Insurance Companies are the Devil

I had an insurance company for over 20 years, let's just say the name rhymes with late darn, and a person name Jake works there.

Slowly but surely they were raising my rates significantly every six months. I never had a claim, never had a ticket, not once, zero, zilch. Seriously, not in my entire driving life had I had a ticket or accident and I probably drive more than the average person. I have good credit and pay my bills on time. So anyways, I call said insurance and tell them I'm not going to keep paying these increased fees since I am a model customer. They actually try to sell me more insurance. I write them a letter saying I will give them one last chance to lower my rate or I'm leaving forever, and If I leave don't beg for me to come back.

You all know how the story goes, I left. Now on a weekly basis I am getting mail from them. One even said How can we win you back? When I left I went to a different insurance company that I absolutely love, they have a little lizard man working for them, but I am still steamed about the other one trying to lure me back. It almost seems like harassment at this point. I find it humorous they will spend all this money on mailers but wouldn't give this savings to me.

This also happened with my membership at the warehouse club. They are even offering free membership if I came back. I decided a few years ago that I was going to vote with my money. If a company truly did me wrong I would not spend $1 of mine there and maybe I'm one person, but if enough people did this maybe companies would treat people right.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I hear ya.
We used to have a company that rhymed with miberty lutual....lol

We bought a new car and they nearly doubled our premium. We had home coverage too. This was about 10 years ago.

I checked around and we got our car and home insurance for half of the above company rates.

They even called and asked why we left after so many years.
I said price.
They said we could adjust some...
I told them they should have not tried to screw me.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Yep, we had home and car and were paying top dollar. I can be lazy and probably wouldn't have changed if they would have thrown us a bone, but nope. I'm actually really glad we left, I have more coverage now for much less and our new company is pretty decent. We haven't had to use them but a friend got into a bad accident and they totally went all out for him.

We have had the same car insurance for maybe twenty five years. My granddaughter got it when she started driving. Her rate was high, but on her one year renewal, the rate dropped way down. They start new drivers out high then if there are no accidents they reduce the rate. way over half of the cost of her policy is in the medical part that pays for injuries. Michigan has some weirdly high rates on this, the medical industry puts a person through every allowable test when you get hurt and every possible therapy. This is well known by our insurance company. I have first hand experience in being a cash cow by the medical industry from an accident.

I think Michigan is the last state to have life long coverage on medical for an accident. That part of the insurance is abused a lot. Many people's health insurance companies are starting to exclude the auto accident caused coverage from their policies now, they put in a big deductible on auto injuries. We now have to pay for full medical on our auto insurance since medicare does not cover accident caused stuff anymore. The auto insurance does still cover us, but with a deductible and copay, I would rather pay the forty bucks a car a year to have everything paid. If something happens and we use it even once in five years for a minor injury associated with the car, we have our money back. It is good to go get checked out at the doctors if you have whiplash, I know many people who have had whiplash, it bothers a person for years most times.

Yeah. The worst part is that all the money we give beforehand could be put aside for actual necessities.

Insurance is a racket unless you got the money at time of accident. Ask a gold medal recipient in men's olympic games.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I work in insurance and can advise a few companies that are great, competitive (depending on your risk profile and their underwriting guidelines) and typically provide high levels of coverage (based on my experience), as long as they provide service in your state:

In General, especially combining Home/Auto:

Ohio Mutual
Mapfre
Travelers
Safeco

Not sure if these ones do both home and auto, but at least Auto:
METLife
MSA Group (Main Street America)

In New England:
Maine Mutual Group
Vermont Mutual Group
Union Mutual
Concord Group

Just auto if you have a lot of tickets or claims
Progressive
Dairyland

Just my 0.02! Hope it helps someone.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I agree completely..

I think all insurance should be handled by a public option..

Medical, auto and disaster/fire..

They are parasite organizations build on the backs of people who pay them for nothing. Either because they lose their insurance, or their claims are denied.


Medical insurance is the worst, because there is no way for them to profit off someone who doesn’t lose their insurance.

Your life time premiums will never cover your end of life costs..

Never.. it cost millions of dollars for anyone to slowly die in a hospital, basiclly no matter what’s wrong.

The only way they profit is by denying service and taking in premiums and they never pay for services for.

MOST IMPORTANTLY THEY ARE NOT PREFORMING A FUNCTION RELATED TO THEIR INDUSTRY!!

Any profit margins they take in are totally inefficient.

I think once you have single payer insurance, and maybe an increase in disability.

Auto and life insurance could go next.

Come up with a fund to where if your house burns Down, car wrecks , exc , under X conditions. Then the fund pays out.

If you don’t meet those conditions, your on your own..

That drops the price of EVERYTHING whatever the insurance company profit margin is OVERNIGHT.

Keep all the paper pushers and anyone actually preforming a necessary function. Get rid of the owner and shareholders. Then cycle their profits back into services.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
I had an insurance company for over 20 years, let's just say the name rhymes with late darn, and a person name Jake works there.

Slowly but surely they were raising my rates significantly every six months. I never had a claim, never had a ticket, not once, zero, zilch...

It took me decades to understand the basic principle of insurance rates.

The reason they raise your rates is that "they want you to leave."

This might seem strange. But, the fact is, the people who sell insurance, the brokers and agents, get paid something called "a commission" for bringing in "new customers."

The broker and/or agent gets paid a percent of the insurance premium, for up to 3 years that the customer stays with the insurance firm. After 3 years, those brokers and agents "get nothing." They no longer want you there. So, they punish you for staying, by raising your rates.

Once you leave, and go to another insurance firm, they can then fight to get you back, and earn "another commission" for yet another 3 years, but when you stay for 20 years, the only people making money from you are the back end insurance firms, the guys in the front office, selling the insurance, don't see a penny of that money.

Hence, the insurance industry is set up, so that, it is only profitable for a consumer to remain with any one insurance firm for 3 years, after that he must move to another firm, otherwise he'll be "ripped off" by the insurance firm he sticks with.

That's what I discovered, after being "punished" my self, for decades, for "being loyal".

a reply to: AMPTAH

That is the absolute worst business system i've ever heard of, but doesn't surprise me at all. Insurance is all about the money. They need to raise the rates for people that are using the system the most and lower it for the ones that don't "cost" them more.

You have to change every 3-4 years. When my father died I took over paying the bills and couldn't believe what ma was paying for insurance on her house. I shopped and got the bill cut by 75% because they had been with the same company for 40 years with no claims. It made me feel better about poking the guys sons wife every week or two. Small town politics

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: AMPTAH

That is the absolute worst business system i've ever heard of, but doesn't surprise me at all. Insurance is all about the money. They need to raise the rates for people that are using the system the most and lower it for the ones that don't "cost" them more.

You have the natural logical thinking, of a consumer.

The problem is, all money making is based on "activity".

The good customers, who are "not costing" the insurance firm, are also "not generating any activity."

You might think, that the bad customers, who are always making claims, should be the ones they'd want to get rid of.

But, in fact, it's the opposite.

The bad customers, create the activity, and give the insurance firms "the justification" for "raising rates and premiums".

They can take the "statistics" to the government, and use that to argue they need to charge higher premiums. And the government lets them do that, because of the "bad customers" making "claims".

As the "premiums rise", everyone makes "more money" (except the consumer), because the commissions and fees are a "percentage" of higher value numbers.

But, the premiums don't rise because of the good clients. The good consumers cause downward pressure on the premiums, and make it hard to justify raising rates.

So, insurance cos really want a particular "mix" of bad customers and good customers. The bad let them raise premiums, and the good pay those higher premiums, because, of course, they're "good."

I've witnessed this type of loyalty gouging in other areas too, like general banking, internet provider firms, etc.. but haven'
t a clue what justification those other businesses use to punish their long time customers, while giving all the breaks to the new customers. I've just learned, as a consumer, I must "jump" ship from time to time, to keep my expenses down.

a reply to: FamCore

Geico and Travelers are same company. Safeco is Liberty Mutual. Progressive and Drive are same company. Dairyland used to be Viking.


Insurance is, IMO, a form of elitist gambling.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I read recently, I think it was Karen Hudes, the Vatican has a controlling interest in all the worlds insurance companies. seems the church believes in a bit of entrepreneurship

Buddy, I am sorry about your situation, but you had to read the contract carefully when you have a deal with insurance companies. Once I had the same situation and learnt to send contracts to lawyer. Together we found the best deal. He searched for a good company and found an offer of total-insurance.co.uk. These guys, for example recently I had a car accident, where I has no guilty, as a result, this company sued that man's insurance company and paid me compensation, also looked for spare parts for my car.