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

[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.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

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.)

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

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.)