Do you think insurance is a scam

jaxbusa

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I’ve been using a Drivewise monitor from my insurance company in an attempt to lower my premium. You plug it into the OBD port and it monitors speed, braking, mileage and time of day. I was talked into it by the insurance agent. She told me that my rates would not not go up because of the device and that I would get a 10% discount while using it. If it shows that you’re a good driver you will get a continued discount. So far it projects that I will receive a 17% discount from my driving habits. This process has made me think back to my perfect record and that they’ve been charging me the maximum amount this whole time. Go figure.


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Mpoitrast87

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I’ve been using a Drivewise monitor from my insurance company in an attempt to lower my premium. You plug it into the OBD port and it monitors speed, braking, mileage and time of day. I was talked into it by the insurance agent. She told me that my rates would not not go up because of the device and that I would get a 10% discount while using it. If it shows that you’re a good driver you will get a continued discount. So far it projects that I will receive a 17% discount from my driving habits. This process has made me think back to my perfect record and that they’ve been charging me the maximum amount this whole time. Go figure.


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Watch out with those plug ins. I have personally seen those plugs in cause weird issues with cars including causing them not to start.
 

tistan

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of course it's a scam. How much have you received in claims? For me, of all time, about $8000. How much have you paid, in total, for insurance (car, house, business, health, life) ? If you add it all up you would shit yourself. Insurance is a false sense of security. you are basically dumping in $10,000+ per year, for absolutly nothing in return. But hey, you're covered IF it happens LOL....
This is exactly the point I was trying to make. When you think that this is happening to every middle class person in American, then it is no wonder that there isn't much financial upward mobility. If you invested that $10k a year for 20 years with a low save 5% a year you would have $350k. Instead of you having it the insurance gets it and invests it for themselves.
 

AustinSN

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Man, I could reply to a lot in this thread but it would take me all day.

Is it a perfect system? No, but it does have value.

If you have ever been in the position where insurances negotiates fault, then you would rather have your day in court.

My wife got in an accident a few years ago before we were married. She was driving down a two lane road, and I was in the passenger seat. The car in front of her was hit head on by a drunk driver. The force turned the car in front of my wife side ways and stopped it dead in its tracks. My wife swerved into the turn lane to try and miss the car, but there was no room to go anywhere . The insurance of the drunk girl determined that part of the wreck was my wife's fault and they were not going to pay for her car repair and tried to get my wife's insurance to pay for part of the other persons repair. My wife's insurance fought and said no she wasn't at fault. My wife's insurance didn't raise her rates because they didn't consider her at fault. The wreck went on my wife's insurance record as at fault. Then her insurance went up quite a bit, and she found out she couldn't change insurance for 3 years because every other insurer viewed her as at fault. Since it is insurance, there was no recourse to fix things.

Uh...

Literally a week and a half ago I quoted someone who had an "at-fault" which I found out through a letter of experience (and from speaking with the insured) that it was indeed a not-at-fault accident.

I contacted the prior company, they verified it was submitted wrong to the CLUE report and they adjusted it (for the future). As the agent I was able to change the "at-fault" to a "not-at-fault" in the system to adjust the rate. I emailed in documentation, poof, done.

If you have anything that's a mistake on your record/clue report, you can contact the company to change it. If they refuse, you need to stop paying shit companies for insurance.



Being in insurance I see claims every single day. One of my good buddies (who I didn't insure at the time, before I worked in insurance), had a minor rear ending when he was a kid. It was about $900 total in property damage IIRC (the dude who was rear ended had a passenger in the car who was sleeping, and didn't wake up from the accident), so really minor. My buddy, and his parents (because teenager), were sued for just a gnats ass under $1M.

The insurance company went to bat for him because that's what reputable companies do, spent like a year and a half in the courts and eventually settled on like $275,000 (which the company paid). That's not a "big" claim in terms of what we see but that's a life changing amount for almost everyone. Can you imagine losing everything you have over a $900 accident in stop and go traffic?

Are you still insuring your house?

If you own it outright you don't need to, but you still carry liability if someone trips on your sidewalk and breaks their leg (had one last year), kid illegally trespasses and drowns in your pool (heard about one just a few weeks ago), deck collapses during a party and you get sued by several people (few years back), your kid throws a party while youre out of town and 2 drunk teenagers get in a fight, one of which cracks the skull of another kid (back when I first started).

That's liability only (and just a few examples of many, many losses over the years), which barely scratches the surface of the majority of the claims we see. Every one of these situations would be enough to bankrupt even upper middle class people and put them on the street.
 

Coiled03

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Man, I could reply to a lot in this thread but it would take me all day.

Is it a perfect system? No, but it does have value.



Uh...

Literally a week and a half ago I quoted someone who had an "at-fault" which I found out through a letter of experience (and from speaking with the insured) that it was indeed a not-at-fault accident.

I contacted the prior company, they verified it was submitted wrong to the CLUE report and they adjusted it (for the future). As the agent I was able to change the "at-fault" to a "not-at-fault" in the system to adjust the rate. I emailed in documentation, poof, done.

If you have anything that's a mistake on your record/clue report, you can contact the company to change it. If they refuse, you need to stop paying shit companies for insurance.



Being in insurance I see claims every single day. One of my good buddies (who I didn't insure at the time, before I worked in insurance), had a minor rear ending when he was a kid. It was about $900 total in property damage IIRC (the dude who was rear ended had a passenger in the car who was sleeping, and didn't wake up from the accident), so really minor. My buddy, and his parents (because teenager), were sued for just a gnats ass under $1M.

The insurance company went to bat for him because that's what reputable companies do, spent like a year and a half in the courts and eventually settled on like $275,000 (which the company paid). That's not a "big" claim in terms of what we see but that's a life changing amount for almost everyone. Can you imagine losing everything you have over a $900 accident in stop and go traffic?

Are you still insuring your house?

If you own it outright you don't need to, but you still carry liability if someone trips on your sidewalk and breaks their leg (had one last year), kid illegally trespasses and drowns in your pool (heard about one just a few weeks ago), deck collapses during a party and you get sued by several people (few years back), your kid throws a party while youre out of town and 2 drunk teenagers get in a fight, one of which cracks the skull of another kid (back when I first started).

That's liability only (and just a few examples of many, many losses over the years), which barely scratches the surface of the majority of the claims we see. Every one of these situations would be enough to bankrupt even upper middle class people and put them on the street.

That's cool. Soooo....when do we stop pretending insurance companies operate with the highest of morals and ethics?

Every case you cite where the insurance company went to bat for their clients, I can probably find one where they screwed their clients over. Hell, I don't even need an actual case. Every time they raise rates with no cause they're screwing customers.
 

AustinSN

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That's cool. Soooo....when do we stop pretending insurance companies operate with the highest of morals and ethics?

Every case you cite where the insurance company went to bat for their clients, I can probably find one where they screwed their clients over. Hell, I don't even need an actual case. Every time they raise rates with no cause they're screwing customers.
The last 7 years, Colorado has been unprofitable for every single one of my companies, except for 1, and that was for only one year. They only paid out $0.97 of each dollar they collected on premiums.

I had companies paying out 175% of what they brought in, for multiple years. But with rate increases, they are getting closer to breaking even (we actually saw a couple companies take rate decreases in the .X%-3% range, imagine that). Is that screwing over customers if they need to make money to continue to operate?

In terms of overall value, it's better for the average person.
 

sleek98

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Man this thread remind me how I pay 5-6k a year in home/boat/auto insurance. Time to shop rates again.

I think paying liability insurance should be based on the person and comp/collision should be based per car. Just base the liability on the most expensive car (liability wise) and let the other go.

Looking at my policy we are paying liability insurance on 5 cars yet we have 2 drivers, and 2 cars get driven under 2,000 miles a year. each.
 
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svtfocus2cobra

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I worked at Farmers Insurance from 07-09 and if I recall correctly the company was not as profitable as you would think. Given, that was the peak of the housing crisis but from my understanding while working there was that profit margins were thin.

Sure you can put away $10k that you would normally pay in insurance and turn it into $350k but have fun getting sued for an accident where you're at fault and the person actually got injured and you are ordered to pay for their medical bills and you are paying for a lawyer on top of that. That $350k you put away could very easily come up short, especially if there are multiple individuals injured. Not even everyone that is in the bottom of the top 1% of the wealthiest in this country could afford to pay out in full for a claim like that because you're talking about millions of dollars possibly. Those kinds of claims would crush 99.9% of Americans so that is why we carry insurance.
 

ON D BIT

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of course it's a scam. How much have you received in claims? For me, of all time, about $8000. How much have you paid, in total, for insurance (car, house, business, health, life) ? If you add it all up you would shit yourself. Insurance is a false sense of security. you are basically dumping in $10,000+ per year, for absolutly nothing in return. But hey, you're covered IF it happens LOL....

That’s complete and utter garbage. As I’ve already stated my friends insurance has paid out over $1,500,000 on his $900k that burned in 2017. His cost $24k in 10 years. It’s a no brained because it will protect you when it does happen to you.

in July my insurance paid out $18k for my totaled 16 fist with 30k miles. Accident was not my fault, my cost for 3 years of insurance about $3.6k.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. When you think that this is happening to every middle class person in American, then it is no wonder that there isn't much financial upward mobility. If you invested that $10k a year for 20 years with a low save 5% a year you would have $350k. Instead of you having it the insurance gets it and invests it for themselves.

Still way behind in the example from above. You are still out $1.15 million without insurance and the $350k in the bank. Damn that hurts.
 
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svtfocus2cobra

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Bottom line is that it is gambling. You are gambling on the fact that nothing catastrophic will happen to you and the money you save will allow you to pay for any accidents that do occur. Problem is that you cannot foresee or control what will happen to you and with the drunk and reckless drivers out there the odds are firmly stacked against you. There wouldn't be thousands of body shops out there with back logs of customers waiting to get in to get repairs completed if they weren't.
 

P49Y-CY

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why do body shops routinely charge a higher price for the same service if they know that the work is being billed through insurance, instead of to an individual directly?

same with dentists/doctors/hospitals when it comes to healthcare - they knowingly inflate their prices.

there is something very wrong with that.
 

nxhappy

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That’s complete and utter garbage. As I’ve already stated my friends insurance has paid out over $1,500,000 on his $900k that burned in 2017. His cost $24k in 10 years. It’s a no brained because it will protect you when it does happen to you.

in July my insurance paid out $18k for my totaled 16 fist with 30k miles. Accident was not my fault, my cost for 3 years of insurance about $3.6k.



Still way behind in the example from above. You are still out $1.15 million without insurance and the $350k in the bank. Damn that hurts.
is it really? how many claims are actually paid, versus people that don't see one claim in a whole LIFETIME ? My wife used to work in insurance, it's a ****ing scam and that's my final verdict.
 

nxhappy

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"over a lifetime of driving — age 16 to 78 — the average person will spend about $94,000 on insurance. "

that's 94 grand straight down the shitter my friends. Let that number sink in.
 

svtfocus2cobra

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why do body shops routinely charge a higher price for the same service if they know that the work is being billed through insurance, instead of to an individual directly?

same with dentists/doctors/hospitals when it comes to healthcare - they knowingly inflate their prices.

there is something very wrong with that.

No they dont. Body shops are held to the prices that the insurance companies set, which when I was working at a body shop last was $52/hrs for body and paint labor rates. If the shop charges more than what is on the insurance companies estimate then that is cost that is directly passed onto the customer and you dont have to pay that, just simply take it to another shop because most shops go by the insurance companies labor rate which is usually standard across the industry. If it is a premier shop working on higher end cars then they may demand a higher rate from the insurance company because they sell themselves as a higher quality shop, but those rates have to be agreed on between the shop and the insurance company, otherwise the insurance company will only agree to their set amount and the customer will be left with the difference if they insist on having the work done at that particular shop. If you dont want to pay that then the insurance company has a long list of DRPs that they can send you to that will abide by the insurance companies rates because they live off of the customers that the insurance companies send their way.
 

ON D BIT

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is it really? how many claims are actually paid, versus people that don't see one claim in a whole LIFETIME ? My wife used to work in insurance, it's a ****ing scam and that's my final verdict.

As with any business that works for profit!

"over a lifetime of driving — age 16 to 78 — the average person will spend about $94,000 on insurance. "

that's 94 grand straight down the shitter my friends. Let that number sink in.

Unless you need it and it will allow you to replenish 10 times 20 times or 50 times that which what you lost.
 

Coiled03

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Unless you need it and it will allow you to replenish 10 times 20 times or 50 times that which what you lost.

Only if you meet a certain set of criteria, which changes all the time without your knowledge, designed to limit as many people as possible from collecting.

And then if you do collect, they'll probably drop you as a client so you can't do it again.
 

Mpoitrast87

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"over a lifetime of driving — age 16 to 78 — the average person will spend about $94,000 on insurance. "

that's 94 grand straight down the shitter my friends. Let that number sink in.
I actually don’t think that’s bad at all. $94k to cover potentially millions in damage over a lifetime? I’ll take that all day.
 

jaxbusa

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No they dont. Body shops are held to the prices that the insurance companies set, which when I was working at a body shop last was $52/hrs for body and paint labor rates. If the shop charges more than what is on the insurance companies estimate then that is cost that is directly passed onto the customer and you dont have to pay that, just simply take it to another shop because most shops go by the insurance companies labor rate which is usually standard across the industry. If it is a premier shop working on higher end cars then they may demand a higher rate from the insurance company because they sell themselves as a higher quality shop, but those rates have to be agreed on between the shop and the insurance company, otherwise the insurance company will only agree to their set amount and the customer will be left with the difference if they insist on having the work done at that particular shop. If you dont want to pay that then the insurance company has a long list of DRPs that they can send you to that will abide by the insurance companies rates because they live off of the customers that the insurance companies send their way.

You’re right about the body shop, he’s right about health. Last time I had my eyes checked the doctor asked about insurance and told the receptionist to charge me the no insurance rate.


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Blk04L

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Bottom line is that it is gambling. You are gambling on the fact that nothing catastrophic will happen to you and the money you save will allow you to pay for any accidents that do occur. Problem is that you cannot foresee or control what will happen to you and with the drunk and reckless drivers out there the odds are firmly stacked against you. There wouldn't be thousands of body shops out there with back logs of customers waiting to get in to get repairs completed if they weren't.

And apply that to health insurance.
Cancer, chronic issues, surgery, etc...

Can point to family health history and a clean diet, but shit can still happen to you that is out of your control.

It sucks to pay out money for a what if, but in todays world of unknowns and high prices for treatment, I'm fine with losing a few k a year to be insured for cars/health.

Can't complain about insurance when I blow money on niche shit like cars, car parts and hobbies.
 

blk02edge

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If insurance payments are hindering your wealth you are not cut out to be wealthy. You'd be blowing that money some other way. Therfore, especially for the average citizen, it is highly advised to have insurance.
 

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