Insurance Rant

[Fishindude77]

Got the annual bill for homeowners insurance on my hunting cabin last week approx. $2400. Thought that sounded high, so I looked it up and paid right at half of that amount last year.
Called my agency and of course can't talk to the boss, just got his receptionist who could not provide any explanation for the the price increase. Told here I was upset that I hadn't gotten any phone call, email or text warning of a big rate increase and / or a reason for such.
After ten plus years with this company and zero claims I explained that I'm going to shop the price.

In the last couple days I've gotten a quote from another agency in the area. Coverages, etc. look fine and the price is slightly less than what I was paying a year ago, so told them I would go ahead with it.

In todays mail I get a new bill from the original insurer $1600 for the same policy. They lowered the price $800 with no explanation. I can only assume the receptionist told the boss and he then worked his magic and sent a new lower bill.
Zero phone calls or communication and zero explanation of why. I'm typically a pretty loyal customer and slight price increases can be expected but the fact that the insurance man won't even call and communicate anything has me moving on. Very poor way to do business.


Here at home, my previous agent (now retired) would call me in annually and we would do a sit down review of all coverages and policies, rates, etc.
Seems this would be the prudent thing to do for any agent that wants to hang on to business long term.

[ua_guy]

If it's State Farm I've had nothing but disappointing interactions with them in the last 6 months. Our agent and his office staff used to be good. 20 years of business with them. But in addition to State Farm sucking as a company lately (they had to be sued in California for delaying/witholding payment for fire damages legally owed per their policies), the local agent's office up here has just been putting out garbage. Mistake after mistake, and I've had to constantly harass their office to follow up on stuff. Nail in the coffin was an auto claim I had back in November. Holy Moses, the level of stupid. I ended up losing my temper and burning the adjuster to the ground and got our local office involved and wasn't too pleasant with them either. I'm forgiving with mistakes to a point but when I have to harass people to do their job, simple things, and they keep dropping the ball? I went Full Metal Jacket.

[kork13]

Insurance has been shooting through the roof the last couple years. Higher rebuild/repair costs (both labor & materials, both home & auto); higher frequency & destructiveness of various natural disasters, etc. (much of which gets covered through insurance coffers); these terms have been growing rapidly over the last decade, leading insurance companies to continually raise rates significantly to bolster/recover their coffers (/profits). Many sub-factors play into those macro issues, but those discussions may get more heated.

Fishindude, especially since they’re still mailing you with updates … I’d just make sure that you affirmatively cancel with the previous insurer, to ensure they don’t continue trying to claim you owe them unpaid premiums as they assume you’re accepting their new offer (I’ve seen many scummy shops try that cap).

[srblanco7]

I recently shopped my insurance bundle (4 cars, home, and umbrella) - this time went with a broker rather than a captive (single company) agent. Was able to trim my bill by $1500/year utilizing the broker. Certainly, the annual savings made the switch worthwhile, but recent engagements with my prior insurer had me a bit frustrated and ready to switch.

Notably, when I reviewed our prior insurer's policy documents I noted that our car insurance policies were up to date, but that the insurer had failed to copy the updated list of insured vehicles over to our umbrella policy. Also, when I sent them an email cancelling the policy, the reply was that "...you had some benefits that you could of used to lower your rate." The fact that they never let me know about these "benefits" was a pretty solid indicator that any loyalty was solely on my part. Never again will I go with a captive agent as I don't believe there's any "loyalty" in the insurance business. I'll work with a broker and shop as frequently as needed to keep our costs under control.

[ua_guy]

One thing while shopping is to look into line-by-line policy coverage detail on the policies they quote and compare to what you have now. It takes time/energy and a lot of understanding, but it's worth it. If you find what appears to be a much cheaper homeowners policy, for example, there could be a reason it's cheaper. Certain coverages may be missing, i.e. if you had water/utility coverage previously, it might be missing on that new policy. Or extended property replacement cost for HCOL areas, scheduled personal property coverage if you have valuables, ordinance coverage if you have an older home that would need to be brought up to code (significantly improved) if it was being rebuilt. Actual replacement value coverage for your roof, not depreciated or actual cash value cost. Things like that. These are called endorsements, and your policy will list the ones you have and tell you what is included and excluded.