What a racket: The great insurance pricing scam
Posted By RichC on November 6, 2013
I had a somewhat frustrating day dealing with insurance policies and realized that we’ve been overpaying for a very long time … unless I’m missing something?
It started with a simple phone call to verify that a 15 year term life insurance policy was indeed expired. A call to the Select Quote people confirmed I was correct and that they merely sent a letter stating that they “may be able to rewrite the policy.” Eventually the polite no pressure conversation ended, but with the sale pitch that Select Quote now quotes auto and home policies too. I thought, well I have time and I haven’t really shopped the current company for a long time … like 40 years! Eventually, the apples to apples quote came back on both my car policy and homeowners showing a savings of over $1000 a year if I switched to Progressive. Hmm … “we must have missed something” I thought? No … the quote even increased my homeowners coverage by $100,000 and I didn’t even need to pay a full year in advance in order to avoid the service fee and additional charges my current company tacks on.
I asked the San Diego based rep to send me the information in an email and that I would talk it over with Brenda … although really I wanted to double check the numbers with our current policy. Maybe do a “discount double check” by giving my long time Liberty Mutual insurance agent a call — ended up working with one of his assistants. She politely thanked me for being a long time loyal customer and suggested that she could re-quote my auto policy … something I figured was done regularly? Obviously not … since after the re-quote my auto policy dropped a full $1000 annually. Huh??? How can that be? Same cars, same company, same coverage … but a change of 40% just by re-quoting. As Shakespeare would say, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark“ at least when it comes to working with insurance companies. I’m not sure I want to stay with Liberty Mutual anymore?
Lesson: Take the 30 minutes each year to hold your insurance company accountable.
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