My wife was recently in a pretty nasty accident. Thankfully no one was hurt but her car sustained almost $9,000 worth of damage. The other driver was uninsured (the accident was 100% his fault) but Allstate paid the entire claim less the $900 deductible with no problem. The guy at the body shop told me that the only insurance company they ever have problems with is State Farm. YMMV I suppose.
Depends on which state. But I had a similar situation and my insurance paid the whole thing minus the deductible. And I was reimbursed my deductible after a time because the person was charged and convicted of driving without insurance and a license by the city and had to pay me restitution. I don’t think that the insurance company was ever reimbursed for their loss.
Question: did Allstate raise your rates after? State Farm didn’t. But they did start raising our rates around 5 years later. Again, for no reason given and so we moved on to another company.
Also, in my experience, Allstate is not at all competitive with any other insurance companies. They refuse to be competitive. I think that they are counting on customer loyalty and the old “crank the burner up slowly so that the frog doesn’t notice” strategy. People are completely unaware of the fact that they are being taken advantage of.
A recommendation to you: shop around. You might save a ton of money. We did. Around $1000 per year for the same coverage. We did a very thorough comparison.
The insurance company strategy: first of all, there is no brand loyalty. Second, they will offer a very good rate to get you in and then after a couple of years, crank the rates up; just below the threshold of pain.