Entries Tagged 'Car insurance' ↓

There are many different ways you can go with in order to lower your insurance rates when insuring a car. And the best part of it that you may combine different options in order to gain even better savings than going with just a single saving method. So if you want to have lower rates, here are some things you can ask your insurer about:

- See if the company can offer you with a discount for having different types of insurance products from them. Many insurance providers offer different forms of insurance at once, such as life, health, homeowners and auto. So if you happen to have any of their products and insure your car with them as well, you can opt for a really good discount. And the more products you have from the same company, the larger your discount will be. So it’s sometimes better to have different more expensive policies with the same provider than having cheaper deals from different companies.

- In case the car lists a student as a driver, and he or she has good grades then the insurance can be cheaper than with other groups of drivers. That is while the student maintains an average of B and higher. When the grades drop, so does the discount (and the rates go up). Besides, you will be required to present the grades report at each annual renewal of the policy. But it still pays off to be a good student and do the paperwork, since the discount turns out to be pretty sweet with most insurance providers.

- Ask if there are any discounts for being a safe driver with a clean record. This especially pays off if you don’t have any accidents and traffic violations in your driver’s history.

- In case you are a senior citizen and hadn’t any traffic violations or accidents during the last couple of years, you can opt for a special discount, too. Continue reading →

When you start off on your tour of the internet, one thing becomes clear almost immediately. If you use the free online search engines, you can get a flood of quotes into your inbox. All the major auto insurers are tied into one or more of the search engines and they all respond to searches with their quotes. This buries you under a mountain of information. There just is not enough time to follow up every quote on every changed variable. Assuming, of course, that you got quotes using different factors, e.g. changing the amount of the deductible, how many miles a year you drive, and so on. The only way you can work out how to get the maximum discounts is to play with the system. So, if you are starting the process of finding a new vehicle to drive, first check out the premium rates on all the makes and models you are thinking about buying. You will be surprised by big the differences are. Then look at payment methods for the insurance. There are discounts available if you pay the premium as an annual lump sum. Should you bundle the home with the auto insurance? This can save at least 10%. Insure more than one vehicle? There are so many options giving you a discount, you need to work your way through multiple searches to understand how much money can be saved.

Talk to your friends and there is likely to be one suggestion they all make. Go for the maximum deductible. This gives you the biggest single discount. OK. So they are advising you to self-insure. Instead of looking to the insurance company to pay all your claims, big or small, you are signing up to a deal where the insurer only pays the big claims and you pay all the small claims. Look back over your driving career and talk to your family and trusted friends. Find out how many accidents they have had and roughly how much damage was caused.

Continue reading →

Somewhere in the dim and distant past of learning English, an idiom surfaced referring to gift horses and their mouths. The translation is that, when someone gives you a gift, it’s ungracious of you to publicly examine it too carefully. Yet, in the case of Prop. 17 which appears on the ballot in California, we should perhaps open the horse’s mouth and examine it’s teeth. It may prove to be an old Trojan horse and a gift we should reject.

Why be suspicious? Because the force behind Prop. 17 is not a consumer advocate, it’s the Mercury General Corp. Yes, friends, we’re supposed to believe that an insurance company wants voters in California to pressure lawmakers so that the insurance industry can give millions of dollars in discounts to policyholders. There’s another of those idioms that comes to mind at this point. It’s something about pigs suddenly sprouting wings and taking to the air in the joy of flight. Indeed, so committed is Mercury to Pro. 17 that it’s paying millions of dollars in TV ads to persuade everyone to vote for it. Bless its little cotton socks. It’s trying so hard to do right by Californians.

So just what does Prop. 17 say? Well, it’s one of these deceptively simple suggestions. As the law stands, Prop. 103 says insurers can only offer continuous or persistent (sometimes called “loyalty”) discounts to their own customers. The idea is straightforward. Instead of trying to poach customers from each other by offering discounts, insurers should try to attract new business by offering low rates. This has the advantage that insurers are competing equally on premium rates for both established and new drivers. If passed, Prop. 17 would allow insurers to match the current persistent discount based on the number of claims-free years. This would lure established customers from competing companies. At first sight, this looks like a good deal for any experienced driver who wants to switch insurers. But the price is paid by the inexperienced new drivers. If persistent discounts are to be paid for, the premium rates for new drivers must increase. Indeed, the premium rates could be increased for anyone who does not have a continuous history of insurance coverage. Continue reading →