Had a number of claims with GEICO (sadly). No problems, no complaints, easy. Worse experiences with USAA.
@AlmostThere2018, we had USAA for 25 years, never considered switching, though they kept raising the rates. One day they informed us that they’d decided that rebuilding costs for our home had increased 700K in the five years since we bought it, with a commensurate high increase in premiums. A contractor told me that costs had probably gone down during the recession, not up.
When we started checking things out, we found that Armed Forces was half the cost of our homeowners insurance, and GEICO half the cost of auto. I’ll never consider USAA again.
Ack, one rep explained to me that it’s not even necessarily your own home’s rebuild costs, just some samples in their database for your wider neighborhood.
And mine include ridiculousness like replacing old nails and horsehair plaster. NOT.
Geico was at least 1/4 the cost of other insurers for me, probably even less. The larger delta than most others probably relates to Geico classifying exotics that do not appear in the makes from their pulldown menu as generic coupes of a customer specified value.
As I touched on in my earlier post, I’ve had a few parking lot fender bender claims, alll of which were primarily all the other driver’s fault. My main complaint with Geico is after the other driver was found primarily at fault, Geico had minimal further involvement in the process.
For example, in my most recent fender bender, the other driver backed in to me. It was classified as was 80% the other driver’s fault. I was 20% at fault because the other driver’s insurer (Liberty Mutual) said I should have kept my car stationary and honked my horn, rather than trying to maneuver out of the way and avoid being hit. I did not agree with this assessment, but there wasn’t much I could do unless I wanted to use 3rd parties, such as external lawyers, since Geico did not seem to want to be involved once the other driver was found at fault.
Financially the incident wasn’t a big deal. The net cost was ~$4k, so 20% would have been ~$800. Regardless of a possibly lower percentage at fault with other insurers, I still would have come out ahead financially overall with Geico, after considering delta in cost of insurance. The damage itself was also not a big deal. The scratch mark nearly disappeared when I washed off my car, so much so that when I’ve showed my car to others, no one else could find the scratch, even when I pointed out the location. It’s not enough to switch insurers.
Their phone support could also be better. Waits are not uncommon, and sometimes customer support explanations sound disingenuous. For example, when asking why my insurance had increased by ~20% one year, the customer support rep told me that was standard and all insurance companies had similar magnitude increases this year.
There are also certain other aspects of Geico insurance have been abnormally good, besides just price. Their emergency road service has done ~500 on mile tows on two different occasions at no additional cost. I prefer going through Geico emergency service over AAA.
I haven’t read this whole thread, because what i want to say isn’t responsive to the original query, but I learned something a few weeks ago that I thought I’d pass on.
We use State Farm. I called them because I had a question and ended up talking to the woman about a rental car we were going to get for T’giving week. Our cars are older so don’t carry collision, and she let me know that because we don’t have collision the rental wouldn’t be covered under our regular policy. We always have declined the insurance and had no idea that we weren’t covered for the past couple of years! She did say to give her a call a few days before we get the rental and she would let me pick up collision for the week or so we had the rental and then I could call and cancel it again. Just thought I’d pass that on.
Have used GEICO for many years (probably decades). No problems. We have had a few claims and had no issues with them (they did have a repair shop we had to go to but they were close enough and professional.) Our rates did not increase after these claims. I don’t remember the rate being ridiculous when my daughter got her license. She was basically off the plan completely when she went to college several states away. I do know I have been surveyed by them a few times and since nobody drives a car as part of a daily commute I think my rate stays low.
Yes. Understand that if car is totaled, you will need to replace it. If you can do that, fine.
One of mine totaled a $10k car after 5 months of ownership—he had no collision. He couldn’t replace his car. Went carless for over a year until he had enough to buy a new car and to pay 6 months of car insurance including collision on it.
The other thing that was important to me, especially for my older daughter, was having Android Auto, which limits the amount of interaction you can have with your phone. Although the recent update has taken a big step backward with respect to limiting screen interaction.