Posted on 08/14/2012 9:57:45 AM PDT by surfer
Edited on 08/14/2012 10:00:28 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their **** hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.
I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.
Now, I don’t discount the possibility that Katie was at fault in the accident, but it never really looked that way. The only witness who gave a statement on the day said that Katie had the light, etc. The totality of the evidence left some room for argument, but that will be the case any time there’s a catastrophic car accident that doesn’t happen underneath an array of video cameras.
One indication that the case was pretty open-and-shut was that the other guy’s insurance company looked at the situation and settled with my sister’s estate basically immediately. Now, because the other driver was underinsured, that payment didn’t amount to much, but my sister carried a policy with Progressive against the possibility of an accident with an underinsured driver. So Progressive was now on the hook for the difference between the other guy’s insurance and the value of Katie’s policy.
At which point we learned the first surprising thing about Progressive: Carrying Progressive insurance and getting into an accident does not entitle you to the value of your insurance policy. It just pisses off Progressive’s lawyers. Here I address you, Prospective Progressive Insurance Customer: someday when you have your accident, I promise that there will be enough wiggle room for Progressive’s bottomless stack of in-house attorneys to make a court case out of it and to hammer at that court case until you or your surviving loved ones run out of money.
Which is what Progressive decided to do to my family. In hopes that a jury would hang or decide that the accident was her fault, they refused to pay the policy to my sister’s estate.
Out of a sense of honor, and out of a sense of the cost of my sister’s outstanding student loans, my folks opted to try to go after the money through legal channels. At which point they learned another delightful thing. In Maryland, you may not sue an insurance company when they refuse to fork over your money. Instead, what they had to do was sue the guy who killed my sister, establish his negligence in court, and then leverage that decision to force Progressive to pay the policy.
Now my parents don’t harbor much venom for the guy who killed my sister. It was an accident, and kicking that guy around won’t bring Katie back. But kicking that guy around was the only way to get Progressive to pay. So they filed a civil suit against the other driver in hopes that, rather than going to court, Progressive would settle. Progressive did not. Progressive made a series of offers (never higher than 1/3 the amount they owe) and then let it go to a trial.
At the trial, the guy who killed my sister was defended by Progressive’s legal team.
If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy.
The trial was a real shitshow for my parents, and I did not love it either. As it happens, the jury did find that the other driver was negligent, which, if justice or decency are priorities for Progressive, will result in them finally honoring Katie’s policy. At this point, I hope you’ll forgive me if I wait for it to actually happen.
Don’t buy insurance from Progressive. Not only will you be paying the salaries of people who put my family through the wringer (really a smaller wringer that Progressive attached to the main wringer of my sister’s death), but also when the chips are down, your money will have bought you nothing but a kick in the face.
Once your sister's estate settled with the other guy's insurance - then all is said and done.
Either you mis-stated the facts or you were stupid.
I work in insurance, the coverage in questions is UNDERINSURED motorist coverage - which is specically for the difference between the other party's policy and your coverage - if the at fault party's coverage is less than yours. He may have stated "uninsured" coverage instead of "underinsured," but not sure that warranted the name calling.
The name of the company, plus freakin’ FLO (the most irritating woman on TV) are good enough reasons to stay the heck away from them.
From a link on Progressive's Twitter. They said, "To be very clear, Progressive did not serve as the attorney for the defendant in this case. He was defended by his insurance company, Nationwide."
Maybe, but I have had the opposite problem with Allstate.
They paid 25,000 to a lady that ran into me from behind, when I was stopped a light. She got the ticket, plus 25,000 from my insurance company.
The other time was a minor parking lot accident that the cop said was hard to issue fault to either party.
My insurance paid to fix my car and hers.
I don't know if they would be so happy to hand over money to me if I needed to file a big claim. However, they sure like handing over money to people that hit me.
I ran over something that fell from the back of a truck and it exploded under the right front end of my wife's van. it messed up the transmission and the right front axle/bearings.
The Mechanic told the agent that he should just right it off since the front end was warped and that even the transmission mounts were messed up.
The Progressive agent never told me any of this just that they were going to put in a new transmission and fix the axle.
I tried six (6) times to meet with him about the van and he always found something that interfered with the time.
I found out later that he had them rebuild the transmission and try to straighten the front end.
I ended up putting in two whole new axles before I got rid of the truck.
I have told everyone I can not to buy Progressive ever!
They are the biggest con artist out there!
Good point.....I've been with the same company (Safeco) for twenty years. Made only one claim when some clown opened his car door right in front of my car.
I was found to be 0% to blame - Safeco even got my deductible back.
That was about ten years ago so I've been loyal to them ever since. But now they want to raise my premium by 35%. Been told they can't do that. I am investigating.
Which sounds very odd because the other insurance company had already settled before.
Of course since tweets are non-binding and the case is complete Progressive can tweet whatever mis-information they want without any danger of recourse.
Do you live in a “No Fault” state? That might be the reason, but then I would think that your policy should have a provision for extending your medical payments. Hard to say. Some states are quite different than others.
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Glenn Beck’s people searched the court records, and found that the court allowed Progressive to participate in the defense. It’s in the link on the previous page.
Dug into this deeper. Check this out:
Why would Progressive request the following and get it granted from the court?
It is this 19th day of May, 2011, by the Circuit Court For Baltimore City, hereby ORDERED
1. That Progressive Advance Insurance Company be and is hereby allowed to intervene as a party Defendant.
2. That Progressive Insurance Company is GRANTED all rights to participate in this proceeding as if it were an original party to this case.
And then in court on August 6th...check this out:
At the beginning of the trial on Monday, August 6th, an attorney identified himself as Jeffrey R. Moffat and stated that he worked for Progressive Advanced Insurance Company. He then sat next to the defendant. During the trial, both in and out of the courtroom, he conferred with the defendant. He gave an opening statement to the jury, in which he proposed the idea that the defendant should not be found negligent in the case. He cross-examined the plaintiff’s witnesses. On direct examination, he questioned all of the defense’s witnesses. He made objections on behalf of the defendant, and he was a party to the argument of all of the objections heard in the case. After all of the witnesses had been called, he stood before the jury and gave a closing argument, in which he argued that my sister was responsible for the accident that killed her, and that the jury should not decide that the defendant was negligent.
So as it always is with lying Progressive scumbag traitors...they will twist the truth, tell only partial truths and rely solely on what the definition of “is” is to manipulate the public.
I was rear-ended by a young driver on a busy Friday afternoon rush hour. We were both insured by state Farm. I started running into trouble right away. I only asked $600 for my wrecked 20-year-old Valiant, which had a good body and a working a/c. State Farm offered $100. I went to court with a written estimate from a used parts dealer for the engine of $600.
The judge asked the SF lawyers what was their defense... they had none and the judge gave me $900 plus I got to keep the car.
Then I had to go back to court because they refused to acknowledge my lost wages claim; SF used the same lawyers and they lost that case. SF fired those attorneys.
My medical bills for 'whiplash' were mounting. I compulsively kept accurate records for well over two years. The judge told me that I would need a lawyer from that point on. So we sued for medical, damages, personal loss, etc. SF surrendered the young guy's policy, so we collected the full amount [and the atty got 1/3.] However my earlier judgments in court for my wrecked car and lost wages remained unpaid for some months. State law allows the insurance co. 30 days to satisfy court judgments.
I took a notarized copy of my court judgment and sent it to the state insurance commissioner [Bill Nelson!!!] and asked him to seize their bond and satisfy my judgment. He never even responded to my letter. I was told by a lawyer that in order to collect my judgment I could seize properly identified property up to the value of my judgment. I went to the huge 5-storey SF office building here in Orlando and started writing down inventory numbers of the property I intended to ask the sheriff to seize. A clerk asked me what I was doing, and when I told her she got on the phone immediately with the 'upstairs'. Within 15 minutes some exec came down with a check for the proper amount... think they didn't know who I was?
As in your case, I had good coverage over and above what the other guy was insured for [he had multiple accidents and was only 19 years old.] SF told me plainly that their duty was to defend the other guy against me. I had over 17 years of safe driving. How's that for customer loyalty? I understand in one sense that he was not going to sue me, but still SF stonewalled every claim that I made.
The clincher was two years after we settled. I got a $13,000 bill from the hospital - unpaid. I had $30,000 in medical coverage with SF for each incident. [Of course I had long since dropped SF before they screwed me and put me in a high risk pool.]
Since we had settled the accident claim the medical bills came under breach of contract. My lawyer sued for the medical and got it plus whatever fee he charged... I didn't get anything from that one except my med bills paid.
I never received one dollar from SF that I did not sue for... and after my first suits I had to threaten to seize property in order to get my legal just deserts. As in the settlement of the hospital bill, SF paid much more in the case of each claim than if they had honorably - and legally - dealt with me.
Insurance companies are no real friend of mine. Oh, BTW, while I waited for my first court judgments to be paid I sprayed on the side of my wrecked Valiant: STATE FARM WON'T PAY! I actually saw SF agents discussing my car at one location. hee hee
I suppose the insurance co's figure that most people will get angry and blow their case out of frustration; when one loses their temper in important deals they lose the argument. I am glad I was equal to the task with SF.
Why wouldn't they request to have a lawyer present during the trial? If they're going to be paying most of the money, shouldn't they be sure that the trial doesn't become totally one-sided?
The question is whether or not their lawyer was representing the driver. Progressive says he was only representing the insurance company, not the driver, and provided no evidence at the trial.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/comedian-matt-fishers-tum_n_1775191.html?utm_hp_ref=business
It appears as though Progressive handled this the way they should given the laws of the State. I don't understand why people think they should have just paid out the full amount while there was still question about who was at fault.
lol huff post...Kleon you are either a RINO, progressive or just a plant here.
Thanks for playing...
If you took the time to actually refer and read a reliable source like The Blaze you would see the truth. Just to help you out with a few more facts...Betsy Morgan (former CEO of the HuffPost) joined The Blaze as CEO because the HuffPost was no longer interested in the truth but just more propaganda from the progressives.
Nice talking to you. Less than 90 days and your messiah will be toppled.
There's nothing factually incorrect about the part of the article I was quoting. Even the Blaze article you posted quotes the family's lawyer admitting that Progressive wasn't representing the defendant, which is the point I was making.
He goes on to say, "Progressive did everything in their power to show that their own insured did something wrong." Well, yes. Isn't this what they would have done if the family was able to sue them directly? Surely, it's not an ideal situation for them to have to do this at the trial of the driver in the accident, but that's the way the law is set up. Progressive couldn't have defended their position any other way.
You are pretty daft...FR used to have people that could actually read and not be influenced by propaganda.
Scroll down at the actual court records:
Jeffrey Moffet attorney for Progressive on defense team.
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