Exhaust Port
08-24-2004, 09:01 PM
My billing cycle is about to renew at the end of this month so I recently received the insurance packet from the insurance company. You know, the new car, accident reporting guidelines etc...
This new year will have one less car on the policy as I just donated my old beater to Volunteers of America so I expected the insurance to be lower by about $15/month. Much to my suprise the insurance was $700 more for the year which is almost a 100% increase. What the heck happened.
I put a call into the insurance company to see what the deal was. I had reported an "accident" (I use that term lightly) last year but it was very minor. I had backed into a car in a parking lot and left a minor scratch on their bumper. I tracked down the owner and gave him my info to fix his bumper. I also had a speeding ticket early in 2003.
It turns out that the minor bumper incident was a freebie and didn't alter my insurance rates BUT there was another accident reported! On the same day as the speeding ticket an accident was listed. No claim was ever filed for it but since it was shown on my driving record I was penalized for it in my insurance premium. Now, I know for a fact that I never had an accident on that day but little that did to change my bill.
Apparently insurance companies don't gather driver information directly from state records but from a 3rd party company that pools information from all the states and sells it to the insurance companies. What my insurance company was showing was supposedly pulled from my official driving record.
I put a quick call into the local BMV (or DMV if aren't from OH) to ask about my driving record. The nice lady on the phone pulled up my record and sure enough didn't show any accidents. The BMV pulls their information straight from the court records so there is no disputing it.
Now it's up to me to straighten this out. I wasted a good part of the day driving to another city to get an official copy of my driving record. Tomorrow I'm going to fax it into the insurance company where it will hopefully make it into the right hands. I'm assured that once they verify the error that my insurance cost will be corrected.
It's not the fault of the insurance company so I can't blame them for uping my insurance cost but it does throw some egg on their face as they acted on bad information. It does cast a poor light on this 3rd party company though. I'm hoping to gather a bit more information regarding the error and the company and file a claim with the BBB. False records like this, whether intentional or not, have implications well beyond the scope of this company and they need to be avoided if not fined.
I'll let you know if anything becomes of this and if it gets resolved. Just goes to show it's always worth a call if you don't like what you see.
This new year will have one less car on the policy as I just donated my old beater to Volunteers of America so I expected the insurance to be lower by about $15/month. Much to my suprise the insurance was $700 more for the year which is almost a 100% increase. What the heck happened.
I put a call into the insurance company to see what the deal was. I had reported an "accident" (I use that term lightly) last year but it was very minor. I had backed into a car in a parking lot and left a minor scratch on their bumper. I tracked down the owner and gave him my info to fix his bumper. I also had a speeding ticket early in 2003.
It turns out that the minor bumper incident was a freebie and didn't alter my insurance rates BUT there was another accident reported! On the same day as the speeding ticket an accident was listed. No claim was ever filed for it but since it was shown on my driving record I was penalized for it in my insurance premium. Now, I know for a fact that I never had an accident on that day but little that did to change my bill.
Apparently insurance companies don't gather driver information directly from state records but from a 3rd party company that pools information from all the states and sells it to the insurance companies. What my insurance company was showing was supposedly pulled from my official driving record.
I put a quick call into the local BMV (or DMV if aren't from OH) to ask about my driving record. The nice lady on the phone pulled up my record and sure enough didn't show any accidents. The BMV pulls their information straight from the court records so there is no disputing it.
Now it's up to me to straighten this out. I wasted a good part of the day driving to another city to get an official copy of my driving record. Tomorrow I'm going to fax it into the insurance company where it will hopefully make it into the right hands. I'm assured that once they verify the error that my insurance cost will be corrected.
It's not the fault of the insurance company so I can't blame them for uping my insurance cost but it does throw some egg on their face as they acted on bad information. It does cast a poor light on this 3rd party company though. I'm hoping to gather a bit more information regarding the error and the company and file a claim with the BBB. False records like this, whether intentional or not, have implications well beyond the scope of this company and they need to be avoided if not fined.
I'll let you know if anything becomes of this and if it gets resolved. Just goes to show it's always worth a call if you don't like what you see.