michal1980 said:Not reading the whole thread right now. But agree with some of the other (say Geo), that alot/most of these posts are meaningless.

The overall theme is to shop around for insurance regularly to make sure you are getting the best price currently.

I'll ad my story as to why most of the info here is worthless.

My wife and I, have 'progressive' auto insurance. But if I get a quote through their website its ~2x what I pay. Due to my wife's job (not in or related to insurance at all), we use a broker thats able to get us a much lower rate, then we could ourselves.

Same insurance coverage, just bought a different way results in a 50% reduction in premiums. But info like that is precisely WHY this thread is valuable!

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had nationwide for 10 years, ever since i turned 16, and after i hit 25 they didn't budge one bit on premium - even when I hadn't had a claim in years. talked with state farm and was able to save more than $100 AND a $1mil umbrella included that I didnt have with NW.

for home, state farm was ridiculously more expensive. i went with farm bureau for that.

largeeyes said:We live in a costal county in NC. This takes quite a few insurance companies off the list. Has anyone found a particularly cheap/good company that deals with coastal counties? We are currently with State Farm ~1400/yr on a $200k house.

that sounds very reasonable to me. that's almost what SF quoted me on a $150k in east TN!

I'm wondering if someone can clear up this question for me:
I'm looking to buy a house. Does a recent home insurance claim on a property make it more expensive to insure for me if I end up buying the house?

I'm in Florida.Just bought 6 months coverage from Ameriprise and it is about $180 cheaper than Allstate I used to have for last 5 years.

gony157 said:I'm in Florida.Just bought 6 months coverage from Ameriprise and it is about $180 cheaper than Allstate I used to have for last 5 years.

Hows Ameriprise for their auto and/or home insurance?

Same here. I saved $110.00 /Year + no more AAA. What I am getting on top of that is $0 deductable with free Road side Assistance any where in NA. Thanks Geico and bye bye AAA.

It might be nice to know of certain companies that use underwriting criteria that would place ceretain individuals in a class that qualifies for lower rates.

Just in searching I noticed Progressive offers a discount if you agree to install a device that monitors you driving, apparently recording your acceleration, speeds, and the time of day you drive.

You can get up to a 25% discount if it places you in the low risk groups. This might happen if all of your driving is say 9-3 (a housewife running household errands might fall into this pattern).

I just finished a trip with a friend who accelerated fast, break sharply etc. and left me feeling nervous. I gather their measurements of driving would separate him from someone like myself who stops well before lights, accelerates slowly, etc.

This possibility would tempt me to try them in the hope that I would qualify for the greater discount later.

Geico seemed to have a more detailed questionnaire then some. They asked about not merely whether you had an advanced degree, but whether it was a PhD (Md's actually have above average accident rates). They asked about industry (I suspect working in education is good). They appeared to come up with lower quotes than several others, probably because of I fell into several preferred categories.

Possibly a good agent would know of all of the peculiarities of companies and could find one that liked your characteristics.

I also noticed several firms had discounts for new customers (such as einsurance). Presumably, it is like credit cards or TV services where they figure once they have you as a customer they will have years of profits. This would seem to imply that changing carriers every so often might be the lowest cost strategy.

It would be nice to know which companies used credit scores, since many of this site know theirs and whether it would help or hurt them.

Of course, you may be able to manipulate scores a little so that you have a good score when insurance shopping. I can pay down loans if I really want a better score. Also, some of us may know of times when scores are high, or will be (i.e. just after paying off a large balance transfer at 0%). Shopping for a policy then may be good. Presumably, you do your policy shoping just before starting an AOR.

quizzer25 said:

The top 3 as of now are Statefarm (agent quote much cheaper than online), LM (agent quote, need to call about additional discounts like credit union membership) and Ameriprise (will get $50 costco cash card)
.

I work in an industry that is coupled to insurance.
There is indication that for certain types of insurance - home insurance in particular was mentioned - that online quotes couldn't cover enough bases to legitimately estimate the quote.
So to prevent from getting burned for "false advertising" insurers are pushing the online quotes up to the top tier of that risk range - meaning that most of the time the agent quotes will be at or below the online quote.

This may be due to the need to ask a *lot* of questions in the home quote process.. and your basic online user simply isn't that patient.