motowebmaster

I had been with State Farm since my bike was new, but strangely Progressive is now the low-cost insurer on Honda Interceptors

Anywho, I went ahead and put down the money. For the first time in years, I'm back with Progressive.

State Farm would have been competitive if I had all of my insurance with them, but I've got too many years with my current company (accident forgiveness, discounts, blah, blah).

The Prophet

This is one of those "Mysteries of Lfe" that is very, very aggravating. I have my house, five (5) cars, and two (2) motorcycles all covered under Allstate, and have been with them for 27 years.


Every, and I mean every year, at premium renewal time I have to threaten to pull everything out and go with someone else before my local agent says" Oh, sorry, I see where we made a mistake, yes, maybe we can lower that premium a little."

Note here that in 27 years, we have zero homeowners insurance claims, zero motorcycle claims, and my one son had a minor ($600.00) accident about 7 years ago.


My wife has never had a traffic ticket (54 yrs. old) and my last ticket was way back in 1973 (61 in a 45)! Neither of us has ever had an accident.

All that said, you would think they would absolutely love to have us. Instead, we are required to submit threats every year. Keeps 'em honest I guess. A mystery.

SidecarFlip

I'll unrave the mystery a bit......

Your insurablilty is based on a number of things including computer modeling of your risk factor, credit score (which breaks down to late payments on accounts and the n umber of credit cards you possess) plus the incidents of claims in your geographic location as well as the dollar amounts of those claims plus a number of other things, all stirred into a pot and out comes a rate......

Personally, I would shove Allstate and Progressive up a dog's anus. I have a very good frien who is in the insurance business so I knw about various companies, maybe more than I should but it gives me a good yardstick when buying insurance, especially here in Michigan with our MCCA coverage fund (in simplespeak, no-fault).

I insure my 3 bikes with Allied Insurance, Des Moines, Iowa. They are roughly 2/3rds the price of Progressive for the same limits, Have a AAA rating. Progressive isn't what it's craked up to be and Allstate is had to collect a claim with.

The Prophet

Well Sidecar, if that were correct...

Our credit rating is golden we are told - my wife handles all the bills, and I don't think we've ever made a late payment on anything, no kidding. House and cars and one of the two bikes are all paid off. We have only two credit cards (I'm now at that age (56) where I don't really NEED anything) which we use for convenience, not credit, and as stated prior neither of us has ever had an accident. We live in the far, far "exburbs", meaning in the country, mostly horse farms and corn/soybean farms in our surrounding area. Probably about one square mile per person around here.

In reality, our premiums ARE very low, but nonetheless they try (try) to raise the premiums very year. My conscious settler is that they make good money OFF of folks like us who don't make claims, therefore we shouldn't be the ones who get their premiums raised.

Maybe they should be paying US?

SidecarFlip

Maybe they should.

Insurance companies profile. Always have. It's been a subject of Congressional investigation but has never gotten anywhere because guess where the big lobby & PAC money comes from....Insurance companies...Like AIG interestingly, well, that should be no surprise. Our gummit can't let a company like AIG go down....too much PAC and lobby money involved......

I'll give you a little tidbit about insurance, something that most people don't know, but maybe you do.

If you have more than 3 claims in 5 years for anything with the same carrier, that is, say you have the same carrier for your home, vehicles, motorcycles, boat and vacation home and you have 3 claims in 5 years...they can and will cancel you and you will only be eligible for high risk insurance. For that reason and that reason alone, I have 4 different carriers, one for the farm, one for my rental properties, one for the cars and trucks and one for the bikes.

Speedtrip

I got dropped for the 3 claims wife had an accident, then a year later I backed into her car in the driveway. So I call the insurance Co (Shelter) to ask how I should handle it as one claim or two agent tells me two so I don't have to pay deductible. I do this and as soon as my claim is done they drop me. I had everything on one policy for a long time, now I have different ones for different things.

SidecarFlip

The best part is that when you get dropper or cancelled, you insurability goes down the toilet and you have to pay higher rates, no matter what the reason and you have no recourse whatsoever.

You might explain to the new carrier, the aspects of the cancellation but in actuality, they could care less. That's a travesty and it's not right. It's all about money and risk ratio's and the (companies) could care less.