Am I being too critical?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>My daughter lives in DC and is going to take her car as she has parking available for a reasonable price. As the car is currently titled in my name and I carry the insurance, we are having to transfer the title to her name and she will have to have her own car insurance instead of the plan with the rest of the family members.</p>

<p>I called an insurance company that writes for the same carrier we current have. The girl that answered the phone was obviously young and inexperienced. She didn’t have the answer to a basic question that I knew the answer to and had to put me on hold to check it out. Something else I mentioned caused her to pause, so I asked if there was another agent I could speak with. She said she would have him call me back when he got off of the phone; instead she called back and said she would give me the quotes.</p>

<p>What should have taken just a few minutes to gather information from me took way too long. I had to repeat numbers 2 or 3 times until she had it correct; ss # took 3 tries, drives license twice. Then she calls me back and said she tried to email me, but it bounced back. She misspelled my last name in the email as well as the quotes; she then asked if my name was spelled the same way as my daughters! I really wanted to be snippy and tell her of course I spelled my name with an “a” in my email, but otherwise I spell it with an “e” :-0 She didn’t understand about the differences in the cost if I changed the dollar amounts and deductibles, or if I didn’t have rental car coverage and tow service. </p>

<p>I now really don’t want to use this company as I don’t want this girl handling my daughter’s insurance. Should I call back and get a more senior agent, or just call another company? I already have a quote from Costco and can also have AAA quote me a price; I just thought it might be nice for my daughter to develop a relationship with a local agent. While I am doing the initial legwork, this will be my daughter’s policy; although I think my husband will pay for it for a while.</p>

<p>This girl is just out of college and I realize she has to learn on the job, but can she learn on someone else?!? Am I really just old and cranky that I am so impatient? I know my own children had to start somewhere, but I am pretty sure they were more competent than this girl was.</p>

2

<p>There’s a compromise, you know. You call back, and you ask the young woman who is training her. Then you ask if you might speak to that person for a few minutes. You tell that person that the trainee needs a bit more training and could the two of them please work together to get everything straightened out, then contact you. </p>

<p>It takes time to learn a new job. I think a bit of compassion is in order, frankly.</p>

3

<p>I think I’d call AAA and get a quote. I have never had a personal agent for car insurance, but have worked with whoever answered the phone at AAA, and they have always been well informed. I’d be concerned that this may not be the right person for your dd to “develop a relationship with.” local or not.<br>
Then I’d call the company back and tell them you are going with someone else. You don’t have to mention the reason.<br>
While it takes time to learn a new job, many companies don’t want to put the time or money into training someone properly before letting new hires handle things on their own.
I would personally rather go with a company that values customer service enough that they would not allow someone completely green and untrained to handle new business.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t blame the agent in this case at all. She obviously has not been given proper training, which makes me think the company is trying to get by on the cheap.</p>

4

<p>I do blame the person who answered the phone (I’m not going so far as to call her an ‘agent’). From your description her incompetence isn’t due to a lack of training but more due to a lack of intelligence, attention, or something else. It doesn’t take training for someone to write down a name or number correctly. </p>

<p>Since you’re not using that office yet, you can always contact another broker’s office of that same insurance company if it’s logistically not a problem for you. For example, we have State Farm broker offices all over our county and if I didn’t have a reasonable experience at one I could always just go through another. You could also just go to another company.</p>

<p>I don’t understand why you’d have to give the SS# just to get a quote. When places like this ask me for that I just say “no - I don’t want to give you my SS#” and they just proceed without it and if they didn’t, I’d skip them.</p>