OT: Car insurance complaints

[Higgs Boson]

I'm currently shopping for car insurance; considering a move from GEICO to (possibly) AAA of Southern California, but open to any company whose record shows they will serve my best interests (hah!)

Important to know how many complaints an insurer receives and how resolved.

In the past I had a list of car insurance companies' complaint records, but now can't find it. I went on-line but no luck. (I did find ferociously angry complaints against AAA mostly having to do with billing and coverage.)

If any NG member know where to locate an OBJECTIVE evaluation of complaints --preferably limited to So. Calif, but any info welcome -- I would appreciate your posting it.

HB

[CRNG]

On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 13:35:06 -0700 (PDT), Higgs Boson wrote in Re OT: Car insurance complaints:

Perhaps here?

[Stormin Mormon]

I do believe there is no such thing as "unbiassed". The best is to find someone whose bias agrees with yours.

Beyond that sage bit of wisdom, I'm not much help.

. Christ>

[Higgs Boson]

Ask and ye shall receive! That was EXACTLY where I saw the list of complaint records that I thought I had mislaid. Why I didn't think of the CA Dept of Insurance, I'll never know... VERY helpful, thank you!

Right... I wasn't actually looking for a forum, since these contain highly selective gripes & kudos rather than an objective evaluation.

HB

[Ed Pawlowski]

GEICO would save me about $25 a year. I've not had an accident for 40 years, but when I had a cracked windshield, one call to my agent and it was done the same day. IMO, a good agent is also very important.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Ditto on that.

[Ashton Crusher]

I've been with State Farm, Gieco, Progressive, 21st Century, Mutual of Omaha, and currently CostCo, which is really AmeriPrise(sp). I've found little difference between them with getting claims taken care of. I have not been with Farmers because I've heard so many bad stories about them from repair shops who say Farmers won't pay them enough to do the work properly forcing them to cut corners, for example, insisting on used damaged parts that can be banged out instead of paying for a new front fender or hood. I will never again go with Gieco because they ask if you own a radar detector and if you do they won't insure you, but they don't ask till you've been on the phone for 15 minutes and then you find they have wasted 15 minutes of your time gathering personal info about you. I've also found that more often then not, no matter who I go with (and when I change it's to find a lower price) that after a few years they are no longer the lower price, it seems like they just make a policy of suck you in and then keep rasing the premiums and hope you'll never notice or shop around again.

[Ed Pawlowski]

You'd actually say "yes" to such a question?

Are they still very effective given the new laser guns and such?

I've also found that

Same here. After a couple of years you have to shop around.

[trader4]

I don't know what kind of policy you have that makes it pay to put in a claim for a $200 windshield. Most policies have deductibles that preclude that, no? And even if it isn't precluded, I wouldn't put it in for fear that they will just raise my rate. That's one reason I have a policy with high deductibles. The other is that it saves a lot of money to self insure stuff that's less than $1000.

[trader4]

I didn't take a look at the website, but unless the data is normalized at least for the number of policies the companies have, it's not worth much. A company with 2 million policies is going to have a lot more complaints than one that has 200K. There also could be other differences that skew the results.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I have full glass coverage as many policies do. I've had to do it twice over the years and no change in rates. Damned if I'm going to put out $200 when I'm paying a premium to cover it and there is no penalty. It is also nice to get a new windshield after 60,000 miles or so.

I also have the $1000 deductible for collision damage

[gregz]

Greg

[Wes Groleau]

People who switched to _______ saved an average of $_______

ALWAYS true, no matter what company. Because people only switch if it is going to save them money.

What DO they teach in those schools?

[Doug Miller]

Ed Pawlowski wrote in news:N8mdnbh9seAUe5vPnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Isn't that the truth. Some years ago, my Suburban was stolen by, apparently, teenage joyriders: they abandoned a stolen Impala in the street in front of my house, and ditched my truck in a driveway about two miles away when they stole that person's van.

By coincidence, the owner of the van had his auto insurance with not only the same company (State Farm) as I but also the same agent -- and when he reported the theft of his van, happened to mention to the agent the Suburban abandoned in his driveway. Agent said, hmmmm, I just had a policyholder report a stolen Suburban... asked him to describe it, then called me and asked if my truck had thus-and-such bumper stickers. Yes, it does. Well, said the agent, we found your truck. I had it back from the police impound yard and in my driveway for more than a day before the police called to say it had been recovered. Yes, I know that, it's been at home since noon yesterday, thanks to my insurance agent.

[Ashton Crusher]

I think they figured out that if they asked it right away people were stilling "thinking" about their answers. So at that point I'd probably realize it was a trap and say no. But after 15 minutes of dumb questions I was just answering things in my sleep and when that question came up the answer just floated out.

Yeah, they can still be pretty effective at sniffing out the revenuers up ahead. It's all about balancing risk, one more tool in the toolkit. Now that I'm older, retired, and more mellow I don't hardly speed enough to worry about radar so my detector just sits on the shelf most of the time.

The worst one I had was Liberty Mutual - It started at about $3500 a year for 4 people and 5 cars with full coverage on everything. 4 years later they wanted almost $10,000 for the same coverage. So I switched, had to go with two different companies to cover the mix of cars and drivers and their accident histories. Final total was less the $4000 and that was with the same accident history that LM was basing their rate on.

[Ashton Crusher]

I do the $1000 deductible but with 0 deduct on the glass, the difference in cost for the Full Glass w/$0 is negligible. I lose a windshield almost every year on at least one of my vehicles. Two of them need new windshields right now due to the size of the cracks and I hate to replace them (even though it cost me nothing) because they are only a couple years old and barely pitted and I hate to have the ins company spend the money till they have enough pits to make it worthwhile.

[Ashton Crusher]

I noticed that too. But it must sell policies. The average person is really very poor at logical thinking. Most people are ruled by their emotions. Heck, roughly half the people out there are below average.

[Ashton Crusher]

I've never found an insurance agent, i.e. a guy in his office near me, to be of any more value then some guy at the end of the phone line in another state. Every large claim I've had "my agent" has turned over to someone in the "regional" office. Twice I've had claims where roofs blew off and both times my "agent" said, you need to do what you need to do to protect the place from more damage and we will pay you for your expenses. So I did. And when I gave them the receipts, both times they acted like "What's this????" All the local agent does (I'm still with State Farm on my rentals) is call me periodically to try and get me to switch my autos and home to SF. And every time SF is more expensive.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Overall, accident probability is fairly high. Maybe they also figure, we got this guy for two or three years and it will probably happen soon. Dump him.

[Robert Green]

Well, a few people switch because they got cancelled by their old insurers but I get your point.

Based on the money Geico has to saturate the airwaves with that damned gecko auto insurance must still be a very profitable business. If anyone's benefitted financially from all the safety improvements in cars, it's the insurance industry. I doubt if they are passing along the savings.