Sheila and Dominic Traina lived in their Staten Island home for 43 years before it became famous. Now they’re getting sick of the pictures. It was bad enough when the wreckage caused by Hurricane Sandy to the Traina’s home was featured in a new AllState commercial called “1,000 Thank You’s,” considering that the insurance company offered the family just $10,000 for repairs. Then the multicolored Google Street View car came rolling through.
The Trainas were having Thanksgiving dinner when they saw the AllState spot, the New York Post reports. “I got disgusted,” said Dominic Traina. “I said, look at the all the trouble we’re getting with AllState and this is what they’re putting on TV. That was terrible.” While the couple did not have flood insurance, they claim their damage came from the wind, not the water, and have turned down the payout in hopes of collecting more. “The commercial said how caring their agents are,” Sheila Traina told the Staten Island Advance, “but they are not caring at all.”
Google, meanwhile, came through yesterday to survey the destruction in their New Dorp Beach neighborhood. “They are putting us wiped out on the map!” said one resident. ““They’re going to call it a wasteland! I don’t like Google driving around my property. What are they doing it for? To drop the property value?”
According to a Google spokesperson, “The Street View team is currently redriving affected areas of New York City. We hope this accurate, updated imagery that will soon be available in Google Maps will help people around the world better understand the extent of the damage and the importance of coming together as a community to aid in the recovery efforts.”
AllState offered even less of an attempt to be soothing. “Our commitment is always to settle claims fairly,” a spokesperson told the Advance. And: “All AllState commercials are produced in accordance with all applicable advertising laws.” One-thousand thank-yous for such sensitivity.
