Posted on 05/23/2025 3:57:37 AM PDT by tired&retired
This is a clip of Senator Hawley holding a hearing on insurance company fraud. It includes All-State and State Farm. At 36 minutes he is questioning the State Farm executive.
Call Jake.
What’s wrong with frat boys?
After Katrina, All-State was even screwing its own employees - I went through a couple “adjusters” (Their motto was, “Your claim has been temporarily disapproved - refile again in 90 days for final disapproval”) and we would have been totally screwed if Mississippi didn’t offer some grant money for a lot of us in the same situation - when we bought the policy, we were told we were covered for anything a hurricane could throw at us....
It apparently never occurred to the Senator that the reaon rates were increased is because the risk cost had humongous gain.
All previous auto cost elements became obsolete as prices for new and used vehicles climbed precipitously. The price for an ordinary pickup, not a wild one with every possible accessory, was in excess of $50 k. The prices ranged upward through $60 and $80k to in excess of $100k.
I had a somewhat sporty car at the beginning of COVID. I received a $50 rebate on my auto insurance. The next billing cycle a got a huge increase. I am like WTF. I am retired and not driving anywhere. My agent retired and the new agent wasn’t responding to emails or phone calls, so I found a lot better deal elsewhere..
++++++++++++
100% true. I was with Allstate for close to 20 years with multiple cars, homes, boat, etc. My total premium went from about $5000 to less than $3000 when I finally ditched them and went to American Family. After a couple years, AMFAM went up for no apparent reason. So I switched to Country Financial. After a couple years, Country stopped using lube and my rates went up so I ditched them. Now I am with State Farm.
It sucks but it is totally worth the effort to get competitive quotes.
There is a major subreddit devoted to trashing USAA.
Nobody is immune to the costs that have driven up insurance rates. Everyone talks about how they can shop around and find a lower rate somewhere else, and then that’s somewhere else raises rates sharply to make up for that initial underprice.
It’s likely that the proper way to shop is not for premium. It’s for service rating. USAA remains in the top 10 perpetually.
Shopping around gets lower coverage costing fewer $$.
It is impossible for the average person to accurately determine the terms of coverage.
If they nickel and dime you over the years, you are more likely to say whatever and pay the increased premiums. A big increase got my attention and got me motivated to look elsewhere..
It is indeed impossible for the average person to understand the small print.
The subreddit devoted to USAA does talk about this a little bit. It turns out that USAA text and their policies generally will lead other insurance companies, meaning their text is lifted and duplicated in their own policies.
Which means the Consumer Reports rating of the companies is rating interpretation of their own policies rather than rating different policy text.
One interesting part of that subreddit are lawyers. They will talk about in their experience who provides good service and who cheats. They are really the only ones who have a sample size large enough to make that determination. The subreddit is filled with personal anecdotes, and there is considerable suspicion that it is also filled with paid actors to try to drag customers away from USAA to the other companies. But it is the lawyer posts that seem to me to be useful because they have sample size. They’ve been involved in so many cases that their impressions are more important than those of actual customers.
This discussion is useless without numbers.
My insurer is State Farm. Been with them for 46 years.
We have a 2017 Ford Escape. We drive about 6,000 miles a year. We have one car, but we do bundle with our homeowners insurance. No accidents that are our fault, but we were hit by a young driver about 3 years ago.
We are paying $135 a month.
Anyone else willing to share?
I think pretty much everything has gone up 50% under Biden, Bidenflation is crushing and it doesn’t decrease.
In the 1970’s I learned the insurance policy of denial, delay, discount of paying claims. It’s all about keeping your money earning a return for the insurance company as long as possible. Every day the money earns a return. There is a reason the first major investment of Buffett was an insurance company. The are a cash cow which feed Warren’s need for investment capital.
We lost our home to a fire in 2005.
We were given 3 options:
1. They will build our home back exactly as it was, with original materials. Since our home had plaster walls and a roof structure made of Dade County Pine, this was going to be very expensive for State Farm.
2. They will give us X amount and we can rebuild it ourselves.
3. They will give us X amount and we can sell the land and buy something else.
We took option 3.
After we agreed to it, State Farm started hedging and saying that they had overstated the amount they could give us. Since we had the amount in writing, we just threatened to show it all to the Insurance Commissioner and let them straighten it out.
Soon after State Farm coughed up all they had originally promised, plus a bit more.
The problem was the adjuster. He was either incompetent or crooked.
In the land of weirdness...6 months later close friends of ours had a house fire as well. They got the same adjuster. He tried to pull the same crap. My friend actually worked in the health insurance industry and reported him to the Insurance Commissioner. Everything went fine after that.
I recently traded in a 16 year old car. I was pay collision insurance thinking the car was worth more than it actually was. I probably should have gone with just liability insurance some years before.
I was an expert witness on a court case relating to a business fire. It was about a $1 million fire and the insurance company refused to pay.
This was in the mid 1980’s and interest rates were high. I destroyed the insurance company expert witness, showing the jury that he was blatantly lying.
I then proceeded to teach the jury with charts how the insurance company internal rate of return on their investments over the period they denied the claim yielded enough income on the amount they denied, to pay the claim in full without digging into principle.
My client was awarded damages in addition to his claim for a total award of $3.8 million.
I’m a fiduciary on this current claim under a POA and considering filing suit as their delay cost me the sales agreement I had signed to sell the property and the property value dropped considerably since the date of claim denial.
Thanks a bunch!
2025 BMW 330 IX about ~$2K a year. My 16 year old Lancer Evolution was about $1.6K a year before I traded it in for the BMW. That was with a $2K deductible. The BMW has some nice power but isn't a high end performance car. It has around 250 HP...
Option 3 was the wise choice.
You do not want to get involved in the complexities of construction—particularly after that kind of tragedy.
You just want a place to live—as soon as possible.
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