And yes, of course, it could have been so much worse. No one was hurt or killed, nothing damaged except the car.
here in ca you have to have full coverage for a financed car but after that all ya need is liability the difference ? 60 bucks or more
This is better suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Why should the insurance agent have had her sign something? Because of people like the one who wrote the OP and blame the insurance company for the decision of this woman.
You keep saying that everyone needs collision coverage on a new car, but I’ve waived it before. It was new but relatively inexpensive, I had plenty of cash in the bank and I’m handy.
Now that I have more responsibilities I don’t want to deal with the potential downtime of fixing up a wrecked car, but I can’t have been the only person ever to have liability only on a new car.
I agree that, given the sketchy facts, doesn’t seem like the insurance company did anything terribly wrong. Ninety-plus percent of the problem is with the customer, IMHO.
No, they don’t. I have personal experience with this in the near-recent past, albeit not with a brand-new car. With a six-year-old car, I had to get rather insistent with the woman in my agent’s office that I really did want comprehensive, and I really did want roadside coverage. She was just flicking through the computer screens: “you don’t have a lien, so you don’t need comprehensive coverage” and went right on to the next screen without ever asking me what I actually wanted. She actually tried to talk me out of comp; no, I have no idea of her reasoning or thought processes. (She isn’t the agent, but is authorized to write binders on behalf of the agent.)
Had I not known what I needed and wanted, I would have ended up with the “wrong” coverage, and I have no difficulty in believing that an unsophisticated customer could walk out thinking they bought something other than what they actually got. Whether the young lady in OP’s story dealt with a similarly unhelpful salesperson or refused the salesperson’s advice is unknowable.
Just as he couldn’t compel her to buy a comprehensive insurance policy, so he couldn’t compel her to sign anything saying that she didn’t want comprehensive insurance.
The story told in the OP does not ring entirely true and, right enough, later on saliqmind admits that he does not know if it is true. The OP strongly implies that an insurance agent told her that she had sufficient cover for her circumstances, but later on he admits that he does not know if she dealt with an insurance agent at all; she may simply have gone online and bought the cheapest policy she could find.
Overall the picture painted is of a young lady whose father made her a present of a brand new car, but failed to raise her with even a basic grasp of everyday financial transactions and their signficance. A stereotype is being invoked, no?
I can’t say either way what the agent did or didn’t do. No one can, not even the OP.
It sounds like this “young woman” made a poor decision (informed or otherwise) and in hindsight she wants to blame the agent for not educating her and her “boyfriend/ father” (two people, I hope) for not injecting themselves into the process to override her.
In any other context these actions would be mansplaining and patriarchy.
Again though, none of us know what happened, not even the OP and certainly not me. I just see a rather unfair double standard based on the story I heard.
Posters keep using the word “agent”. Who, in 2016, talks to a human when buying car insurance? Especially if you’re young?
Does the OP know she even spoke to an employee of the insurance agency? When I buy car insurance, I go to a website and get a quote for the product I request.
Last time I bought a car, I got online quotes from Flo, the lizard, and the good hands. My local agent beat the best quote by around 20%. I have no idea how. And yes, all quotes were for the exact same coverage.
Just think of the valuable lesson this young lady learned. All on her own.
Meh. $3k is not that big of a deal. We only have liability on a couple of our vehicles, and it saves a lot of money. Driving for 20 years, I’ve never had an insurance claim. I’ve definitely saved more than $3k in premiums by not having comprehensive coverage. If her dad bought a new car with cash, I bet he can fix it and they can work out a payment plan for her to reimburse him.
Yeahbut it’s 2016 and this woman is presumably under the age of 30. She most likely did not go in to an insurance agency and did not speak with anyone. She probably did not even use a proper computer :eek: just a phone.
Her dad probably said “I’ll buy you a car but you need to get your own insurance!” And since she had just that week seen 47 ads for geico.com while watching two episodes of The Bachelor on Hulu, she went to geico.com and got her insurance, thus meeting the requirement set forth.
To be honest, my dad never “taught” me anything about insurance. I don’t know that new cars need whatever but you can get away with whoosits for an older car. It just so happened that my dad had an insurance rep that he liked that insured his house and car and told me to go to this guy when I got my first car. The guy said “Ok you’ve got insurance and it will cost $X a month.” And that guy has since retired but gave his clients to some other guy who is fine and I’ve gotten new cars and I call him up and he sends me a bill and I pay it and I’m insured.
So by happenstance it’s my dad’s “fault” that I have all the right insurance for my situation but by no means did my dad put any effort in to explaining what I needed. And who knows if my dad even knows what he needs or what I need! He just happened to have “a guy” and I just happen to be able to afford the guy’s costs of insuring my car (and house).
Anyway, you’re making a lot of assumptions and this situation that you have imagined has you all riled up and mad at a whole lot of people but really you don’t seem to have any of the facts or a grip on the reality of how people buy insurance in 2016.
This was exactly my thought reading this thread. The insurance company is making a profit selling their product so if you can afford to cover a loss yourself statistically you’re better off not buying insurance for it.
In this case they spun the wheel and loss, but we can’t know if declining comprehensive was a rational decision without knowing information like the price of the declined comprehensive insurance and whether the family in question is able to cover the cost of repairs themselves.
I suppose it COULD be the insurance company’s fault if they messed up the paperwork or misled her but I suspect it was more that she wanted the cheapest insurance possible and went for the state minimum requirements - probably over the concerns of the salesperson.
Me. I talk to an agent maybe twice a year about coverage and when my stepson bought a car I dialed the company and handed him the phone and walked him through the process. I wouldn’t dream of buying insurance online and one project I have my students work on is actually talking to an agent’s and discussing the different coverages and how changing limits and deductibles affects premiums.
“Especially if you are young.” Which you are not. Comparing plans and learning how changing limits and deductibles affects premiums can all be done online. Maybe your students can teach you.
A) The post I was referring to did not contain the phrase “Especially if you are young.” It asked who talks to agents and I do.
B) Interesting take considering this is a thread about someone that (probably) did that and had no clue what she was doing and screwed herself over. Ask yourself this, If the minimum liability in your state is 25/50/15 will a website explain WHY you may want to consider higher limits or should you already know that. Will it tell you the difference between comprehensive and collision? How about all of the little additional coverages you can get especially those specific to your state like PIP in Washington.
I always talk to my agent when I buy or change my car insurance or home insurance. No, I don’t have to, but I’d rather.