Hey everybody, thanks to each of you for your input.  All the advice and comments were put to good use. One of the most important things you did was eliminated the fear that we, in the general population, have of insurance companies. To refresh your memories, the insurance company and the GC were 50K apart. Because of the difference between the formats of the exactimate bid and the GC's long hand bid, it was hard to tell where the difference was. I acted as the owner's rep and the three of us sat down and hammered it out. The insurance price did not have some major items, there were a few manual inputs that we felt were too low, a quantity transposition (.29 vs 2.9 squares), the software was 2 quarters old, and a few things that were just missed. In the end, the GC took 4k off his bid to make things jive.

Again, thanks for letting an outsider feel welcome and I'll keep you posted if anything else comes up.

David

Thanks for letting us in on the end of the story, David.  I'm glad it worked out in the end.  The truth is that I can find an agreed price with the vast majority of the contractor's I encounter, but some take a little work to get there.  And after that bit of work, the $4,000.00 saved on this claim, joined by the thousands of dollars from thousand of other claims where a bit is saved here and there, results in lower premiums for all of us.