How long are we going to let the insurance companies screw us and steal our money? I had my wifes car insured with Allen Insurance Group when it broke down in September. I called in after it had broken down to make the last payment on the 6 month policy, they told me I would have to go ahead and pay 1/3 for the next 6 months worth. I did not have enough to do so, so we agreed to wait until I got the car fixed. I just finished fixing it so I called in to get it reinstated and they told me it would cost more than double because it was uninsured for over thirty days. They said it did not matter why that’s just the way it is. It is not fair, any company I call says the same thing, they are all a bunch of theives. The politicians make it mandatory to have insurance so they can do anything they want to. That’s the reason for enacting laws to make HI’s licensed, then make it mandatory to have E&O. I am tired of it, from now on my prices are going to based on ones occupation, if they are in the insurance industry or politicians, I am going to make them pay. They are nothing but licensed crooks.Where the He!! is this freedom I keep hearing about?
In our state if the car is not driven, and the owner has another car at their disposal to drive, then the “no insurance for 30 days” does not apply.
My daughter was in that spot and I needed to say that she had use of my vehicle and tell them my insurance info and then they did not upcharge her to get insurance.
That is the way it should be, my wife has been using my truck to get to work and I have been riding my motorcycle. But AIG said it did not matter.
Ken
I empathize brother!!
When I had my Harley I had to pay insurance for the entire year. It used to be you could buy insurance for 3 or 6 month period now it’s 12 months mandatory coverage. I live in Toronto the riding season is at best 6 months.
I just called AIG back Larry, and they said you are not telling the truth. I did not tell them your name, just the situation. Like I said, they are crooked.
It is time for us to do something about it, it is organized crime, talk about price fixing! It should be on the person, not the vehicle, I can’t drive more than 1 at a time. If it was not a mandatory law, then they would have to compete just like all of the other business’s out there, and the treatment would be much better. If you file a claim, they will make you pay more. As your car gets older, do your payments go down? NO! Just look at what happened with Katrina, thousands of people are having to fight them right now or look at 911, they got the government to bail them out. They make us pay them with the law, but the law will not help us when they rip us off. WHY? Becuse just about every politician owns stock in the insurance companies. Back in the early eighty’s there was a T.V. program about Senator’s and Congressmens incomes, there were only two who were not millionaires and they were the only two who did not own stocks in the insurance industry, what does that tell you about why they can do as they wish. Dam the TEA, we need to throw the politicians in the harbor! If they make E&O mandatory in GA., I’m going to quit this business, I am tired of it, I really am.
Actually, it happened just like I said. Nontheless, I feel your irritation and would be looking for another insurance company if I were you. I believe there will be a special place in h3ll for those types.
I shop my insurance needs every 2 to 3 years just to keep them honest.
I have changed back and forth more than once.
Loyalty is nice but sometimes insurance companies have a bad year and raise the rates the next while another had a good year and didn’t raise rates as much. It pays to shop around.
Just make sure you are comparing apples with apples.
BTW-I have had some companies that will write 6 month policies and some that wouldn’t. You just have to ask.
I’m too mad to make any decisions right now, but thanks for the suggestions.
We are not allowed to keep the tags on our vehicles if they are not insured, and are not allowed to keep the vehicle in public view if they don’t have tags, running or not.
It will be interesting to see how the insurance companies react to all the homes which have perished in the SoCal fires.
Ben,
An insurance question for you concerning CA fires.
Up here in WI and MN we have a situation that when the deer car accident rates go up too high the insurance companies pressure the state DNR to reduce he herd which we hunters are only to happy to help out with. It lowers claims for the auto insurance Cos and rates for the consumer.
??Why don’t the insurance companies in CA pressure the state to clear the underbrush to a managable level so that these annual fires are not so destructive??
I read today that there is 10 - 100 times the amount of acceptable undergrowth that has been allowed to remain because of other pressure groups desire to leave it alone and are against the use of controlled burns to reduce the danger.
lol…you would not believe the answer. At least years ago this very proposal was raised and the environmentalist went to General Quarters. Apparently, some kind of little rodent would lose their natural habitat. I do not know if that is still the reason but it was at one time. I was stationed out in San Jose in the early 80s and used to shake my head at the things I heard and saw.
Not to slam, just educate. My wife used to be an actuary and knows how insurance works, and it ain’t like most people think it does.
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Insurance is a contract between you and the insurance company. It doesn’t matter what people think is fair or necessary, the contract spells out what the company has to do and what you have to do.
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States mandate the things that insurance companies must cover and how they must cover it. You can buy different levels or coverage, but all the reauirements are dictated by state law, and is pretty different in every state.
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I assume you are referring to auto insurance. Auto insurance rates are set by a) Actualrial mathematics, based upon risk statistics and b) the history of the insured. If you have had accidents, you will pay higher premiums. If you live in an area with high car theft and vandalism statistics, you will pay more. If you drive a car that gets stolen alot, you will pay more.
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If you have no history (i.e., were uninsured for a time) you will pay more because you have no claims history with the company. I know you are saying, “but they have all my history. I was only off for a month.”. Well, that ie because the state has passed laws which restrict and change what the insurance company cal and can’t use for history.
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As we all know, when the government gets involved, they start trying to legislate the value of pi. Actuarial science is exact and works (otherwise, insurance companies would go out of business), but you know that the government just can’t leave well enough alone with science and has to pass laws to make things “more fair”.
Hey, I didn’t make the world the way it is, nor do I particularly like the way it is. I just have to live here.
And who do you think is keeping the fires burning??
If the gov would clear the underbrush they would use fire and charge us for doing it
Got to look at it another way - house burns - builders have to build a new one and the insurance goes up
I love the system
rlb
Funny. I had the same thought yesterday.
Insurance companies will be closing their doors over this devastation or involved in lawsuits with homeowners for non-payment…Guaranteed.
Michael,
Let me give you a bit of background about controlled burns. I’m currently the Chief of the local VFD here in my little community which is surrounded by the approximately 3.3 million acre Gila National Forest. As such I’m involved in the planning and execution of many of the controlled burns in this area.
I don’t have all of the numbers in front of me, but we have done controlled burns every year for the past four years I’ve lived here. In 2004, we burned almost 10,000 acres, which was a huge effort. The NF brought in firefighters from WA, OR, MN, CA, and I’m sure other places. All to burn 10,000 acres out of the 3.3 million acres that exist in the NF.
Now, say we do the same 10,000 acres every year, so in 10 years we have burned 100,000 acres, or approximately 3% of the entire forest. That would be a good start, but the reality is that the area we burned in '04 had already recovered by '06 (we didn’t have much rain in '05, but '06 and '07 were good rain years).
In fact, this spring when I did some horseback riding up in that area, I noticed that the grass was so thick and strong from the rains the year before that it was probably worse then if they hadn’t burned it at all.
Now, I’m not saying don’t burn, in fact I like the controlled burns, but it is not the panacea that everyone likes to make it out to be.
Another note, last year we had one of the worst fires in this NF’s history, and that is saying alot as Teddy Rosevelt signed the bill creating the NF system and the Gila about a mile from my home. The fire was called the Skates fire, and it didn’t get much press because we only had about 150 homes threatened by it, but it was one heck of a fire and it took a concerted effort from all of us to keep those homes safe.
At the same time the Skates fire was going on, we had six other medium to large wildfires going on somewhere in the Gila NF which burned a total of around 85,000 acres. That’s about 2.6% of the entire forest. Last week I was driving thru two of the largest burn areas to inspect a house, and I noticed that both of them were almost completely recovered by now.
Now having said all of that, there are things that can be done. One of the most important thing to do is to create a defensable space around your structure(s). The main thing is to clear the vegetation around your structure. With the type of fires we have here, it has been determined that if you have a 30’ buffer around your home, then you have a much better chance of having that fire bypass your structure.
Now, we don’t have any foen winds around here (The Santa Ana winds are a foen wind), and those things make fires at least 10x if not 100x worse then what we experience, so I don’t know what the distances would need to be to make a fire break that help in that case.
Secondly, building homes with more fire retardant materials. In my case, the only exposed surfaces are concrete (stucco), metal (roof) and glass (windows). That’s not totally true, The doors are solid wood and I have some ceramic tiles in the doorways. But the fact remains that I and most of my neighbors build their homes to withstand a fire from the outside.
Whenever we have a new person start a home here in the area, I make a point of going out there and meeting with them and explaining that we are a Volunteer FD, as such you get a bunch of old, out of shape, poorly trained men (mostly) coming by to put your fire out. Were actually really good at putting out wildfires, and a couple of us have been called in by the paid FDs to help them get wildfires in their areas under control, but we are never going to be a crack structure fire fighting team, so our residents can either roll the dice, or build a home which is not likely to go up in the case of a wildfire coming thru here.
Brian,
Thanks for your informative post.
Do you (or anyone else) know if the areas devastated this week in CA ever have had controlled burns or removal of underbrush or if any effort has been made to provide sufficient margins around structures to minimize problems from wild fires?
I would think the insurers would be interested in this.
I don’t personally know about the specific areas that were involved in this fire. I do know a member of the incident command team, he is from here, so I will be talking to him in detail about it when he gets back. He was planned to do some training for us in a few weeks, but I think that’s not likely to happen now:shock:
I know that they had some significant fires in '04 I believe, not sure if it was the same area or not.
I do know that shortly after the ‘Oakland hills’ fire, another foen wind driven fire, the local government passed ordinances which required something to be done to make the fires less able to spread. I’m not sure of the specifics, but I know it was a local effort. I have never heard of a state wide effort in CA, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
NM will actually pay our home owners if they make a defensable space around their home.:mrgreen: You basically call in the state forestry office and they will come out and tell you what needs to be done and give you an estimate of the cost. Then if you do the work, call them back, they come out and give you the $$. Do it yourself and pocket the cash or hire it done, they don’t care.
– bz
Brian, I am glad to hear that someone else is thinking about how we build the house. Many of the homes that burned now burned about 4 years ago. Just think how many could have been saved if they were required to be built with concrete. It is the same here in Florida. If we built our homes with concrete then the hurricanes wouldn’t do so much damage.