Car Insurance

[Kerry F]

Anybody notice a large rate increase on car insurance?  I just got my last six month premium discounted for five years accident-free, ticket free and now this new renewal period it went up higher than it was before the discount.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

Same scenario here and my Allstate 6-month premium went to $681 in January from $633 in June.  So about $100/year.  I didn't even notice.  I have homeowner's and an umbrella policy with them, too, so so much for multi-coverage discounts.   Time to shop and see.

[Mary Jo Cochran]

There is an insurance company called Amica.    It is definitely lower.  (I no longer qualify).

[Kerry F]

Mary Jo, I used to have Amica.  I loved them.  When I moved to another state a few years ago, it wasn't offered there.  Now, though they are twice as much as other insurers.

My agent says they all went up due to the losses..............storm losses!  So they're dinging car insurance policyholders for that, which just isn't right.

Amica just quoted me a couple weeks ago and couldn't come close to what I am paying.

My premium with Progressive just went up $132 a year and no tickets or claims.

[Mary Jo Cochran]

I have esurance(?).  I think they are a part of Progressive.  It is $125 a month.  I hit a pedestrian (three years in March).  I only had the insurance like four months.  (I was not charged).  The adjustors were pretty good in handling the situation and in talking with me.  The guy was expected to die, but didn't.  They paid him the $10,000 policy I had.  As they said, you don't want to get four years down the road, he finds a lowlife attorney, and files suit.  People's memories change.  We're going to give him the money and it's over.  I thought for sure the insurance would go way way up, but it didn't.

[Kerry F]

Well, I was paying $82 a month and it just went up to $93 a month with Progressive.   I'm at $500 deductible on comp and collision and I'm thinking of upping the comp to $1000 and getting just the minimum on liability.
I'm a good driver.   I'll keep the uninsured motorist. 

[Alice Clark]

Your uninsured motorist limits are usually matched to your liability limits by most companies.  Wawanesa, which can be one of the less expensive insurances (only insures good drivers), was capping their uninsured motorist.  I do know they did add an increased option to $100,000 at some point.  If you live somewhere where there are lots of uninsured drivers, you do want to keep that up as high as you can.  We are insured with Liberty Mutual because they have a 500/500 policy so at least our uninsured stays at that level.  Most companies topped out at 300/100 and then expected you to get an umbrella for a million (the last time I checked, which is when we switched to Liberty Mutual), but no longer matched your uninsured/underinsured to the umbrella.

[Martha R]

I just switched to GEICO.   I sound like a commercial.   I had 21st Century for 20 years and we added our teenager, and it was really expensive. Recently I shopped around and I save $1100 a year using GEICO.   Now they would only insure us for six months at a time.  So we will see how it goes.   But I just couldn't pass that up.   I have no tickets or accidents.

[Rhonda Hall Breuwet, RDR CRR CLR]

when we moved from Jacksonville to a suburb of Tampa, ours automatically went up $1,000 a year.  Every renewal period with Progressive, it went up.  We ended up changing to State Farm because we have our homeowners through them.  I can't figure out why in the hell my insurance on a car I have had for 11.5 years now is pretty much the same rate as it was brand new.  I mean, really?  Adding the kid on was killer.  $2500 bucks a year.  She's fixing to turn 21 in March, so I'm praying it goes down.  All our insurance should go down in a few months.  We are building a home one county over, and rates are lower there.  With Tampa having a HUGE amount of staged accidents, insurance is just ridiculously expensive.  I think we are third in the country for staged accidents.

[Mary Jo Cochran]

About the staged accidents, I have had about five small depos regarding those.  The pedestrian I hit, I had a Cougar (cool looking sporty car).  Three different groups of people (one group being his friends) said he took off running across Fowler Avenue (real big road), across the median, across two more lanes, and jumped on my car. I didn't even know I had actually hit someone.  I just heard a clunk, clunk,clunk on the hood.  The windshield shattered, I was getting rained on with the shattering windshield.  I had to put my hands up to shield my eyes.  I took my foot off the gas and I was slowing down.  When  it stopped raining glass I pulled over.  I had to sit there for a minute, then was outside the car, trying to figure out what happened.  The whole inside of the car was covered with slivers of glass.  A group of people were back farther from where I had come from, so I walked back there.  And there he was.  People had moved him to the crosswalk median.  The police were already there.

[Kerry F]

I eneded up switching from Progressive to Safeco. Got a rate just $15 more a year than I was paying with Progressive before they just raised the rate.

[Janiece Young]

After I saw this post I checked with my insurance company.  I live in Kansas.  My car insurance rate is still the same.  It's really low here.  I think I pay about $50 per month.  I have all the bells and whistles.  I do have my homeowners and car with State Farm so I get a discount for that and I'm accident free for over 20 years so that gives me a discount too.

[Kerry F]

State Farm does have really low rates for long time customers.  I had them for 25 years and dropped them because I had to sue them to pay my medical bills for a neck injury in an accident that wasn't my fault.