We’ve been with Liberty Mutual for literally decades.
We live in a DC suburb of Virginia.
And our car insurance is insane. 300 a month now, for 2 cars (a 1998 Civic with no collision coverage, and a 2006 CRV which does still have collision).The 300 a month supposedly reflects a multi-policy discount (we have home and umbrella coverage) and an employee affiliate discount.
We have 3 drivers, one of whom is 24 years old. He had a minor fender bender when he was 18 or so; he was at fault. When he started driving our insurance went up about 1200 a year. It’s risen steadily every year, despite any further claims. He turns 25 in a few weeks.
I think we’re being totally ripped off. We also have home insurance and an umbrella policy through them. The home insurance more than doubled in 8 years, when I called them to sort things out with the kid getting his license, suddenly the home insurance was slashed in half again.
I got a quote from another company, less than 200 a month for similar auto coverage. Dunno how much their home and umbrella insurance rates would be.
Do companies bait-and-switch? As in, if we go with another company, will our rates there go up every year far beyond inflation rates, until we have to jump ship again?
We’ve been with Geico for many years and even tho our cars get older, our premiums rise. I’ve gotten on-line quotes from different companies and they are either lots more or nearly the same as we’re paying now. The prices rise because of people driving without insurance, because the costs of repairs rise, and because the companies can raise rates since we have to have insurance to drive.
Many of the “save money now” companies won’t cover us as we have drivers under 25 in our household. High school aged kids crimp the options. Fortunately my 22 yo got his performance sports car on his own policy but he had to meet our company’s coverage level our I’d have had to pay extra.
I went from State Farm to Progressive recently and my premium decreased by 50%. What is more, the amount of coverage I had, which State Farm thought was bare bones, was rated “too much” by Progressive and I was able to drop another $15 by going to their recommended level. Finally, the on-line process was incredibly easy whereas State Farm’s was impossible.
Having said that, there is no way around high premium if you have young drivers in the household. When my son turned 16 my insurance doubled overnight. Now that he’s out of the house it’s back to something a lot more affordable.
The only way to know is to ask several companies for quotes for all of your insurance. Spell out the exact insurance requirements (limits, deductibles, etc.) you have, so you get apple to apple comparisons. You may find using an independent insurance broker helpful.
Maybe. If so, shop rates again.
Couple of other thoughts. Consider dropping the collision on the 2006 CR-V. Consider raising your deductibles. Consider having the 24 year old kick in $100 per month. All of those will help.
If possible, find a broker. I use one and wouldn’t go back. You let them know what you’re looking for and THEY do all the shopping for you and recommend the best fit. Mine will also recommend adjustments to coverage (too much, too little etc) that I wouldn’t have done on my own. They’ll also have access to discounts and in many cases can either answer questions directly or be able to get answers faster than you can.
And one of the best parts of it, at least for me, is that every few years I can call up and have her shop around for me.
A good example of what a broker can do: A few years back I felt the rates were getting too high so I told her I wanted her to check out other companies. A few days later she had me set up with a new company for my home, car and umbrella, but put my motorcycle with someone else. When I asked her why, she explained that the company she’s recommending doesn’t like bikes and even with the bundle discount having everything at one place, it was cheaper to put the bike elsewhere (Geico IIRC).
Now, I’m not saying I couldn’t have figured that out on my own, but I’m not sure it would have even crossed my mind…and she just knew it.
Also, they’ll get quotes from (good) companies you may not even know exist. They go far deeper than Geico, AmFam, State Farm etc. I think the last two places she used for me was Acuity and Travelers.
There is a downside to using a broker (or even an agent, as opposed to doing it online). They earn a commission based on your premiums. Because of that, the higher your premiums, the more money they make so often they’ll push you to make claims (which can drive up your rates) for things that you might otherwise ignore (ie, fender bender that you’d normally just pay cash for).
Having said that, overall I think a broker is the way to go. At least give one a call and see what they have to say. If you know anyone that owns a business, they may be able to recommend their broker.
Thanks! Couldn’t reply sooner due to the boards taking the weekend off!!
I think we went through a broker 30ish years back when shopping for insurance for our HOA (not around here). Interesting point on the broker pushing you to screw yourself :(.
We already have 1,000 deductible on the CRV; we could drop the comprehensive on it (we did so on the Civic a few years back, obviously). It’s probably only worth 4-5 thousand bucks at this point. I’ll have to see what that would do to our rates. I need to make sure they list my son’s car as garaged in his college town starting 2 weeks from now also, as that’ll likely lower the rates a titch.
The one big company I did an online quote with, I made the mistake of giving my phone number. Within a half hour I had a phone call from them. I didn’t recognize it so I didn’t answer. An hour later, they called again. An hour after that, again. That time I picked it up, told them in no uncertain terms that I was just trying to get numbers and please quit pestering me. They haven’t called since
Interestingly though, they did send an email recommending umbrella insurance (which we do want) and bundling home in with the car as we’d get a discount.
Yes, yes, yes. Find a good independent agent, and they’ll do all the legwork for you. They know exactly what changes to coverage and deductibles will have the biggest impact on cost, which ones you’ll regret later, and which carriers meet your needs best.
Ask how many carrier appointments they have (this is how many choices you’ll have). I think you want at least four, and in larger markets the typical agent will have many more.
As a person who represents injured people, I concur that umbrella insurance is very important. Especially, get umbrella on your UIM converge (protects you if under insured or uninsured person hurts you, which is depressingly common). Not all carriers offer it. (mine will only offer $1 million)
Interesting - I had not heard of umbrella covering the uninsured motorist portion of the regular insurance. I guess this would boil down to me suing “myself” to cover injuries. I’d always assumed it was just for liability purposes - to keep us from being wiped out if someone sues us.
I went to LM’s web page today to dink around with the various coverages. Changing my son’s automotive usage from “commuting” to “personal” raised the rates 250 bucks a year which is just insane. Setting his comprehensive coverage deductible up to 1,000 (from 100 - no clue how THAT got left on there) lowered things 60 whole bucks.
So I called LM - and making the same tweaks plus one or two others (e.g. we don’t need towing - we have AAA, and my son will be away at college in 2 weeks) would have saved us… 300 dollars. That’s less than 10% of our bill. They had already factored in my son turning 25 in a few days. I could have insisted on getting turned over to someone to completely re-rate my account (which saved us 1,000 a year on homeowners’ insurance a few years back) but I just didn’t want to bother right then.
My company had a link on their “affiliate employee discounts” page which me to a broker that works with a number of larger insurers. Not Allstate or State Farm, but I got quotes from Progressive, Travelers, Liberty Mutual, and MetLife.
Interestingly, their figures for LM were massively lower than we’re paying now - but as the fellow I spoke with told me, we couldn’t get that rate unless we left LM for 6 months or so. Of all the companies, the quote for auto insurance through LM was actually lower even than Progressive. But, no can do because LM would rather lose a long-time customer than treat that customer fairly.
So the auto insurance looks to be about over 1,000 a year. About a third of what we’ve been paying. Less than we were paying even before we added my son to the policy. Homeowner’s insurance looks to be similar - somewhat cheaper but not dramatically. The umbrella policy looks to be 1/3 of what we’ve been paying, also - 200 vs 600.
So, um, yeah. We’re going to switch.
Here’s a general question: if someone borrows your car occasionally, are you covered by your own insurance? The person in question does not own a car and so does NOT have her own insurance.
I wasn’t even sure if I should mention that. To be fair, even an agent for a [single] insurance company is likely working on commission and will make more money if you’re rates are higher.
Auto insurance premiums are pretty much always going to exceed general inflation rates. You’d have to look specifically at the inflation rates of medical costs and car repairs and, the cost of settling losses. i.e. Employee salaries and benefits, lawyer fees, operational expenses, etc. As you can imagine, medical costs and car repair costs have risen dramatically.
If I may semi-hijack this thread for a moment, I will never use Liberty Mutual because the stupid little song on their advertisements (“Liberty, Liberty, Li-ber-ty, Li-ber-ty”) is the single most irritating ditty on the planet. It’s not even an earworm, it’s more like an ear-Ebola-virus. All the actual earworms in my head curl up and die when they hear it.
It is not at all “you suing yourself.” You’re making a claim with your insurance company for damages exceeding the policy limits of the guy who hit you.
In a recent case my client got creamed by a young man with $25,000 in insurance. He had $100,000 UIM policy. He made a claim for the $25,000 and after they paid it, he went to his own insurance company and got another $100,000 for the damage the underinsured motorist caused. If he had had an umbrella policy, he could have been more fairly compensated (his damages easily exceeded $1M). Moral of the story, you never know who is going to to hurt you or how much insurance they’ll have, so get as much UIM as you can. It’s relatively cheap.
The emu does not add to the entertainment value of their adverts. Geico’s gecko is much cuter, and Farmers’ “we’ve seen it all” ads are funny too. LiMu emu? Not so much.
I have my insurance for my farm, my car, my rental house, and an umbrella with TN Farm Bureau. I have full coverage on my car for $60/mo. No other drivers, though. In fact, I mentioned to my agent the other day that I was working from home 4 days a week and they dropped my rates even a little more. When we had hailstorms come through, I already had guys putting on my new roof before my neighbors with State Farm had an adjuster out to look at their roof.
I have my home over-insured a bit, but since it’s 170 years old, to get the craftsmanship and materials used in my house would cost more.
I know you can’t use TN Farm Bureau, but VA also has a Farm Bureau. You don’t need to have a farm to be a customer.
The other downside of using a broker is that most brokers have relationships with specific insurance companies and all their quotes will be from the carriers they deal with, with many major carriers not dealing with independent brokers at all. (I doubt if your agent put your motorcycle with Geico for this reason - Geico agents can’t place anything for any other carriers.)
That said, I recently had a very good experience with an agent placing homeowners insurance. Overall, I think it’s hit-or-miss, and can work out better or worse either way. (A lot depends on how much energy you have to deal with these various quotes.)
An independent agent will have appointments with multiple carriers, while a captive agent (like Geico or State Farm) can place insurance only with their own company. I’m not sure that a choice limited to 10-50 carriers is really a downside compared to a choice limited to one. If you suspect that Geico might be cheapest, you can always fill out the application online for them and let an agent do the work for all the rest. You are still better off than if you tried to comparison shop them all yourself.
As for the concern that an agent is incentivized to get you a higher rate: an agent effectively loses money on the first year of a policy. The commission they earn doesn’t cover the cost of sale; they make money when you renew the policy and stick with them. The few bucks more they might get in commission with a higher rate is greatly outweighed by the goal of making you a happy, returning customer. I’m sure there are a few bad apples out there, but I’ve never dealt with an agent who would take that approach.
[Disclosure: my job is connected to the insurance space, in particular the independent agent channel, and I talk to agents about their business frequently.]
