Why is my car insurance going up?

Ranger50 wrote: Every other agent I visit, the price stays the same.

Oh and I should have said that those agents are with different insurers, not the same company I am with right now.

Klayfish wrote:

z31maniac wrote: Because the 75-100 different factors they use to determine your rate, increased/decreased in such a way, that actuaries and the models they put together based on those factors indicates to make a little money, they need to charge you more. As has been pointed out many times before, most insurance companies don't even make money on premiums. They make money investing the premiums to cover the losses, otherwise, your insurance would be even higher.

Ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner! That's exactly right. People can make accusations of being a scam or whatever, but the true facts are as you said above. It's not some veiled attempt to steal money, it's a lot of metrics. So why will an insurance company lower rates sometimes if you call to complain? Well, an insurance company is a business, and just like Lowes, Home Depot or Wal-Mart, they want to keep their customers. So if they feel a customer is worth keeping, then they may lower the premium even if it means taking a small loss. Happens all the time, especially in the commercial insurance world. That's big business, cut throat competition.

how are they taking a loss at all if you never make any claims? it can't cost more than a few pennies to maybe a dollar or so a month to maintain the customer data on the server and mail out the bills and new insurance cards to someone like me that hasn't made a claim in the entire 21.5 years that i've been driving..

Because your insurance prce is not directly connected to your practices.. Insurance is meant to spread the risk over everyone.. now how they punish you for having claims is another story..

ShadowSix is right on the money. I have been with State Farm Mutual for years and my rates have actually dropped, but keep in mind I also have my house insured through them. Every once in a while I will get a small check check when they pay out less than they took in for a given fiscal year, that's because a 'mutual' is supposed to be a non profit (yeah, right ). The tradeoff is that they are completely unreasonable on collector car and motorcycle rates, so those are with Grundy and Progressive, respectively.

By the way, if the agent won't play ball it's not difficult to shop it around, or even get someone different at the same agency. Way back when I had my '79 RX7, I called my agency and some guy gave me a ~$300/year quote for it, even though it was driven only rarely and he wouldn't budge. I called back 2 days later (same agency), got some gal and she quoted me, IIRC, $79 every six months for straight liability since I only used the car for 'exhibitions' (autocross).

Hagerty refused to insure my bike AT ALL unless I had a DD bike. Progressive was $99/year for liability.

bastomatic wrote: I bought a new policy with Farmers insurance last year, shopped around a bunch for a good rate, and went with the guy in town. It was a huge drop in price from what I was paying through Progressive, who had apparently raised my rates by a small amount with each statement. I actually got a quote from Progressive too, at the time, just for giggles, and it was remarkably less (like 50% less) than what I was actually paying through them. So what's the deal here, is this just standard practice now? Quote a low rate and start increasing it as the 6 month statements come in? My rates seem pretty high already, 30 year old married couple with spotless driving record, and it's $850, and now $930 per six months. That's for a Honda Fit and an Element, in suburban Michigan. A 10% increase within 6 months seems like a lot, considering we made no claims and our record remains unblemished. What say you?

I'd say ditch Farmers. I have them, too, and it's all bad.

Ranger50 wrote:

Ranger50 wrote: Every other agent I visit, the price stays the same.

Oh and I should have said that those agents are with different insurers, not the same company I am with right now.

Sometimes if you call independents they are all using the same 'mother company'. Around here, if you call any of the idies you will get very similar pricing because they are all using Seibels Bruce. About the only real benefit you can get is they will finance the premium, unlike State Farm etc.

In reply to novaderrik:

Insurance spreads the cost across the insured. It is not at all about your driving record.

For example Katies accident in the other thread. What appears to be a minor accident could easily turn into $25,000 to $50,000 plus claims handling and defense costs if the other party gets an attorney even for a minor soft tissue injury. If they have a real injury then it could but much worse.

That driver that has paid into the system for less than a year can wipe out a 20 years of premiums pretty easy for a minor accident. The idiot who broadsides a family with multiple serious injuries or death would obviously take out so much more.

Curmudgeon wrote: The tradeoff is that they are completely unreasonable on collector car and motorcycle rates

It must have changed since I owned my 2004 R6 (Aug 2004-Summer-2008) as State Farm was widely regarded as teh best place to insure a bike, at least in Oklahoma.

Once I turned 25, full coverage (no medical of course) on R6 was $11/month.

Before that it was $95/month.

It used to be that State Farm rated the bike based on engine CC regardless of the "type" of bike. Again it sounds like that has changed.

The bike thing was in 2011, they wanted something like ~$200/year. What really wound me up was Hagerty said flat 'no' unless I bought a newer DD bike which they would not insure because they specialize in classics. Hmmm. So newer bike = ~$5-6k (used), then insurance for it (~$250 or so a year), all so I can save ~$100/year on the classic? The math just don't work, dude.

Something else I just remembered: there is what's known as a 'high risk' pool in this state, the insurers pass part of their liability to a state owned fund which is there to make sure everyone can get car insurance. Here's the kicker: you don't necessarily have to have a bad driving record to wind up in that pool. It can be based on age, where you live, type of car, the moon's phase, you name it. Pretty much anyone with a DUI or reckless driving or other big ticket is in it, but there are others as well. A younger guy with, say, a Porsche could very well be in that pool even if he drives like Grandma.

I was in that situation and as some might remember I had a thread up re motorcycle insurance costs in the past. Out here and in my special situation it seems that State Farm still seems to offer the lowest premium for the coverage I want.

My classic bikes are all insured with Hagerty mainly because the "normal" insurance companies won't touch them - they "grey market" bikes and have titles branded accordingly. I was a little annoyed with the DD bike requirement but it was that or no insurance for the classics...

Well, for me the thing was that Progressive was cheapest and did not require a 'DD bike'. It being a 1980, it may fall in some screwy category. For instance, SF was really weird about possibly insuring the Jensen, the whole 'agreed value' thing had them wanting me to have it professionally appraised and then it would have been more expensive to insure than my DD even though I rarely get to drive it. With Grundy (American Worldwide) it's $140 a year for a $12k agreed value with a $1k deductible. I purposely wanted the agreed value high to lessen the chance they'd just total it.

Well, I called up my local agency and they weren't able or willing to lower the rates. I like them a bunch, they are less than a mile from my house and so I hate not giving my money to the local guy.

But I also just did a quote through Progressive, and between the two vehicles it was $300 per 6 months less. I hate switching back to Progressive, but probably not as much as I hate losing $600 a year I don't have to.

we pay 620 every 6 months for full coverage on a mazda6 and a mazda tribute.

I still have a few more calls to make to the local agents, but the SF lady has me at $583/6mo., as of yesterday....

It's an insurance company. They will do anything and everything they can to con you out of more money. They are just above used car salesman on the scumbag continuum. I'm not surprised your rates went up for no reason. They were probably just hoping you wouldn't notice.

I think we can maybe lock this thread. I foresee many canoes in the future.