car insurance

[arethinn]

I'm curious who-all (in CA) uses what companies for their car insurance, and what your experiences have been. It looks like I may actually be buying a car in the not-too-distant future, and one decision we have to make is whether I want to start my own policy with AAA, or whether I want to switch to another insurance company when I do so. AAA is somewhat of teh debbil, and I hear vague rumour they're worse in terms of service than some others, so tell me who's better. Cost is not exactly a factor here; of course I don't want to pay something way out of line, but at least when checking online quotes, it seems that the rates for what I want to drive and my record are all pretty similar (within $50 or so of one another), so... yeah. Any recommendations, or companies to avoid like the screaming Martian plague?

Comments

[darkmoon.livejournal.com]

I use Progressive and have had good luck with them so far.

[arethinn]

What do you mean by "good luck"? Is it easy to get a hold of an agent if you have questions about the coverage? Is filing a claim relatively non-stressful? You haven't found any surprises that made you go "wtf?"

[saizai.livejournal.com]

I have The General (aka permanent general). $150/mo for minimum "legal to drive" coverage, but they actually are willing to *give* me insurance. I have a few points on my record, and am not yet at the "5 (4?) years' driving" discount either.

When I had AAA, I recall that they were relatively good, except that they had problems with my payments a couple times. Not entirely their fault, but still.

[arethinn]

Their commercials are scary *giggles*. I don't think our insurance situations are terribly comparable, though. My record is pretty clean (2 accidents in the past 9 years, neither of which appears on my DMV record), I'm over 25, I'm female, I have 9 years of driving experience and being insured, etc. $150 a month almost gives me a heart attack, but surely they wouldn't charge me the same. Besides "they're willing to give me insurance", how is the service and all? Anything surprising about the coverages, can you actually get a hold of a real agent when you need to, etc? Any experience filing a claim?

[saizai.livejournal.com]

"Commercials"? What are these things you speak of? :-P

And yeah, I'm sure you'd get much better service.

I've not had any actual service from PG, just the signup stuff, which was done via phone and fax. I haven't had any claims with them.

I did have a couple claims with my previous one - State Farm, sorry, not AAA - and can say that they were extremely prompt and efficient about it, and I had not difficulty at all getting Real People. (They assign you to a paritcular person at their local office anyhow, so you have a "case worker" you can personally call.)

[arethinn]

Don't be sorry, that's exactly the sort of info I'm looking for. I'm trying to find out if it would be worth switching from AAA, so that's useful to me. (Bonus, I live literally down the street from a State Farm agent. Double bonus, I know they do auto insurance in Canada and I can simply tranfer a policy with what I'm told is a minimum of hassle.)

[darkmoon.livejournal.com]

I haven't had to call just to ask questions, but when I've had to file claims (once or twice, I forget how many of them were through this company and how many were through the last one) they've been very easy to deal with, and I haven't come across any major surprises with them. That, and you can get a quote on their web site and do quite a bit of account management there as well, which is a big plus in my book.

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

To avoid: CVA. Don't recall what the acronym stands for. Found them on a "find the lowest quote" search engine. Had them for a year and had nothing but problems with them.

Recommended: Progressive. Went through five different web sites and got the lowest quote from them - roughly commesurate with the other quotes I received, but a bit lower and with one month FREE every 6-month term! (So why don't they just make a lower premium every month? I don't know. But as I said, the monthly for Progressive's five wound up being about the same as the other guys' six, so I'm not complaining too loud.)

Prior to either of those, we had one term of State Farm, mostly because we had to have *some* kind of insurance to drive off the lot, and State Farm had some sort of arrangement with the dealer. No strong emotions positive or negative, but it was the most expensive insurance I've had to date.

Of course I've never actually had to file a claim *knock wood* so I don't know how well any of these companies actually work. Here's hoping neither you or I ever have to find out!

[arethinn]

Well, I've already had two accidents and two break-ins in my lifetime, for a total of two insurance claims we filed (the first accident and the first break-in) and another filed against me (the second accident). The thing with CSAA is that they wouldn't tell us anything. It was hard to get a hold of a real person. They paid the claims in the second accident without notifying us they were doing so. Etc.

Ironically, at least through website quotes, however, they offer me the most flexible insurance options - they will let me buy as much as I want to, whereas a lot of other sites are limiting me to levels I don't feel comfortable with (Geico even insisted that I choose between Uninsured Motorist Property Damage, and Collision - it wouldn't let me have both! WTF!) and give me the cheapest rate while doing so! I don't get it! They also do insurance in Canada, like State Farm does, as the Canadian Automobile Association, although their website won't give me a quote.

My dad's opinion is that "the devil we know" may be a good idea. heh.