Here’s another good example of why it pays to shop around. I was quite amazed to see how much I was able to save on auto insurance by switching to another company,
With my oldest son newly licensed this year, I was warned by my insurance agent that the we would be paying more for our auto insurance. This wasn’t terribly surprising since his car was added to our policy earlier this year and he was driving it back and forth to his summer job.
What I did not know, was that even if he was not driving and did not have a car on the road, our premium would still go up simply because he has a driver’s license and happens to live here with us.
With school back in session and his car no longer registered and not on the road, I was a bit surprised to get a bill from the insurance company that was about $800 higher than the previous year.
I should also note that our policy includes our home owner’s policy as well, since it is a combined policy. The big increase however, was on the auto portion of the policy. The homeowner’s policy, like everything else in the world, has been inching up a bit each year as well, but certainly not to the tune of $800!
Since my son’s car was no longer on the road, and the insurance company had removed it from our policy for the time being, I thought there had to be some mistake when I saw the $800 increase in our premium.
I called our agent who is right here in the same town and has always been very pleasant and helpful to deal with. She explained to me that the fact that a teenager with a driver’s license lives in our house, our premium goes up.
I explained to her that he is not currently doing any driving and will not be for a while. One of our cars is a manual transmission which he does not know how to drive and the other vehicle, my pick-up truck, is something he will definitely not be driving.
I was told that did not matter and as long as a teenage driver lived with us, the new premium would stay in place. Our only options where to throw him out of the house or have him surrender his driver’s license. Not too realistic.
This whole thing seemed ridiculous to me, but I know how insurance agencies like to minimize their risk. I suspect a tremendous amount of money is made in the insurance business and I certainly would not want to deprive any insurance company executives of their next lavish vacation or extra Mercedes for the garage after all.
A few days later I was surfing around the net and saw one of those ads for low insurance rates and free quotes, etc. Being a bit unhappy about my new premium, I decided to click on the ad and proceeded to fill out the online form for a new quote.
A day or two later I got an e-mail message from an agent up in the Laconia area who wanted to give me a quote. He got some further information from me and provided me with a quote which I was sure was a mistake.
The premium was close to what I was paying before my son got his license — about $700 less than my current insurance company was expecting me to pay. I kept expecting him to discover a mistake and tell me that the premium would actually be closer to my current policy, but he did not.
A couple of weeks later and I had my new policy in hand and the telephone in the other hand, dialing my current agent to let them know I wanted to cancel the policy.
For those that are interested, my previous company was OneBeacon based in Massachusetts and my new company is MetLife.
I never had any real problems with the previous company, but never had a claim either, so I can’t say how they performed when we needed coverage.
It was kind of amusing after my initial call to my agent because she called me back about 10 minutes later just to make sure she fully understood the numbers I gave her earlier and to be clear on why I was canceling my policy so she could tell OneBeacon why they lost our business.
It’s simple really. We’re paying for insurance because of something that “might” happen. And I don’t care who I pay that money to as long as I am not aware of any specific reason not to select that company.
If MetLife is going to save me $700 when compared to OneBeacon, you bet I am going to switch!
My previous agent kind of snickered when I told her that the MetLife agent informed me that MetLife was going after business with young drivers. She said she had seen companies do that before to drum up business and then end up having to raise rates later on.
Who knows? She may be right and I may end up paying as much to MetLife next year as OneBeacon was wanting me to pay this year.
But what I do know is that my policy for the coming year is going to cost me about $700 than my previous policy and that’s good enough for me.
I should also mention how easy it was for me to switch to another company. I exchanged a few e-mails and phone calls with the new agent who sent me out some forms to sign.
I signed the forms, scanned them into my PC and e-mailed them back to him and I had my new policy about a week later. Quite painless.
If you are unhappy with what you are paying for auto insurance, by all means, shop around a bit and see if you can get a better deal. I was quite surprised to see just how much better I was able to do.
If you want to try one of those online quote forms like I did, this one will give you five free auto insurance quotes. Click here to access the form.
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