Right. But when it’s sometime else fault, they usually do recover from the other driver’s insurance company, and in that case, they pay you the deductible, after they collect their own money as well.
Many years ago, I was driving my brand new (purchased new 2 months prior) car and was rear ended. I got three estimates of how much it would cost to repair, one from the repair shop, one from my insurance company, and one from the insurer of the guy who hit me. The first two came it at 5k and change. The third was for $2700. The major difference was that the first two planned to use new Honda parts, and the other insurance company planned to repair it with all used and third party parts.
Now, a large fraction of all auto repairs are paid for by insurance companies, and if they never use third party parts, the auto companies basically have a monopoly and jack up the prices to something crazy. So i understood where the third insurer was coming from. But i felt a brand new car should be repaired with new name-brand parts. (It was the prior model year, they pointed out.) So i filed a collision claim, paid my $1000 deductible, and my insurance company paid the other $4200. They told me that if they recovered from the first company they would reimburse me for the deductible. I was shocked when i got a check for $1000 a few months later. I’d have never gotten that company to budge from its estimate. But the insurance companies don’t want to waste a lot of money taking each other to court, and generally play nice with each other. So I got my deductible back.
And that’s what should have happened in Little_Nemo’s case, too. But something went wrong. Physical damage claims shouldn’t take 2 years to resolve.
Regarding the idea of shopping for another, perhaps cheaper auto insurance, two New York Times reporters recently tried to shop for cheaper car insurance (gift link); it didn’t work, meaning it was not easy to compare and better prices were not found. The incumbent carriers were USAA and GEICO.
At USAA, the only way to achieve big savings was to let the company track Ron’s driving habits using his cellphone. Many major insurance companies have similar initiatives, and USAA claimed Ron could save “up to” 30 percent.
I went to a presentation on insurance industry trends about 5 years ago, and everyone had a program like that except USAA. Their chief actuary said, “we don’t think our customers will want to be tracked like that, so we aren’t doing it”.
But what they found was that they couldn’t lower their premiums, not that other carriers wouldn’t write their business.
It’s definitely hard to compare - last time I switched I used a website for an agency (I think it was Experian) that got me multiple quotes for the coverage I wanted.
But I didn’t like the impression the article gave which was that shopping didn’t work - it goes without saying that you aren’t going to find better prices if you are already paying the best price available. But you can’t know you have the best price until you shop.
This agency represents twenty-two insurance companies. I have a hard time believing the other twenty-one companies would put up with that. If the agency was intentionally steering customers to one company, the other companies would withdraw from the agency. If the agency was accepting payments from that one company and lying to direct customers away from the others, there would probably be legal action.
I will also note that I’ve been with this agency for around thirty years. In that period they have twice contacted me on their own initiative and told me that I could switch to one of the other companies they represent and get an equivalent policy for less money.
Also, the more i think about it, the more i suspect that your agent thinks you are more likely to ever get that deductible back if you remain a current customer of progressive. And that’s why he doesn’t want you to move when you have an open claim. And something got garbled in translation.