State Farm HO Ins. in midwest US

[Puddin' Man]

Award #1: For the most grossly simplistic economic notions I have encountered in many a moon.

Award #2: You are "Their Man". If the economy is full of such folks, they can financially gut-and-filet us with impunity.

It'll never cease to amaze me the extent to which many folks will swallow abuse after they've been conditioned to have crazy stuff crammed down their throats. Not that it doesn't happen to me as well, but at least I'll never fail to feel insulted, abused, etc. Maybe even *try* to find an alternative.

P

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!" -Friedrich Schiller

[Puddin' Man]

...

"They will sneak in behind you, while you're not looking ..."

If I hadda nickel for every home that is over-insured, I could maybe afford a nice, little summer home, maybe the entire state of Rhode Island or somesuch.

Thanks for mentioning Farmers. I'd forgotten about them. Worth a try.

Collected 3 Farmers #'s from the yellow pages. 2 had been disconnected. I rang the 3rd 3 times at 2 hour intervals: got only a garbage recording each time. So much for Farmers in this area.

If you've got a good agent, cherish him/her. Most of these folks are in the business to collect payments and refuse service (in 1 way or another).

Cheers, P

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!" -Friedrich Schiller

[jimmyDahGeek]

We had 5 homes & 3 cars insured with State Farm. They did the same thing to us. When It came renewal time for each policy we started shopping around and found we could get the exact same coverage for 25% to 50% less through another company. Apparently State Farm to trying to recoup it's losses from Katrina. We have moved all of our policies from State Farm.. Just last week we received mail from our Sate Farm agent saying they have lowered their rates and they would like us to contact them for a quote... FAT CHANCE. I'll NEVER use State Farm again. Shop around and ask friends and neighbors who they use. I'm sure you can get the exact same coverage from another company for a lot less.

Good Luck,

[<josh]

The coverage increase seems a bit low -- assuming you have replacement cost coverage on your home, has the cost of construction really gone up that much slower than inflation in your area?

As for the premium increase, that could be any number of factors.

The investment environment is one -- Insurance companies often take in slightly less in premium than it actually costs them to adjust and pay claims. They make it up with the return on the money between when you pay the premium and when they pay out for a claim. But when their investment returns go down, they need to get more of their costs from their customers.

Changing legal environment is another, e.g. when the black mold hysteria broke out several years back, insurance companies were suddenly paying out claims that they had never expected when setting rates.

Still, there&#39;s nothing that says every insurance company is experiencing the same investment results or the same claims environment, so it&#39;s quite possible you could get the same coverage for less with another company.

[Vic Dura]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:02:56 -0700, "charlie" wrote Re Re: State Farm HO Ins. in midwest US:

By lowering the "Discout Rate" and the over-night "Federal Funds Rate".

[dpb]

Far more to it than that alone although excessively easy credit can be a contributing factor...

More significant factors are not at all necessarily government-induced as the earlier poster posits, either. It&#39;s all entertwined and to attribute any complex system behavior to a single cause even as diffuse as "government" is simply too simplistic a view to be anything other than a joke. Probably the most difficult upward pressure on prices at the present time is energy demand owing to burgeoning growth in developing economies...

--

[Douglas Johnson]

Milton Freedman won the Nobel prize for showing that inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. The government through the Federal Reserve controls the money supply. If the Fed expands it too fast, we get inflation. Too slowly, recession and/or deflation. Freshman economics.

-- Doug