Since 1977 insurance has been a big part of my life. Especially since it is costing me an arm and a leg to keep buying it. For years the insurance industry has been telling us how they save us money. Yet it seems that every time things were going well along came a rate hike. They said it was because costs were going up. Well what has happened to all the money I have paid into the system.

My insurance carriers have paid one claim to my family. That was $550 paid to a body shop after a deer ran in front of my car during the wee hours of the morning. I paid more in premiums that year than was paid out in the claim. As a whole we have had only 2 speeding tickets and 1 wreck in a combined 68 years of driving experience between my wife and I. I do not count my children but they have not had any tickets or accidents either.

So why do I keep getting rate hikes when all the advertising tells me that they can set me $500 over my current carrier.

Today I spent all day getting quotes from insurance carriers. My current carrier is Allstate. For our cars we currently pay $103.76 per month. That is over $1200 per year. We do not have original cars and the cars we have are both paid for completely so we carry the required insurance by law with additional liability coverage just in case. I spent a lot of time today getting quotes. About 45 minutes to hold out all the online forms and 4 hours fending off phone calls which started less than an hour after completing my first online compose.

I was really surprised at how expeditiously the response was actually. And of course the first question from everyone was when do you want your new insurance to go into do. The one thing that bothered me is that my current company even called me and offered me a quote.

Now you shouldn’t be surprised at the results. In fact no company wanted to actually give me a quote that I could hold them to. Every quote that I received had a disclaimer on it. All of the disclaimers basically said the same thing. They said that this quote is not binding until the policy is actually issued and may go up after we have completed your checks. What checks I gave them all the information that was requested what are they going to do now? Well the biggest thing it seems is your credit rating. Poor credit results in higher premiums even if you have a handsome driving picture. (Our credit is just average I guess at approximately 688) One representative actually told me if my credit was over 700 they would discount the policy after the first 6 months. All but one would not let us pay except by automatic draft from our checking account. I asked about bundling our house insurance for additional discounts and two of the agents said they couldn’t do it but would make a price and a local agent would contact us for that.

I was really kind of disappointed in the level of care that I got. Especially after all the money they are spending on commercials to get me to call. The agents I spoke with were not really agents at all but were “customer representatives” and any questions out of the ordinary would have to be relayed to a licensed agent. So for all the big talk about trust and suited hands and saving money it all comes down to a really big company spending an terrible lot of money on advertising and very itsy-bitsy money on actually delivering a quality product at a decent price.

All said and done. I will conclude where I am for the time being. No single company could save me more than $100 on my yearly cost and no single company was willing to provide me reasons why they were not saving me the promised $500.

When you need insurance. Pull out your local phone book. Call all your friends and family and regain someone that has a good reputation for service. Don’t contemplate to the lizard in a suit that steals money from the boss’s desk. Look to a quality reputation.