<p>We have Geico insurance. I just got the renewal premium, it jumped by $1300 for six months. It turned out they are taking away our good driver discount because of an accident my daughter had back in March, 2007.</p>
<p>The accident happened with our daughter slowing down on a one lane street trying to find a parking spot, a man driving 2 children in the back seat was in a hurry assumed she was stopping and passed her on the left, hit her on the left side. My daughter was only 17 at the time, scared out of her mind. The man told the police my daughter came to the main road as he was driving. My daughter told the police otherwise. I called Geico right away to tell them what happened. I told them that I was concerned the police may just assumed our daughter was at fault because she was only 17. They told me not to worry about it because it didn’t sound like it was our daughter’s fault, they make their own judgment call, not just based on the police report. There was no ticket.</p>
<p>Since then, we haven’t heard from anyone or had any premium increase. Now two years later, they are increasing our rate because of the accident. I spoke with someone in the claim department, they said the case was so old they didn’t have much information on it.</p>
<p>My question here is should we try to get another policy or try to get it cleared up with Geico? Would other insurance company penalize us the same way? Would DMV have a record that my daughter had an accident and claim it was her fault? If we knew Geico was going to find it was our fault, we would have contested it 2 years ago.</p>
<p>DMV would probably have such a record; here in WA they keep everything on file. Any joe-schmoe can get 3 yrs worth of anyone’s records with the right information on hand, an insurance company or the driver himself can get the record going back 5 yrs.</p>
<p>I would check with other insurance companies. Geico hates any claims and is notorious for jacking up the rates if anything happens. I prefer to pay a bit more per year with another company brokered through the AAA; they only charge an extra $50 for a couple of speeding tickets per policy. Here in WA many insurance companies only ask for 3 years worth of driving history, but it might be different in your state.</p>
<p>In MA I believe all accidents are suppose to be reported to local police within 2 weeks. There is a form to fill out and return. In addition, police cannot determine who was at fault unless they witnessed the accident. Is is possible there is a record of the accident at the police station? </p>
<p>In MA my understanding is, if there is a dispute as to who is at fault, we have a board you can present your case to and they will make the final judgement. Sounds like in your case you should keep persueing the insurance company. </p>
<p>good luck. In MA one at fault accident can raise your rates for many years.</p>
<p>Absolutely Oldfort, get a number of other quotes.
First, just because it’s good business to keep a check on finances, and second, if you really like Geico(otherwise), explaining your position and providing other lower quotes for them to see- well, they might reconsider their position to keep you.</p>
<p>mamom, in Massachusetts, prior to the limited deregulation now in effect, when an insurer determines that you are at fault, they send you a notification of fault and information on how to appeal that determination to the state Division of Insurance. It costs $20 to file the appeal, I believe. In the meantime, your rates go up as per the schedule depending on the severity of the accident. If you win your appeal, your money is refunded. (Unfortunately, we had to do this several times; fortunately, we won each time.)</p>
<p>Now, under the limited deregulation we have, some insurers like Liberty Mutual offer “accident forgiveness” - if you’ve had a good record, your rates won’t go up for one at-fault accident. Of course, if the accident really hadn’t been your fault, I’d still suggest appealing so you don’t lose that one at-fault forgiveness!</p>
<p>^ I second Chedva’s suggestion ESPECIALLY where the DMV is involved. Here in Connecticut residents’ rights to information/access expire after a time. (At least it did in my case.)</p>
<ol>
<li>most states will show “involved in accident” and the date, if police were called…it does not indicate fault.</li>
<li> in NJ, carriers surcharge for 3 years if YOUR company paid out over $1,000 - this avoids the “fault” argument.</li>
<li> recommend an independent agent in lieu of a direct writer. They can be similar in cost and act as your advocate.</li>
</ol>
<p>I had an accident eons ago and was pleasantly surprised that my insurance rates didn’t go up. Turns out that my accident was a “1 Point” accident and I wouldn’t lose my Good Driver Discount until I had 2 points charged to my account.</p>
<p>My friend with another insurance company backed her car into a pole and her premiums skyrocketed. Her insurance company would yank your Good Driver Discount with 1 point…something she was shocked to discover.</p>
<p>Bottom line–look at what parameters are involved in keeping the discounts when shopping for insurance.</p>
<p>Braincramp, could you please clarify that for me? My son was very recently in an accident in NJ. He had 2500 in damages to our car. The other driver ran a stop sign and hit our car on the side. There is a police report. We got back our deductible from our insurance carrier within a week because the accident was clearly other driver’s fault.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t get any point or ticket for the accident. NJ is no fault. Claim adjusters from both companies decided among themselves that it was my daughter’s fault, my insurance company paid the other insurance company 2000 and 4000 for my daughter’s car repair. Geico never told us their decision. By increasing our premium by 2600/year for 3 years, we are pretty much paying for the accident. I might as well be self insured. The bottom line is Geico does not want to insure anyone without perfect history.</p>
<p>Wow, oldfort! We are in NJ and are Geico customers too. Just curious, did you pay your deductible at the time? Nobody got points or tickets when my son was in his recent accident because police were called after the accident, but a report was made and the cars were stopped at the time where the accident took place. The accident was described in the report. My H called the other guy’s insurance company and told them that he wanted the $ for our dedutible. Geico contacted us the next day to tell us that they are putting a check in the mail for the deductible, and they did. Our autobody shop was already holding the check from Geico for the repair less the deductible. This all went smoothly, no complaints yet. So, am I going to possibly get hit for an insurance hike when some guy goes through a stop sign and hits our car?</p>
<p>NEMom - if you got the deductible back then it’s clearly not your son’s fault. That being said, Geico did bring up 2 claims we have put through (a deer jumped on top of my car, and a broken window) a while ago. I don’t know if this recent accident is going to come back to haunt you. But the good thing is there are other insurance companies out there. I am going to be very happy tomorrow when I tell Geico that I have terminated their policy.</p>
<p>Oldfort, that’s my point. We did get our deductible back, but now I wonder if our premiums are going to get raised. I think that would be outrageous. We changed over to Geico after our older son became licensed. We had been loyal customers of State Farm, but when the new premium bill arrrived we nearly fainted!! I mean true sticker shock! I could have just signed my entire paycheck over to State Farm and had zero left over for living (ie: like food, shelter etc.)! We ran to Geico at that point. State Farm sent letters to us telling us how they have such low premiums,etc. to try to win our business back.</p>
<p>In our area both companies are known to offer nice rates to low risk clients (like me, 34 yrs & 2,000,000 miles with no claims- knock on wood—), yet I use a local insurance broker who shops it out with smaller firms at a competitive price. I use him because he cares, takes any claim to heart and follows through, plus I can walk into his office any workday, or knock on his front door when he’s at home. So just like all the national ins co. ads on TV say, I’m in “good hands”, with a “good neighbor” that “I can speak to directly (actually face to face) 24 hours a day”.</p>
<p>A similar thing happened to us. I was actually with my son so I saw the other driver was clearly at fault, but all the policeman could see was my young son and the other driver’s cleavage. He wrote up such a false report of the accident, I didn’t think there was any way to challenge it - if I’d known, I’d have insisted on leaving the vehicles in the street until someone could take pictures, but it was too late for that. USAA raised our rates <em>outrageously</em>. </p>
<p>My daughter mistakenly moved the car before a picture was taken. It’s a good practice to take a picture will your cell phone before moving the car out of traffic.</p>
<p>I enjoyed my call to Geico this morning. They actually told me to continue to insure with them this year (2600 higher) because my rate would come down next year. Yeah, that made sense. I told them that I would check them out again next year to see if their premiums would be lower.(love picking them off) I also invited them to visit CC.</p>