My husband and I have two cars. One is the every day car and the other is a '73 Mustang convertible that winters in the garage and is only brought out on nice days. The Mustang has a low-mileage policy.
Both cars (plus our house) were insured through State Farm.
State Farm pissed me off. The Jeep (the every day car) needed to be renewed so I decided to switch insurance companies. The Mustang didn’t need renewed so I left it with State Farm.
My State Farm agent keeps calling me demanding to know about the Jeep. I said I switched companies. She asked to where. Then she said that I had to provide the new insurance policy number to prove that the Jeep is insured. If I don’t provide that number, SF will change the Mustang to be our primary vehicle, no longer low-mileage, and the rate will double.
This pisses me off, but I was already pissed off and I admit that my pissed off state might be unreasonable.
So I ask of you, o Dopers, give it to me straight. Who is being reasonable here?
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. They just want to make sure you still have the Jeep and are driving it, otherwise you could be driving the other car as a primary but trying to continue paying the lower rates.
I hate State Farm, mostly because they tried to talk me into keeping a $40/month non-owners car insurance policy that I couldn’t afford after my car was totalled and I told them I had no intention of getting a new one any time in the forseeable future. They told me all these horror stories about how I’d have to pay a million dollars a month for insurance if I cancelled and then got another policy later. I kept it for awhile because I used to borrow the room mate’s car, then when my parents made some changes to their insurance policy last year (I had a separate policy, but my dad was still listed as a driver on my insurance) they informed me OH YEAH you can’t drive the car of any males under 25 unless you pay extra. I have no idea why it would matter if the driver was male and/or under 25 or not, since I’m a 24 year old female and I’m the driver being insured, and was really pissed that they didn’t tell me that when I got the policy – because my boyfriend is 22 and I did drive his car a couple of times when he was sick and I needed to go get him medicine. Fortunately the former room mate was 25, so I was never in any danger driving his vehicle.
To be fair, they did give me a really good settlement on my totalled car, and they told the insurance company of the lady that rear-ended me to stuff it (she slammed into me from behind and they tried to say I was 50% liable; State Farm got them to accept 100% liability). But I don’t like their tactics for retaining customers. I suspect this practice may not be unique to State Farm, though.
What strikes me as a little weird is the agent equating second car=low-mileage car.
Surely the definition of a ‘low-mileage’ car is based on the amount of miles it is driven.
I’d ask for a definition of what ‘low mileage’ means. If it is tied to actual miles driven then any connection to the Jeep is none of their business. If not, then I guess you would be free to drive the snot out of the Mustang and still pay a low-mileage rate, which doesn’t seem to make sense.
What’s also funny is the agent said I needed to prove I wasn’t driving the Mustang to work. But I work five miles from home. I could drive it to work and still have it be a low-mileage car, easily.
I have Allstate Insurance on my car and was told that I need to provide proof if I wanted to get the low-mileage discount. (I get the oil changed at Jiffy Lube, so the receipt will work. Each receipt shows the mileage at the last half dozen oil changes and the dates of each.)
As for your question, no, I don’t think they’re being unreasonable. They could very well have a policy that the “second car” discount you were getting on the Mustang was contigent on having all of your vehicles insured by them. Now you might ask if you could get a low-mileage discount with State Farm by proving the mileage on the car.
IIRC, it’s the law (in some states) to report to the authorities when a policy is cancelled, since the authorities keep track whether someone’s insured or not, which has a bearing on whether they get to remain licensed and registered.
And that works so well, doesn’t it? Certainly there are no unlicensed, uninsured drivers on the road. :rolleyes:
My friend was recently rear-ended by a woman with a suspended license (alcohol is suspected) and as a result she hit the car in front of her, and that woman also had a suspended license!
So, in a three-car accident, two of the drivers shouldn’t have been on the road!!
Be unpleasant if you have to. Remind them that if they want to pursue that policy the easiest thing for you to resolve the issue to your satisfaction is to move the Mustang to your new provider.
Note: I had to do none of this when I moved from Geico to Allstate in 2004.
Never let a vendor start ordering you around. They’re trying to control the discussion. Keep them off balance and guessing.
It seems that the reason you switched the Jeep in the first place was that State Farm pissed you off. Now they’re pissing you off even more—even though they might be well within the bounds of normal insurance company behavior.
Why don’t you just pull the Mustang from State Farm and insure it with the same company as the Jeep?
Yes, they’re being nosy, and yes, that’s reasonable. They’re cutting you a break on the Mustang, based on it being a car that neither of you uses for primary transportation. (Plus, you probably had a multicar discount on the rates for both cars.) Now, afatk, the Mustang is the only car in the family which would make it your primary source of transportation. That makes it far more likely to get in a wreck, and means you need to pay quite a lot more for it to be profitable for them to continue your coverage. It’s called covering their asses.
If it makes you feel any better, when my license was suspended pending medical review, I was still on my parents’ policy. Their insurance dropped them and would only reinstate them after we sent in proof that I did not live in their house, had a valid license, and had insurance in my own name. The rationale was that they didn’t want an unlicensed person driving a car they covered, because any wrecks would automatically come to them. Makes sense, even though my parents were massively pissed about not getting a chance to send in any documentation or drop me from their insurance before getting cancelled. They flatly refused to go back and actually found a much better deal elsewhere for the house and cars.
I’m an insurance agent in New York State. State Farm and other companies do this in order to protect the client from DMV fines resulting from cancelling the insurance on a vehicle without turning in the license plates.
Are they actually refusing to delete the Jeep without proof that it’s insured elsewhere? Give them proof of the new insurance and be done with it.
Also, you might want to put the '73 Mustang on a antique auto policy. These policies generally offer much better coverage (liab, comp, collision) at super low rates.
Since this has come up I will post my LIFE Lesson here.
Back in the summer of 2001, I totalled out our 1993 Ford 250 econoline.
We bought a few months later a 1993 150 Econoline. Got the papers on it, it all looked ok to us with a quick glance ( and in all fairness, when we got the paperwork on it, it was probably around September 11th. So, we weren’t really focused as one can imagine.And it was just a shit year for us with one brother dying another brother in the hospital for months, my accident then my husband nearly totalled his car, then he had to lay off a bunch of people at the office. Then september 11th. It was a shitstorm. Focused, we were not.)
Went through the same agency.
Then, about 15 months later, for one reason or another, I was looking at our auto insurance coverage. Not sure why. Something jumped out at me for some reason that I still cannot figure out, but one vehicle was a e250 the new one a 150. It made me go out with the paper work and compare the VIN numbers.
THEY were wrong. :eek:
The insurance company (AAA) had been insuring our old van for that entire time.
It was a clerical mistake on their part and we were not that diligent in that matters. But if something had happened, it would have been a mess.
When I went to my local AAA branch and showed them the paperwork from the old totaled out van to the new purchased van paperwork, they were exceptionally quiet and tense about the entire matter. It was all resolved in 10 minutes, but had I/we been more alert all that time ago, it would have been for the best.