I’ve always got a retro-refund of my premium from USAA when I don’t make a claim. I hit a deer back in July and I didn’t get one but my rates did go down at renewal time. I have nothing but good things to say about them.
This has been my personal historical approach. I purchased minimum coverage policies from Safe Auto for years, but I tend to drive beaters, and I never had to file a claim with them. Mrs. WeHaveCookies’ car is not a beater, and she prefered the “peace of mind” of comprehensive/collision. When we hit the deer under the previous carrier, it was worth it. There was a lot of damage and they covered it all with a $250 deductible. Since then, it has been far from worth it, but you just never know when you’re going to find yourself on either side of that unique line in the sand formed by the idiosyncrasies of the particular carrier/policy/state combination. What I do know is how jagged and bitter the pill is to repeatedly find oneself on the sucking-ass side of that line.
Because insurance companies are scum. That’s the justification.
We lost our chimney back in early 2000. Blew clean off the roof (it was one of those metal pipe chimneys) in a major windstorm - same storm that led to a car near my office getting a new tree-induced moonroof. Cost 3K to fix (actually, per the repair guy, half of that was the chimney, half was remedying the shoddy construction tactics that led to the chimney being blow-off-able, but the insurance company paid it all anyway minus our then-small deductible).
18 months later, our car was broken into and a CD player (loose) and bunch of CDs were stolen from Typo Knig’s car. We foolishly ran the CD player and CD through on our homeowner’s insurance. The car damage was significant - nearly a grand, IIRC, as they not only broke the window but they damaged the door frame.
14 months after that (and after they’d already done one annual renewal with no quibbles), we went to move to a new house. Routine call to the insurance company to set up the insurance and “Uh, I’m not sure we can write that policy for you because you’ve had 2 claims”. A few panicked days, and learning that we were now persona-non-grata at any reputable insurance company, and fearing we’d have to go into a high-risk pool with all the other scum-of-the-earth (read, "people who had also had random stuff happen to them that was totally beyond their control) and have insurance only on the house structure not on the contents… and that our only way of avoiding that was if the current insurer deigned to keep us on. (That’s ultimately what happened, when I pointed out that I had had car insurance through them for, oh, 20 years at that point and they’d never paid a dime except for that window breakin).
So I hear your pain. Random “acts of God” stuff should NOT be countable in whether you get raped by the insruance companies. I can see, honestly, if you’re someone who files a claim at every little thing, or live in a high-risk area, or whatever. I could see them penalizing us for the breakin because maybe we habitually park our car in a bad neighborhood. But who expects, or can prevent, a chimney blowing off the roof, or a deer hopping in front of the car?
I made two claims in less than a year with 21st Century and neither was my fault and they didn’t raise my rates.
Gettng your money back? Insurance isn’t a savings account, y’know.
Yeah but unless he is a theif with a iTunes subscription he is stuck watching 42 episodes of the Rosie O’Donnell Show 
THAT is unfortunate!
This is one little silver lining to the cloud. He scored 5000+ “grrls with guitars”, country, and celtic songs, and a half dozen Pixar shorts. Likely not popular with the theft and pawn-shopper crowd.
Why are people so against insurance companies making money? I’ve never understood this. It’s a company. Like other companies. They have employees. They have shareholders. Just like thousands of other companies. But run a story in a paper where an insurance company has made more than $7 profit in a year, and everyone goes bananas.
Refunding money!? Please. You bought a product for a period of one year. You have purchased (in Ontario, anyway) the repair or replacement value of your car (minus deductible), medical care if required, and a $1,000,000 cheque to use against any claims that may be made against your for damages to a third party for which you may be liable. You got what you paid for. What refund?
Reminds me of a homeowner who didn’t have home insurance. His house burned to the ground. He went back to his last insurer, with whom he’d cancelled his policy years before, and told them they should rebuild his house. Why? Because he’d paid them all that money and never used it!
Oh, and I forgot to add that getting your rates increased for hitting a deer is messed up. That should never happen. Your broker sucks.
I should have said that everything I posted was true for my area. The government of Alberta stepped in to somewhat hold back the insurance agencies here recently with a joke of a rollback against them, because even the government agreed that the insurance scam here was getting egregious.
Government says you have to have it, and the insurance companies say you can’t claim against it, or they’ll penalize you, regardless of how much money you’ve paid into it. Sounds like a scam to me. If your insurance companies don’t act like this where you are, consider yourself lucky.
The government says you have to carry insurance because, while many people drive, precious few of them can afford to actually pay even a physical damage claim, never mind a liability claim.
If someone’s in an at-fault accident, why wouldn’t their rates change? Do you think someone who has had an at-fault claim, someone who has caused an accident, should be paying the same rate as someone who hasn’t, all other factors being the same?
As has been pointed out, it’s not a savings account. You buy a product at a predetermined cost for a predetermined period to offset a possible claim during that period.
Parenthetically, there’s not many insurance companies that make money solely on their personal auto business (I think Chubb does). It’s usually the commercial business that pays the bills. There’s just not enough money in auto premiums to pay claims.
This is mostly true. In auto insurance, it is not unusual for a company to lose money in a given year. Profits of 1% are cause for celebration. That’s why most companies do not handle just auto, because its not profitable.
You got a cite for that load of bull shit? I do and it says you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.
Here is the actual report in .pdf
Thieves suck. Insurance companies suck. I would definitely have words with your wife’s HR department. At the very least, they should have notified all employees that there has been a rash of car break-ins. At the most, they should have hired security to protect their employees’ cars.
We have thieves in our neighborhood that are breaking into cars. And then they use the garage door openers to gain access into the houses while the homeowners are sleeping. Yikes.
I feel for you, Cookies.
I almost included her new employer in my rant, but decided that the list was already long enough and my vitriol already copious enough, and there are extenuating circumstances that may or may not prove to provide them the benefit of the doubt.
Mrs. WeHaveCookies is working part-time as a barista for a (very) small “Mom and Pop”, socially progressive coffee house near downtown Atlanta. A rarity in this Starbucks/Caribou world, which is exactly why she was attracted to working there. She spent the past 3 years working for Starbucks, including managing her own store, but eventually got fed up with their corporate bullshit. She’s trying to concentrate on composing music at home, so she just wanted a no hassle part-time job that she would enjoy but not ever have to take home with her.
The coffee house is located in a “transitional neighborhood”, because the owners are trying to lead by example and give back to the community. They don’t have much extra money to throw at anything other than more mocha mix and soy milk. They do have a couple of cameras that they intend, someday, to install over their small parking lot where the breakins have been occuring. It just hasn’t seemed to be very high on their priority list, but we’re trying to convince them otherwise. She’s also now parking in a very small spot much closer to the shop that is a bit more secure.
Well, I’ll take your OP in the spirit in which it was intended, and give you sympathy.
I’ll never forget the Allstate agent who advised me, in an accident where I had injuries, to not make a claim and my rates wouldn’t go up.
Then, of course, next year my rates doubled. When I asked why, they said “Because you had a single-car accident” (in a snowstorm I dinged the fender going into a ditch). I said “But you told me if I didn’t make a claim, then my rates wouldn’t go up”, and the agent looked at me right in my face with a shit-eating grin and said “prove it”.
Then of course, I was told I couldn’t make a claim for my injuries as it was beyond some special time-clause in the contract, which I “cheerfully” signed…and being a naive, broke young college student, there was no chance of me suing them (being a mean, bitter rich old lady now, of course, I’d be getting a fire-breathing lawyer and at least trying to do something…)
USAA is awesome. We have them for both our auto and homeowners insurance. We had a flood from a pipe break in the master bathroom, and then when we had a second flood two weeks later from the AC condensate pump failing, the claims adjuster said that because it affected the same area (it actually also caused new damage, but there was overlap in the areas) they’d just put it in under the same claim and we didn’t have to pay a second deductible. Kick. Ass. I recommend everybody see if they’re eligible.
Not with me at the moment. From a cursory review of the report it would seem that the situation is a little different in CA, at least the last couple years. If I had to guess, I’d say the use of credit reports in recent years has helped improve the loss ratios as well as more stringent risk assessment. The one big thing I noticed in there is all they included were loss ratio and LAE, no other overhead is included in those totals, which can easily account for another 20% or more in total expenses.
Since I have never worked auto insurance in CA I was speaking from my experience on the east coast and reports of national averages. Over the 6 years I worked in auto insurance it was considered a very good thing if we didn’t have total expenses over 100% of paid premiums, we got emails many many times saying that they were impressed that we had dropped our expenses to only 101% since they were expecting 103% for that year from our line of business. That is also why we didn’t just handle auto insurance, because the profit margins were slim to nothing most years.
I understand the need for government legislation to ensure that most people are insured. That’s not the part I have a problem with, but it is part of the scam.
Your rates go up here regardless of whose fault the accident is. The only difference that determination of fault makes is who pays the deductible - you or the other guy’s insurance company. If you make a claim on your insurance and they pay out, your rates are likely to go up. Insurance companies are in the business of making money, not insuring people. If you cause them to pay out some of their money, you are a bad risk (in their eyes) and will be treated as such. Circumstances are not important.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I retract my statement about not getting money back if you never claim being part of the scam. The rest stands, though.
The commercial business is scamming, too.
Are you guys seriously telling me that insurance agencies don’t act like this in other parts of North America? Because I’m not lying to you about how insurance agencies work in Alberta. I am talking from personal experience, and the experiences of people I’ve known and worked with who had no reason to lie to me. I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but this is how it is here.
And I think I’ve taken up enough of Cookies thread with my own personal grudge. Sorry 'bout that, Cookies.
No worries. Have at it. 