Call Your Car Insurance Companies!!!

[texanfray]

I just called mine, The Travelers, after getting an esurance quote for $600 cheaper.

So I called Travelers to tell them and see what they could do. Guess what - all of sudden - they have a new Best Price Quote program. My insurance went from $1900 a year to $982 a year. I just made $1000 in less then hour!!

I got the idea from this website! Thank you forum members!

Everyone get on the phone and then post your results here!

[rainysparadigm]

we recently did some price shopping and managed to save about $30 a month on the bill. not quite as remarkable but we're still pretty young (damn biased insurance lol), one license is less than 3 years old, and one car has a lien and is classified as a sports car, and the other car has a claim, so what can you do lol still, i would rather keep that $30/month then give it to the insurance company! lol

thats awesome though! congrats!

[hermione]

I recently switched to Progressive and went from $300 for 6 months of liability-only coverage to full coverage for just $60 more for the 6 months. The reason I even checked out Progressive was because I saw something on MSNBC about their Pet Coverage and I wanted to find out more about it. So I got the quote and saw that we could get 10X more the coverage than before for only $10 more a month.

I recently wrote an article on this for our blog:
Insurance Matters: The Cost of Complacency

[texanfray]

Thank you for posting! I really do want to hear from more of you out there. You are right - our money is better in our pockets than the insurance companies!

[lucille]

We started insurance shopping after American Family arbitrarily jacked our homeowners $200 a year. Our credit union has an insurance agent in house. They got us in with Kemper this dropped our homeowners about $300 a year IIRC and our auto by about $10 a month.

When I called our AM Fam agent to cancel they asked me why I was canceling. When I told them how much we were saving they must have known they wouldn't be able to match it because they didn't attempt to argue the point.

What texanfray did should be on everyone's agenda to do. We found quite a bit of money back in our pockets by shopping those things we pay every month.

[moneymatters]

We recently shopped around for homeowners insurance and car insurance. We had gotten complacent about our insurance and just assumed we were getting decent rates. As it turned out we ended up saving about $1000/year on auto insurance (with progressive - for better coverage), and $200+ on homeowner's insurance (with kemper). So for a couple of days of getting quotes we saved $1200+ and got better coverage. Not bad.

If you're in doubt, just do it! You could save a lot of money!

[rstlne]

I switched to GEICO auto insurance because they were around $700 per year lower than AIG. What prompted the shopping around though was AIG's refusal to sell me an umbrella policy.

[Milehimama]

Just an FYI - I had a terrible experience with Progressive and avoid them like the plague.

I got insurance through them. A lady hit us a couple of weeks later (before they had collected their second premium). At the time, state law dictated that MY insurance had to pay for MY injuries, no matter who was at fault. Progressive claimed I was an "uncovered driver" and refused to pay (despite the fact that I owned the car, and I was the only possible listed driver for it! I wasn't even married or anything!) I had to get a lawyer and SUE my own insurance company.

Just be careful!

[lucille]

Originally Posted by Milehimama

Just an FYI - I had a terrible experience with Progressive and avoid them like the plague.

I got insurance through them. A lady hit us a couple of weeks later (before they had collected their second premium). At the time, state law dictated that MY insurance had to pay for MY injuries, no matter who was at fault. Progressive claimed I was an "uncovered driver" and refused to pay (despite the fact that I owned the car, and I was the only possible listed driver for it! I wasn't even married or anything!) I had to get a lawyer and SUE my own insurance company.

Just be careful!

Before going with any new insurance company I suggest doing some research online. I tried to get into AM Best to look at Kemper's ratings and they won't let the general public pull ratings. I really hate old entrenched business models, blech.

But a google search will usually pull up websites that exist for hate of said insurance company if one exists. It will also pull up news stories such as them merging, having financial troubles or if they have pulled a nasty one on a policy holder or had a big court case. Every insurance company is going to have some negative publicity. But if you see tons of negative publicity it would be a sign the company is not worth dealing with.

We used progressive for a while. They were more expensive and I disliked their call center style customer service.

[jdp]

I have used Progressive almost my entire life. There was a short period where I got a better rate through someone else but then they quit accepting monthly payments and required a years premium up front so back to Progressive I went. I've had no-fault claims and been hit by other people and Progressive has always been great. When I hear the headaches family members have gone through with their insurance companies I feel like maybe staying where I am, even paying $100 more a year is worth it. But its so contrary to my frugal nature lol. But if I could save $1200 a year I'd deal with headaches!

I do have one question, with auto insurances being tied into credit reports, using them in rate determinations and such and with my limited knowledge of how fico works - does it hurt your score to do a lot of shopping, having a lot of people pulling your credit?

Also, I know from looking at my documents online with Progressive (I love anyone with paperless operations) that since I've been back 3+ years now I'm eligible for more of a discount. So even if you aren't with Progressive you might want to check and see if your current insurance will match the rates you are finding or if they have a customer history/loyalty discount.