You Help Them… We Help You
In a survey by the PA Fire and Emergency Services Institute:
- 504 Volunteer Fire Companies particpated.
- Almost 50% of companies surveyed, bill for some type of service.
- 60% of these companies collect less than 20% of their total billings.
Reasons for not billing included:
- 19% felt it wasn’t cost effective (with PAFRS there is no cost unless there is recovery, therefore making it 100% cost effective).
- 33% feared a negative community response (as stated before, PAFRS deals mainly with the insurance companies, not the community members – as a matter of fact, in 12 years we have only spoken to a handful of individuals there were concerned about Fire Services Billing).
- 27% had legal concerns (to date, we have not seen any legal ramifications of billing, and if any were to arise, we have legal representation by Fire/EMS law specialists).
- 16% had philosophical concerns (the main concerns that we hear are “we are a volunteer company…We don’t do this for money”) Think about the danger you’re putting your “volunteers” in without proper equipment/gear.
- 35% expressed other concerns (hopefully some of the other concerns have been answered by the other info on this website).
Response from Communities being billed:
- 41% were favorable.
- 38% were indifferent.
- 13% didn’t know.
- Only 7% were unfavorable!!!
You can see from these statistics that the majority of the concerns that Departments had were, in reality, unfounded concerns in regard to community response. PAFRS addresses all other concerns and makes recovery efforts hassle free and affordable for you.