's refusal was unreasonable given the facts available to it, not simply that the host disagreed with the outcome.

Example: a host's short-term rental property in Atlanta sustains storm damage, and the host submits the repair estimate, photos, and every document the carrier requested. Sixty days pass with the file complete and no decision from the carrier. That gap exceeds the Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act's 30-day window for a completed property claim and is the kind of delay a host can raise directly with the carrier's claims department, escalate through Georgia's insurance regulator, or, where the delay reflects a broader pattern of bad-faith handling, address through the bad-faith statute.

Documentation supports any of those paths. A claim file with a clear submission date, a list of everything the carrier requested, and the date each item was provided is what turns a slow response into a specific, provable violation of the acknowledgment or decision deadline.

These deadlines apply the same way to a short-term rental claim as to any other property claim. See how short-term rental insurance and its Georgia-specific structure work, and how AirCover and VRBO's guarantee differ from a carrier-backed claims process with these statutory deadlines. A coverage review can walk through what documentation a specific carrier requires, and Olive Cover's carrier list shows which carriers write STR policies in Georgia.