We’ve found that insurance companies (auto/home/whatever) inch up premiums a little for the first few years with the company and then wham, big increase.
So we shop around and get a low rate somewhere else. The process repeats.
It may just be “that time” for the OP.
(If you haven’t shopped around in a long time, you’ve already passed the big increase and the rates don’t go up so fast after that. But then you’re paying too much indefinitely.)
Minnesota, age 55. Mine actually went down about 10%.
Geico, Alabama. Going up less that 0.5%, but like ftg noted, I got them when my previous insurer hiked my rates by 40% last year. My advice, John Mace, is to do some shopping around (and yes, Captain Obvious is obvious).
Mine went down, almost across the board. I don’t know, but I think insurance companies categorize risk in groups that aren’t intuitively obvious to us, and it seems weird from our ground level viewpoint.
Examples:
This year I upgraded to a larger and much more expensive truck. Apparently it moved me from the suburbanite-with-oversized-station-wagon to commercial-operator-with-large-equipment category, and my insurance on the truck actually decreased.
I have a fairly large boat at the marina, and insurance for it went down as well. My RV insurance remained the same. It’s surprising how low insurance on these vehicles is anyway. Apparently, there’s very little risk with them. The smaller, less expensive wakeboard/ski boat used (mostly) by my kids cost an effing fortune to insure.
For some reason, insurance on 1 of our cars went up, and the other 2 didn’t change much (possibly due to college student moving it to another city).
I’ve told this story here before, so apologies if you’ve heard it. When I insured my teenager in our small plane, the cost to add him to the policy was trivial. I asked my agent why it cost thousands per year to insure his Toyota, yet only a few hundred for him to fly a complex machine cruising at 150 mph. His answer: “Your plane never goes to a high school parking lot.”
We have Farmers and it looks to be about the same as ever. Our house insurance is on the same policy so maybe that helps stabilize it. Anyway, if it’s changed, it’s in the low single digit percents.
Good point and I should have noted that mine is bundled with home insurance. My broker is asking me if I’m a member of AARP. I assume I get a discount if I am, so I might have to swallow my pride and… join!!! :eek::eek::eek:
From experience with kids at Progressive seems like there’s some gaming with that though of a ‘discount’ you get immediately then they just increase you more later than they would have. I can’t prove it. But in general seems to me harder to see what’s going on with insurance pricing if it’s one of your first few bills. And yes there’s no way to drive safely on moderately fast roads with numerous traffic lights without sometimes setting off the beep on ‘snapshot’ (we were driving a kid’s cars mainly during a lot of their snapshot trial).
But I’ve been w/ Geico in NJ for pretty long and since full year 2015 with the same car and coverage (two people, high liability limits and collision on a somewhat expensive car) over which time the semi-annual premiums have been: 550, 588, 610, 605, 576, 567, 573. So it’s not even been going up steadily.
Ours went up around 25%. Because of that, we switched from State Farm to Allstate and probably saved around 15%. We’re paying for 4 vehicles, so that is substantial money.
Our new agent said prices are so high due to cars being so expensive to repair. You bust someones side mirror and it could cost over a thousand to replace.
Male, 60, PA and mine actually went down slightly on the motorcycles and remained the same on the car. The bikes and the car are with different companies.
AAA, California. Rates went up about 3%. But I’ve been a AAA Premier member for 3 decades and we bundle, so I get every break they offer.
This is only true for places that use agents. Farmers, State Farm, etc. Places that do direct sales channels like Geico and Progressive will quote you immediately online because they don’t have agents, or if they do, they are in house to service those folks that want to talk to a person. That could also happen if your fact pattern doesn’t fit their underwriting guidelines easily then you can get redirected.
One thing to note is that with more modern vehicles, severity is increasing. Meaning that in accidents, the cost of repair is higher for the same type of accident today than it was historically because more modern cars are more expensive to fix. Increased severity is a contributing factor to rate increases.
In my experience this is not correct. But to be specific, what I’m asserting does not happen is that you enter all your information (about drivers, vehicles etc.) one time on the online insurance quote website and then sit back and let the quotes roll in from a whole bunch of participating insurers. Either you’re going to have to provide the info all over again to each entity which quotes you or perhaps there are some which don’t participate with these websites altogether.
Though I should note that there are some instances where you will get quotes automatically via email, but these quotes tend to be based on incomplete or incorrect information and you will need to provide it all over again to make sure they have it right, which they generally won’t. (Though it’s possible that my experience is not completely representative in this regard because I have 3 vehicles and about 4-5 drivers usually. Possibly if you have one vehicle and one driver it might work.)
The significance of this depends on what you’re looking for. If you have reason to believe that your current rate is very high and want to price around and get the best deal it might be worthwhile to get quotes from many companies and pick the best one. That’s what happened to me when my oldest daughter got her license and my company jacked up the rates by about 250%. I went online and got a bunch of quotes and saved about 70% by switching to Geico (which seems to underwrite younger driver very favorably). But then as those rates crept up somewhat I figured I would get some quotes just to see if there’s anything better out there, but I was not motivated enough to spend 15 per carrier just on the off-chance that someone would beat Geico’s price.
It’s years later now, but my info is still in the system out there, and every six months I get emails and letters pointing out that I could be saving a lot by switching to these various competitors …
Ahh, you’re talking about a quote aggregator. I’m more referring when you go direct to Geico or Progressive. You can online quote on the spot, and even bind the policy. The quote aggregators however, yeah those are different.
Allstate and it went up 52 dollars for the year for no good reason. I know it’s not a whole lot but I’ve been driving for 25 years without so much as a ticket and that didn’t change this year plus we went from driving a certain amount to a MUCH lower amount. It went from daily driver to occasional driver and my daughter was removed from the policy so it shouldn’t have gone up. If anything I’d think it would go down but I don’t know, it was just liability. I don’t know how any of this works. My daughter usually handles this stuff because it’s her car but this year I’m going to be driving very rarely just to the store or appointment while she’s gone to where her husband is stationed.
Yes about $35/mo, but on 12/29 I replaced my 2007 car with a 2018, so it’s hard to figure if any of the increase wasn’t directly related to that.
It’s possible, but I’m still with Progressive and my rate increases have been roughly unchanged from before I used Snapshot.
I put the policy out to market before renewing this year just to see what kind of offers I’d get. My quote to renew for six months with Progressive was $382 (with full payment up front). The next best quote was from GEICO at $811!