So its time to get new car insurance. Never searched for car insurance before, so I really have no idea what I'm doing. I'm sure its not too difficult, but I'm really trying to get the cheapest insurance out there.

Any recommendations?

5/24/2008 12:27:46 PM

There's really not a single one that will ALWAYS be cheaper, they all weigh your driving history differently so it'll really just depend on you. Just check out a few websites and get quotes and see what happens.

That said, I've been with progressive for a little while now and my insurance is pretty cheap. Haven't needed it as yet though (knock on wood) so I can't attest to their customer service.

5/24/2008 12:39:16 PM

[Edited on May 24, 2008 at 12:58 PM. Reason : double post]

5/24/2008 12:53:11 PM

I'm pretty happy with State Farm. Despite having a new car I've pretty much got enough insurance that I could kill 5 nuns in a Mercedes and never pay a dime out of pocket and I'm still paying less than $90/month. When I had my paid off truck I was paying about $50/month with similar coverage. I've had one accident (not my fault) but they were happy to help me through the process and I've never had any issues with them.

A lot of the customer service stuff is very much dependent on your agent, so my agent could be great while someone else could have had a horrible experience with the same insurance company, but a different agent.

5/24/2008 12:53:12 PM

My driving history is pretty normal.

No wrecks and a couple speeding tickets. My mom sent me this, saying this is what I currently have and what to get:

Property Breakdown:
- You have: Don’t go below:

A. Bodily Injury $100,000 each person Same thing
Bodily Injury $300,00each Accident Same thing
B. Property Damage $50,000 each accident Same thing
C. Medical Payments $2,000 per person
D. Other than collision full coverage $100.00 deductible
E. Collision $250.00 deductible $500 deductible
F. Uninsured MTR BI per person $100,000 Same thing
per Accident $300,000 Same thing
G. Uninsured Motorist- Property damage $50,000 Same thing

[Edited on May 24, 2008 at 12:59 PM. Reason : .]

5/24/2008 12:57:05 PM

I work for Farm Bureau Insurance, and as far as I know we are the lowest out there right now. If anyone is interested in switching over, pm me and I'll get you hooked up. If you're in the middle of your policy period you can usually get a pro-rated refund from your company. Our rates are about 10-40% cheaper than State Farm, All-State, Nationwide, and Geiko right now and they're dropping even lower on June 1, 2008.

5/24/2008 11:32:29 PM

all i can say is

GET UN-INSURED/UNDER-INSURED COVERAGE (UM/UIM)

trust me...i've seen far too many people seriously injured in accidents that weren't their fault, and the liable party not have enough insurance to cover their damages.

5/24/2008 11:35:12 PM

If you are eligible, USAA is pretty much the best at anything they do, and they do car insurance.
Eligibility is basically this: if your parents, spouse, or spouse's parents are USAA members, or if you or your spouse are veterans.

Prep-e is right about Farm Bureau being the next place to look (along with Amica), but really comparison shop if USAA is not available.

I switched from Farm Bureau to USAA, went from basic to premium coverage, added a second car, and came away with a $60 smaller monthly bill.

[Edited on May 24, 2008 at 11:41 PM. Reason : a]

5/24/2008 11:38:08 PM

I've had Geico for like 11 years now, and I am very happy with them.

5/25/2008 12:45:56 AM

Farm Bureau FTW!

5/25/2008 11:48:37 AM

I've got Nationwide, and i've never been disappointed. i bundled it with my homeowners insurance to get a better rate, but it was never too expensive to begin with.

how's your driving record? and what do you drive? are you looking for full coverage or just liability? all things to consider, but as has been said before, you'll never find one company that's always cheaper.

5/25/2008 11:51:10 AM

Watch out for their claims response... seems like the constantly cheaper ones are probably not going to be as awesome when something actually happens...

I have state farm mutual, which for me is pretty cheap... or was until I had 2 wrecks... but they were really awesome throughout the whole getting my car fixed/replacing my car deal.

2 years left before I get reasonable rates again

5/25/2008 12:09:22 PM

Quote :

"I work for Farm Bureau Insurance, and as far as I know we are the lowest out there right now."

Nice advertisement. As paerabol said, there's really not a single one that will ALWAYS be cheaper. I use All State since it was the cheapest I could find and I've been pleased with them.

5/25/2008 12:17:45 PM

I work for Liberty Mutual (not in sales or the auto division). I know we have 10% discounts for NC State students/alums. Might be worth checking out.

5/25/2008 1:33:28 PM

Jim McCleary

919-790-3886

5/25/2008 1:38:43 PM

^^^All I'm saying is I haven't been beaten on price since I started with Farm Bureau. There might be someone out there that is lower, but it's definitely not State Farm, Nationwide, All-State, Geiko, Liberty Mutual, or Progressive right now. And we're cutting our rates even lower starting June 1, 2008.

From my experience, All State is quite possibly the highest out there right now, right next to Nationwide. I rated a multi-car policy this last week for a friend who was with All State paying $725 for 6 months, and I gave him lower deductibles and more favorable liability limits and we were still at $492 for 6 months. I had another guy with Nationwide paying ~$1500 for 6 months with a 4-car policy and I matched his coverage exactly and we were at ~$1100.

[Edited on May 25, 2008 at 1:50 PM. Reason : /]

5/25/2008 1:47:13 PM

Well, all I'm saying is I called you guys up for a rate and it was higher than all state so I went with all state.

5/25/2008 1:59:54 PM

^do you have DUI's?

and when was this?

5/25/2008 2:03:43 PM

This was a while back.

No DUIs, no accidents in 8 years, excellent credit, honda civic 98

What rate can you get me?

5/25/2008 2:08:16 PM

if you have no speeding tickets either, i would guess that you're probably looking at anywhere from $40-$60 a month depending on what liability limits and deductibles you want to go with

5/25/2008 3:50:40 PM

To those of you that pm'd me for quotes, I'll be back in my office Tuesday and I'll try to get back to you. But I really need to run your motor vehicle report and get a copy of your current policy so that I can make sure I'm quoting you with the exact same coverage you have right now.

5/25/2008 5:45:45 PM

USAA quoted me $23/mth for:

$50,000/100,000 Bodily Injury
$50,000 Property Damage
No uninsured motorist, medical, or collision

5/25/2008 6:17:52 PM

^That's not enough insurance.

5/26/2008 9:19:17 AM

sure it is, i have a negative net worth--you can't squeeze blood from a turnip

5/26/2008 1:49:30 PM

you should really have uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage though, it's like an extra dollar or two a month

5/26/2008 5:04:51 PM

yeah, i prolly should

5/26/2008 7:48:11 PM

i kinda figured shopping around was a waste of time becasue the rates were probably about the same, I wrong about that?

7/15/2008 3:54:01 PM

Farm Bureau

7/15/2008 11:02:02 PM

prep-e helped me out tremendously when I was going to switch from Farmer's. For some reason, coincidentally or not, right when it came time to pull the trigger I had a revision notice come in that no longer made it cost effective to switch to a new company. Ignoring that, I would have done it in a second. It's definitely worth it to allow him to check Farm Bureau's rates for you.

7/15/2008 11:13:59 PM

What kind of car are you driving? If it is older and not worth a lot, you may want to look at prices for just liability and uninsured / underinsured coverage.

7/16/2008 7:09:17 AM

i havent read the thread but nearly every bodyshop i've talked to greatly prefers state farm because they pay out fast and don't argue over petty shit like the others.

so, all else being equal that's who i would recommend.

damn near all the companies advertise that theyll give you everybody else's rate these days so it shouldn't be hard to get a quote from everyone at once

7/16/2008 8:15:53 AM

My insurance just went through the roof recently because I moved from Morrisville to Raleigh. I was with Allstate and it went up $170 because of a zip code change. Geico got me back on track with a premium that was about what I was paying before. I realize location is relevant, but $170 difference and youre still in the same county? Thats ridiculous.

7/16/2008 9:00:35 AM

i actually have horace mann. i was with progressive, who gave me the best rate for years (i checked constantly) and horace mann was able to go about 150 every 6 cheaper than that.

7/16/2008 12:10:53 PM

My parents (and 16 y/o brother) switched from progressive to AIG and saved 60%, 1 car with collision, 2 older ones without. I decide to get a quote from AIG and it'll cost my wife and I 100% more than what we have through progressive, but we are making payments on both our cars and therefore have collision on both.

Moral: If you don't need collision, checkout AIG.

7/16/2008 2:06:52 PM

just go back and forth between geico and progressive and play their rates off one another a couple times

thats what i usually do

7/16/2008 3:39:47 PM

I like progressive auto. Pretty fair prices.

7/17/2008 8:31:38 AM

if anyone wants a quote for Farm Bureau rates, pm me and I'll see what I can do for you

we're about the lowest out there right now (unless you have DUI's or lots of speeding tickets)

I stole Str8BacardiL away from State Farm recently (I think we ended up around $40 cheaper per month)

[Edited on July 17, 2008 at 7:23 PM. Reason : /]

7/17/2008 7:11:19 PM

How many is a lot of speeding tickets?? When I get back from Europe (mid-October), I'm going to re-do my car insurance (I'm with Farm Bureau now).

I think I've gotten...mmm...maybe 5 or 6 speeding tickets??? I'm 25 and those are my only traffic violations (all reduced to 9-under). No wrecks and no DUIs.

7/17/2008 8:19:08 PM

I HAVE GREAT NEWS!

prep-e JUST SAVED ME A FUCK LOAD OF MONEY ON MY CAR INSURANCE.

I had been with State Farm since 1998 and supposedly had a fat loyal customer discount, Farm Bureau still ended up saving about $300 for a six month policy. I sent my homeowners there too and saved over $100 per year on that.

7/17/2008 8:58:19 PM

LMAO

7/17/2008 10:02:10 PM

Here's a little news that most of you might find interesting:

A LOT of insurance companies are basing their rates not only on your driving history, but your credit rating as well.

Me = fucked in both departments.

7/17/2008 11:21:05 PM

Quote :

"i actually have horace mann. i was with progressive, who gave me the best rate for years (i checked constantly) and horace mann was able to go about 150 every 6 cheaper than that."

Horace Mann may be cheap, but you better hope that you don't have an accident with them. I had them back in 2001 and got into a wreck and it was like pulling teeth to get them to do anything for me. Their customer service was horrible every step of the way. They gave us a very select list of places I could have the car towed and then when we picked the closest one, they still didn't want to pay for towing because it was more than the allotted distance. Then we had to wait almost a week before someone would come out and evaluate the damage. Then they wanted to only cut me a check for the damage to the front of the car since that was the part they were responsible for paying for. They wanted to have the person that rear-ended me's insurance pay for the rear-end damage. Nevermind the fact that the combined damages resulted in a total loss of the car. I had to pester them for almost two weeks to go out and re-evaluate the rear-end damage so they could total-loss the car. In the end they finally paid me the full amount for the car (actually ended up being about $1500 more than I had paid for the car a year previous) but I would not want to deal with them again.

Plus in my case, state farm ended up being cheaper anyway.

Bottom Line: Fuck Horace Mann.

7/17/2008 11:29:36 PM

My driving history is good.

...but that's just because I've spent a lot of money on traffic lawyers so I wouldn't end up paying it to the insurance companies.

[Edited on July 18, 2008 at 12:46 AM. Reason : i bet i've been pulled over 70-80 times, at least. <10 tickets, though.]

7/18/2008 12:45:03 AM

547/6mos

No collision

Right about the time this 'inexperienced operator' BS falls off is when I'll turn 25.

7/18/2008 1:39:17 AM

Erie Insurance ftw

7/18/2008 10:18:17 AM

Quote :

"547/6mos"

Holy crap

I pay $250ish/year

7/18/2008 11:19:11 AM

Yeah

In the course of 1.5mos, I'll go from 1K+/yr to maybe 300/yr...maybe less

7/18/2008 12:12:35 PM

Quote :

"Erie Insurance ftw"

<$90 /mo for two drivers. (No tickets in 5ish years, and no accidents that either of our faults)

They also handled the incidents that we have had quickly, and with minimal headache.

7/18/2008 12:20:52 PM

Quote :

"547/6mos No collision Right about the time this 'inexperienced operator' BS falls off is when I'll turn 25. "

Mine is about 600$/6mnths for two cars and I have a spotless driving record. sports car $rape

7/18/2008 1:19:52 PM

you're bitching about 50/mo/car?



But what's your insurance on your civic hatchback


I would make really good use of a sporty car when I'm older, gradumacated, and, essentially, in the dough

...but I probably won't ever get one. Between the tickets and the insurance and mileage, I'd feel too guilty about enjoying driving to be able to enjoy owning it.

I really want one of those ruby red corvettes that has the slight glittery effect in the paint job <3
(yes, I'm aware that there are other sports cars that are better. Do I know them? No. I'm playing the 'i'm a girl' card for the time being )

7/18/2008 1:36:27 PM