If you got a discount from your windstorm insurance company for installing shutters and other hurricane protections on your home, you might soon have to give some or all of it back.

Nearly a dozen insurance companies -- although not yet for the state's biggest insurer, Citizens -- are dispatching inspectors to the homes of recipients of wind mitigation discounts to ensure that the discounts, often in excess of $1,000 a year, are deserved.

In many cases they are not, the insurers say. Rather, they resulted from faulty prior inspections -- in some cases, fraudulent ones.

In hundreds of cases so far -- a precise number is not available -- discounts are being reduced or eliminated.

That's what's about to happen to Cari Pouso, a West Kendall homeowner who paid more than $20,000 to install impact-resistant windows and doors at her house. Magnolia Insurance sent an inspector to her home unannounced on an afternoon when her 14-year-old son was home alone.

She said the inspector promised he would be back a few days later when she could be home, but never did. A few weeks later, she got a letter from Magnolia saying her mitigation discounts were being rolled back because she had one door unprotected.

Now Magnolia is asking her to pay $100 for another inspection.

The previous inspections to certify that homes had been hardened to withstand a windstorm were paid for by homeowners or a state program that expired this past summer. In some cases, insurance companies believe, inspectors promised to save the homeowner enough money to cover the cost of the inspection -- ranging from $100 to $300 -- and did so, even if it meant fudging their report.

This latest round of inspections is being done on the insurers' dime.

Nestor Rivero, who got an $888 reduction in his windstorm premiums after installing impact-resistant windows, thinks the reinspections represent a bad-faith effort by insurers to avoid paying discounts, for which hundreds of thousands of homeowners have qualified.

Insurers ``are trying to find little holes wherever they can in these inspections,'' said Rivero, himself an independent agent who works with various home insurance companies. ``I'm sorry, [but] that's what they're trying to do so they don't have to [apply] the credits.''

Insurers who will discuss the strategy say it is not a case of sending inspectors on a mission to torpedo discounts to protect the industry's bottom line.

``We are required by law to give the discounts,'' said Lockwood Burt, chief executive officer of Security First Insurance in Ormond Beach. ``The problem is that we might be giving discounts to people who aren't entitled to them.''

Burt said the company has reviewed 500 policies with discounts. Mistakes were found in 59 percent of the inspections that were a basis for a cut in premiums. He said correcting those mistakes has resulted in higher premiums -- an average of $302 higher.

As evidence of the company's good faith, he noted that one in every 10 cases has resulted in the homeowner getting a larger discount -- $140 on average.

GAUGING DISCOUNTS

Wind mitigation discounts have been around since 2003, but became wildly popular when insurance rates spiked after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005. In 2006, the credits were doubled. The idea was that homeowners and insurers both benefit when homes are better fortified to withstand a storm.