<p>We’ve had USAA for 27 years and have had no major problems, but I will say that their customer service has gone way done from what it was in the early 90s. I was much happier with it before they opened up eligibility to what seems like everyone and their brother. I do know of several long-timers who have dropped them for the same reason, along with home owner’s issues like busdriver. We don’t own a home, but will definitely shop around when we buy.</p>
<p>30+ years with USAA. Only one problem that I can recall, but the membership trending rate issues described by Bus Driver has been seen and discussed by our friends.</p>
<p>My unsat experience? About a year ago, my car was hit by a gentleman backing up in a parking lot as I was driving up the aisle. Somehow the repair cost for the body work was just under our $1000 deductible. After a couple of days of working with USAA and taking the car to a USAA shop, I was told that we had to work directly with the other guy’s insurance company. (I don’t mind a big deductible if we cause the accident, but I think I’d like a lower deductible when we are not at fault!)</p>
<p>It was very frustrating to find that our high deductible cut us off from the good service we had had in prior experiences. The accident was in early August and my car wasn’t repaired til mid September. The repair shop took almost 2 weeks for the repair, and the rental car provided was not much more than a golf cart.</p>
<p>With the current storm damage in DC and the fires in Colorado Springs, I’m expecting USAA will have huge payouts this year.</p>
<p>busdriver11–like I said earlier-most disgruntled customers happen because of the lack of understanding how insurance works. Yes, moving from a rural area to a city is going to cause your rates to jump. Most companies rate based on zip code. It isn’t just accidents but theft, vandalism, etc. that increase your rates. If we lived 2 miles north, our rates would almost double because of the rates in that zip code. Our oldest is buying a house and while the house, most would assume is in one city, it technically in another-and given that he is an unmarried young male, that is going to save him about $100/month on his auto rates alone.</p>
<p>As for the claims, insurance isn’t there for the little stuff and filing claims that are just over your deductible amount generally isn’t a good idea. You lose claim free discounts, which can be significant. Not all windshield repair coverage is the same, too. In our state, they can’t increase your rates for a claim like that, but in some states they can.</p>
<p>As for your house rates increasing, what were the sq foot rates for rebuilding in your area? Were they close? What was the value of your home at the time–home, not land? Do you have the SAME coverage with your new company at that rate? </p>
<p>With the flooding, fires, wind damage across the country EVERYONE is going to see rate increases next year. It’s been a bad year.</p>
<p>We have everything with USAA, insurance, ira’s, savings accounts, 529’s.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago they sent out an appraiser to our house and they appraised the rebuild to be way higher than the value of the land and house. They didn’t even take the value of the land into consideration when seeing how much the house could sell for at the time. Our taxes are going down, our house value went down 20%, yet we couldn’t get them to lower the rebuild price. The rebuild price would let us build a mansion. My friend is a builder and his price to me was hundreds of thousands less. </p>
<p>However, their banking is getting easier all the time. We wanted a local bank to be able to deposit money. Now you can just take a picture of your check and email it to them.</p>
<p>When the accident wasn’t my fault I had to pay the deductible at first, but then got reimbursed by the other insurance company. USAA took care of dealing with them not me.</p>
<p>We have had our home insurance rates upped modestly by the cost to rebuild, but I know as an architect that their notion of what it would cost is on the low side. We have a solid house from the 1920 - oak floors, nice moldings, brick walls etc.</p>
<p>Not with USAA, but in our area, when applying to refinance a mortgage (not for insurance), value went down, so less equity effected the loan. Not sure if this is related to estimates to rebuild. Perhaps that is for a different thread.</p>
<p>"busdriver11–like I said earlier-most disgruntled customers happen because of the lack of understanding how insurance works. Yes, moving from a rural area to a city is going to cause your rates to jump. Most companies rate based on zip code. It isn’t just accidents but theft, vandalism, etc. that increase your rates. If we lived 2 miles north, our rates would almost double because of the rates in that zip code. Our oldest is buying a house and while the house, most would assume is in one city, it technically in another-and given that he is an unmarried young male, that is going to save him about $100/month on his auto rates alone.</p>
<p>As for the claims, insurance isn’t there for the little stuff and filing claims that are just over your deductible amount generally isn’t a good idea. You lose claim free discounts, which can be significant. Not all windshield repair coverage is the same, too. In our state, they can’t increase your rates for a claim like that, but in some states they can.</p>
<p>As for your house rates increasing, what were the sq foot rates for rebuilding in your area? Were they close? What was the value of your home at the time–home, not land? Do you have the SAME coverage with your new company at that rate?"</p>
<p>I understand somewhat how insurance works. Our intent is to make as few claims as possible so our rates don’t go up. We did not move from a rural area to a city, so that is not a factor. It never occurred to us that they would consider windshield crack filling a claim, nor just calling and asking a question about a loss would be considered a claim. Before I left USAA I asked them if they still declared every phone call a claim, they told me they didn’t do that anymore, and we hadn’t had any claims for the prior five years. So our insurance jump had nothing to do with claims.</p>
<p>The cost of rebuilding based on an online calculator was $773K, assuming it is considered a custom house (though it’s a big, older, unremodeled box). Difficult to figure out the rebuild costs of other houses in the neighborhood. They didn’t do so either. But even at 773K, there is no house within a mile where the home value, not including land alone stands at that. We had our home over insured with a rebuilding cost of 1.05 mil. They raised it to about 1.74 mil after we owned it for four years, no claims. We have it insured with Armed Forces for about 885K, which is still over insured (plus they will rebuild up about 25% of what you insure). It doesn’t matter to me that Armed Forces is giving us a lower total, what matters to me is that we are not forced to pay an extra $2K+ per year to over insure by a million dollars. That is outrageous. </p>
<p>I think I’m learning the way that insurance works is that if they can find a way to make more money on you, they will. For USAA to get loyal customers like us to drop them, they had to try extremely hard. When you’re paying several thousand dollars a year and almost never making claims, maybe it was just too hard to resist getting more. Though if I was to become unhappy with GEICO and Armed Forces, I still would choose USAA over anybody else. And I’m sure they’d offer us lower rates to come back.</p>
<p>We have our homeowners’ insurance through Armed Forces as well. I would agree that service has gone down as the number of people eligible has gone up with USAA.</p>
<p>As is usual on any online review thread, dissatisfied customers are much more likely to go into great detail, and to use stronger language to describe their experiences. Satisfied people are much less likely to post at all. And inevitably “It ain’t what it used to be” .</p>
<p>We have been insured by USAA for over 30 years and have always been pleased with their service and the rates.</p>
<p>“As is usual on any online review thread, dissatisfied customers are much more likely to go into great detail, and to use stronger language to describe their experiences.”</p>
<p>Definitely. My overall feeling is that some of us have been disappointed because USAA is really now just like any other insurance company. They are not the benevolent caretakers of military that we’d assumed they were. They are subject to the same management poor decisions, errors in judgment, and desire to increase rates on those they can get more from that all insurance companies are. People are very happy until they are affected by this, but it doesn’t make them worse than others. They probably pull far less on you then most.</p>
<p>I say check out the rates with USAA, and if they are good, go with them. But also check out Armed Forces for homeowners, and GEICO if you have younger drivers, see where the rates fall.</p>
<p>Have had USSA for years and only had one small problem which they fixed right away and that was the way a claim was going to be paid out for hail damage.</p>
<p>Been with USAA since late 80’s, all insurances and banking. But 8 years ago we did switch to Armed Forces for homeowners & later added an umbrella. They were able to beat USAA’s price and they didn’t have the “special” roof/hail/wind damage deductible (instead of paying your chosen deductible for roof damage, you pay a percentage of the home value. At the time I think it was close to 2%).</p>
<p>In general we have been happy with USAA, but dh would like to shop around for the car insurance since they really increased our rates with the two teen girls (16&18) driving. In 25 years, we’ve made one claim and it was for significant hail damage. Might have to check out Gieco :)</p>
<p>To offset the mega increase in rates when our three boys started driving (ouch!), we raised our deductible. Luckily we never had claims for them and rates dropped when they turned 18, and again at 21. We were also very careful to check rates on specific cars when buying theirs. Two cars that seem comparable to us can have drastically different rates to insure.</p>
<p>We already had a $1000 deductible and they drive (share) a Prius. Not to mention the oldest is away at college without a car, that saves us a whole $70 a year! (insert sarcasm) Dh was very disappointed with that and is what prompted him to consider shopping around.</p>
<p>I just wanted to update anyone who was following this thread on something that had been touched on earlier and we are experiencing right now.</p>
<p>Earlier in the spring we were contacted to have our home assessed by an agent for USAA. I gladly accommodated their agent, made the entire house available to her, answered all her questions and thought nothing of it. We have had the home over insured since before the real-estate drop and never bothered to change it. I shared this with the appraiser.</p>
<p>Several months passed and I didn’t hear anything, making a mental note to contact USAA. Before I did, we received a notice from USAA last week saying the appraisal was $50k over the current amount and the adjustment would be made when our bill was paid via escrow in August (ie this is all automatic). In the fine print…if you’d like to discuss call 800… We were shocked! I was irritated that nothing stating how much more the bill would be had been included, the new appraisal wasn’t sent, nada.</p>
<p>My DH called this week and after speaking to a few people was able to get the appraisal faxed. There were several major discrepancies. The report stated we had an elevator, central vac, mostly tile floors (only our baths are tile, first is hardwood, upper is carpet), the exterior was listed as 60% concrete siding (our home is 100% stucco). These are just the ones DH told me over the phone!! He spoke with USAA and asked them to refer to the pictures taken and read the report. They agreed something was not right (ya’think?!?).</p>
<p>If we had not followed up, in August we would blindly be paying premiums on a house with an elevator!! As of now they are supposed to get back with us next week. My best guess is we are going to be put out again by having another appraiser come through the house. My DH will have to be here because I won’t go through it again. Yes, mistakes happen, but I feel so much like USAA is just trying to pull more money out of us without us even knowing!! :mad:</p>
<p>I would tell USAA to send me the survey that asks you the questions about your house. I would not waste my time with an appraiser again.</p>
<p>Good idea MD Mom. I forgot about the 2-car garage …in the basement (in addition to the one on the main level). I’d love to see that!!</p>
<p>“I would tell USAA to send me the survey that asks you the questions about your house. I would not waste my time with an appraiser again”</p>
<p>I agree with that, but they don’t always give you a choice. They told us that it was required for our house, it wasn’t an option.</p>
<p>Impressive house you have, blueiguana. Two garages, with a two car in the basement, and elevator, and all that tile :)</p>
<p>I would argue, and we have had USAA for nearly 40 years for the cars, that they already wasted my time sending someone out who obviously could not identify an elevator. Ask them iwhether they can ask you questions on the phone. Then ask them if they have the number for Armed Forces insurance.</p>