Was it USAA? When I was on my parents’ insurance with them as a student living outside the home, my license was briefly suspended due to a snafu with my medical review paperwork. They canceled my parents’ policy, and refused to issue them a new one with or without me after I got my paperwork sorted.
I’m not sure of the details, and maybe I’ve got it wrong, but on two occaisions I’ve heard people mention it.
One was a former roommate who had no car, but mentioned she had to get some very low-level liability insurance.
The other was a friend’s brother. He was driving his roommate’s car and was in a hit and run (the other driver’s fault.) But the police/DMV/whoever found out he had no insurance, even though he had no car, and he lost his license or had a lot of points on it or something.
As we’ve seen in this thread, it doesn’t happen automatically, but you’d be a fool to ever forget that insurance companies are in the business of making profits - their obvious preference is for you to pay money to them and never claim any back out. For-profit insurance is basically the biggest legal scam ever thought up.
No, not USAA. I’m not going to name them because I can sort of see their point (hell, at that point I wouldn’t have insured anyone who lived within a mile of us), but they’re a well-known company.
So right about cute ads/lousy product correlation.
My horror story concerns the ins. co. with the cute Peanuts ads-- Metropolitan Life, dba Metropolitan Casualty in my case.
I was in the market for car ins. and found a great deal @ an independent agent carrying Metropolitan Casualty as one of his companies.
I paid 1/3 of the premium for a 6-month policy up front.
About 2 weeks later, I get a registered letter stating that my policy was being cancelled 30 days from the receipt of the letter. No explanation-just an 800 number.
When I asked the crabby witch at the 800 number why I was being dropped she said" Because you lied about your claim history on your application."
When I protested that I was truthful she said “What about this collision claim filed___1991.” I said it was a not at fault accident ( We came out to our car, parked legally on a residential street ,and found it sideswiped) and the agent only asked about at-faults of which we had none and our 18 y.o. daughter had one. I further stated that no agent of ANY company has ever wanted to know about “NAFs”, though I’ve always offered to volunteer windshield claims, downed tree claims, etc. I even volunteered this one but the agent said that it was not necssary.
No dice.“Liar” was getting cut off in 30 days.
There was a small “star break” in the windshield of one of our vehicles. Never got it fixed because it never bothered me. Found a glass co. willing to replace, not repair the glass. Took my pound of flesh out that way.
Fuck Metro Life!
BTW, told this story to my present agent at State Farm as I signed on with him and he said, “Nobody asks about NAFs. Who the Hell are these people?”
You can get a non-owners policy, which gives you (as a driver) liability coverage if you rent or borrow a car. I had one when I drove company rentals 100+ miles a day, it was supposed to be on top of whatever coverage came with the car. It may have been unnecessary, I’m sure none of my other coworkers had it, but I was happy to not find out.
But I’ve never heard if this being required just to have a license.
Yes, you are sheltered, through an accident of geopolitics. Massachusetts auto insurance laws (up until recently) were so pro-driver and anti-insurance company that none of the big national companies had any interest in doing business here. When I first moved to MA from PA, I called my State Farm agent, who just happened to be my uncle, and he told me there was no way he could write a policy for MA. Just didn’t happen. The whole SDIP system, where companies could only base rates on driving history and no other actuarial factors, was so repugnant to most companies that they didn’t even bother trying.
Related crazy car insurance thing:
A few years ago I owned the Honda POS that ended up dying on me. Stone dead - it wasn’t going anywhere. So I didn’t re-up my policy on it. Cut to three months of taking the bus later, and I bought a new car. When I called to insure it, I took a hit as an uninsured motorist. I hadn’t had an insurance claim, accident, or traffic violation in a decade … but I was a risk because I didn’t have insurance for a car that I didn’t own anymore.
I was told I would have been wiser carrying insurance on the Honda, even after I had it towed away, until I bought the new car three months later.
Makes no sense to me.
Which is more or less how CA works, isn’t it?
No idea. The SDIP system said you start at 15 points. For every year of uneventful driving (no moving violations, no at fault accidents), you drop a point, to a minimum of 9. An event would increase your point count. Your rates were based solely on vehicle, amount of coverage, and your points. Unless or until your license was revoked, you couldn’t be denied coverage, and your rate couldn’t be higher than those set by the state, based on those 3 factors. Every other state I’ve lived in let the insurance companies take into account your age, your gender, whether or not you racked up a lot of tickets in the past, etc.
<Nitpick> Your home location is also another huge factor. I saw large changes in my insurance costs when I moved from Ipswich, to Amesbury, to Lowell. Lowell was obviously the most expensive.
Where I got really screwed in the short term, was when I moved to NH. All my good years in MA counted for nothing, and I was basically starting out with no “good credit” and a single ticket on my record a few years previously. The rates dropped pretty quickly though.
State Farm, who also carries my homeowner’s insurance not only handled a claim from a UPS delivery guy who “claims” to have fallen on some steps on my property, in a very fine fashion, but also kept us as customers, without a noticeable rate increase following their settlement.
I’ve always been suspect of the “mystery cancel” story. I’m sure it happens once in a while to someone with no reason to be canceled, but I think often it’s someone not telling you the “whole story.”
State Farm here - no problems, never been dropped even when I was distracted and confused (as in, I had literally been laid off ten minutes previous and was nervous and really just needed to lie down and take it all in) and had an accident.
Really, it’s stupid to just drop people, unless they really have proven to be a bad risk (I knew a guy who’d had 11 accidents (but only 7 of them were his fault, he calimed) by the age of eighteen! If the individual is still a good risk overall, maintaining the policy let’s you get your money back.
When my two brothers and I started driving (3 years apart from oldest to youngest), my Dad simply added us to his and my Mom’s policy one by one.
After a few years with all 5 of us on the same policy and with no claims having been made, we were suddenly cancelled out of the blue.
The reason? Because we’d all been accident-free for x period of time, statistically we were “due” and therefore a bad risk.
My Dad’s agent suggested creating separate policies for us kids, which is probably good advice and it’s what we ended up doing… but with a different company after my Dad told his former agent where he could shove those policies.
This incident helped cement my still-held opinion that for-profit insurance companies answer only to the almighty dollar, whether it benefits their customers or not.
That seems unusual to me for USAA, I guess it might be the difference between accidents etc. vs. a suspended license (even by mistake). I wrecked my parents car shortly after getting my license, and then was involved in an accident (not my fault) while driving someone else’s car while still being insured under my parents’ policy. USAA didn’t cancel them or raise their rates, but did send a notice that not only was I not to be on the policy, but was to be specifically excluded (so if I was driving their car, they would not cover any accidents/damage). But even that was for (I think) a six-month period. Once my driving record was “clean” for a period of time (and that was the last accident I have ever had as a driver) they covered me again at the same low rate.
As an adult I have had USAA insurance forever (and now my kids have it too) and have found them to be one of the better companies as far as not raising rates or canceling policies. Not to mention that they are the lowest (cheapest) company I have known and we get a percentage back each year as well (we recently received a check for about $50 which could have been applied to our premium if we chose). I have honestly never heard of a negative experience (before now) from anyone with USAA.
Back to the topic though, my parents-in-law were involved in a nasty accident with an uninsured (and drunk) driver, involving med-flights and ICU stay injuries of both of them. Their insurance handled all the subsequent law suits, medical bills, etc. and didn’t so much as raise their rates let alone cancel the policy.
I have heard of such actions from what I think of as the “lower-class” insurance companies (those that advertise with “if you have been turned down for insurance elsewhere, we’ll still insure you no questions asked” and the fly-by-night insurers) but never from a reputable insurance provider.
Here’s how you can get your homeowners policy cancelled for IMHO no good reason.
Farmer’s cancelled my homeowners policy a few weeks after I closed on my new home back around 2002. Reason? Two previous zero-dollar claims, as my agent said they’re called.
First ‘‘claim’’ was when I had called Nationwide because my truck got broken into. They helpfully explained that the glass damage was less than my auto deductible so I was on my own for that. Also, the property stolen out of the vehicle was covered by my homeowners policy and it was below that deuctible as well.
Second '‘claim’'was when my ex called Nationwide about some minor water damage from a leaky window in the house I hadn’t lived in for over a year. She got it fixed for less than the deductible and called them back to tell them never mind. Still shows up as a zero dollar ‘‘claim’’ against me.
So Farmers cancels my policy and the best I could do for a couple years until the claims dropped off my record was the ‘‘no-name high risk’’ stuff that literally doubled my premium. Some quotes I got were for much more than that.