Plan B Forum

I got my auto insurance renewal this week - the premium increased by 20%.

So I decide to shop around and see if I can get a better rate - no dice, comparable coverage with any other company was anywhere from $500-800 more than the $1350 my current insurer is charging me. Apparently I have been getting quite a good deal over the years.

I was quite amazed at the gross disparity in price for what is a very standardized product, for which it is very easy to determine what one's competitors are charging. Are there a lot of people getting ripped off paying 60% more than they need to, or have the insurers charging that much simply decided to abandon the sector of the market in which I fall?

I did actually get a reasonable explanation for the premium increase - since I have an older car without more modern safety equipment like airbags, etc., the probability that I will be seriously injured in the event of an accident is supposedly greater.

But for all that I'm still pissed off at that big of an increase after being a customer for 18 years.

It's a common misunderstanding that a lot of people believe that staying with an insurer for a long period of time is going to somehow save them money.

Do you get "no claims bonus" over there?

We pay $63 pcm to insure our station wagon.

Joe Guy wrote:It's a common misunderstanding that a lot of people believe that staying with an insurer for a long period of time is going to somehow save them money.

There is a loyalty discount that comes off my premium that I think is in the range of 5%, plus another 5% because I also insure my home with the same company. But the primary reason that staying with this insurer has saved me money is that they appear to have the cheapest premium (for me) by far among all the companies I surveyed.

I didn't think they owed me a cheaper premium just because I had been with them a long time, but if they were going to calculate risk based on new criteria, I think they could have stepped the increase over a couple of years rather than hitting me with it all at once. That I think would have been a reasonable recognition of being a claim-free customer for 18 years.

Gob wrote:Do you get "no claims bonus" over there?

We pay $63 pcm to insure our station wagon.

There is a no claims discount incorporated in the premium, based on having no claims in the previous 6 years, with a higher discount if there are no claims in the previous 10 years.

Every few years I do a scan for ours. So far its the cheapest by a lot. We use the same for homeowners and have an umbrella policy for an additional $1M on both. But we have very high deductables. $1,000 for the cars and $10,000 for the homeowners. I believe in self-insuring for smaller losses.

Makes life easier.

yrs,
rubato