(NBR) Am I overreacting about insurance agent?

haswelljme · November 2011

I'm about to lose it on our Allstate agent. The first problem has to do with our house insurance. A couple weeks ago I emailed our agent (if I call we play phone tag for a day or two) about the payments for our insurance. We are first time owners, so I wanted to make sure I fully understood that payments were being made and we weren't going to be blindsided. In the same email, I also asked him about a quote for car insurance, because we are thinking of switching from USAA to Allstate, if it is cheaper. His response was only about the car insurance quote, nothing about the house insurance. I got distracted and forgot to follow up.

Fast forward to last week...when I receive a letter from corporate Allstate saying that our mortgage company has not paid our house insurance, so if we don't pay the nearly $800 by the 20th, our policy will get canceled. I FREAKED out. It took nearly 3 days to finally speak on the phone with the agent, who had no clue that this was happening. We figured out the problem, and he said it would get it fixed. Ok, good, progress. However I'm still pretty irritated that he somehow had no idea this had happened.

Yesterday I emailed him for an update because I hadn't heard anything from him...sort of getting anxious, the 20th is in 6 days and after speaking with our loan rep, I know that the insurance should have been paid the day we closed on the house. I also asked him why he, as our agent, wasn't aware of the non-payment status and a question about the car insurance.

I get a response from him this afternoon - "yes it is being taken care of"

THAT'S. ALL. No professionalism in the email at all, no courtesy, no punctuation and NO answers to my other questions. AGAIN.

Now I am DEFINITELY reconsidering keeping our car insurance where it is, and now switching the house insurance. Am I overreacting? Am I expecting too much from the person that we hired to manage our insurance? I'm also thinking about making a complaint to Allstate about the lack of competence by my agent...I don't know if competence is the right word. Maybe I'm hormonal, but I'm freakin' irritated.

Also, thank you for letting me vent.

mrs.larry · November 2011

that's pretty bad, but not necessarily Allstate's fault (except maybe for still employing a lame agent...)

Maybe you can ask to be assigned another agent or something? I'm not sure how Allstate works. we have AAA and you pretty much deal with a different person every time, but they've all ALWAYS been very responsive and helpful.

haswelljme · November 2011

Switching agents is a good idea! I don't know why I didn't think of that as an obvious answer Embarrassed , especially since I don't want to go through the hassle of switching our housing insurance. I think it is much easier to switch car insurance, and Allstate is cheaper.

I'm not saying it is Allstate's fault, my extreme frustration has to do with how it was possible for our agent to somehow not get notified that payments weren't being made. I figure as an agent, that is kind of something that gets reported to you. Add that to his lack of adequate responses, it doesn't help the situation.

I'll definitely look into switching agents, thank you!

anhg80 · November 2011

Our All State agent has been great. I definitely think you should bring this up to a higher up at All State. If they can't transfer your agent, I'd move elsewhere. Imagine if you were experiencing an emergency situation?

sweetky_06 · November 2011

USAA has the best customer service - I do everything through them - bank, insurance, Roths - the only thing I don't have through them is my mortgage.

It would take some phenomenally low insurance rates from someone else to get me to switch, and probably not even then.

Companies need to get the message - customer service matters!

haswelljme · November 2011

Yeah, USAA has been fantastic with our banking needs. I hate that it is cheaper to go elsewhere for insurance, especially with the problems we are having now. But cheaper is cheaper, and that is what we need right now. When I'm a millionaire and win the lottery, then I'll switch everything back to USAA. Stick out tongue

Tracilaroo · November 2011

We have USAA for our house, car, everything. I'm actually surprised that All State is cheaper (is it less coverage?) because our car insurance is CHEAP. I guess it depends on the cars/drivers. I have, however, never had to use the car insurance in any way since we haven't had any accidents. USAA is amazing with our homeowners insurance, though. We have had two MAJOR leaks in the past two years and they were so quick about making sure to get the ball rolling and our agent checks in to make sure things are going well and if I have any issues she contacts the company. Personally, would switch everything to USAA just because I feel like companies like All State would have much worse customer service and response time. I don't even think we have a set agent, we just get someone who handles the current issue and that's who we deal with for the duration of that problem. Much better, in my opinion, than having to deal with one specific person for anything and everything, especially if that person sucks.

BritanyV · November 2011

LegalPawn:
It's true that USAA has great customer service, but we left them in Jan because we couldn't justify the extra cost. USAA was TWICE the price of multiple other companies, including my insurance company. There a big difference between $700 and $1600 for homeowners insurance.

Sorry, I *have* to ask. Are you sure it was "apples to apples"?

I only ask because when we bought our house last month we got a call from the builder's insurance agency saying that insurance was only $800 for the year, my quote from my Farmer's agent was $1300. Once I pulled up what they were quoting me for and what Farmer's was quoting me for, it was not the exact same policy. I had them add what would make it the same and it was a little more.

I hope you got the same policy or you could be loosing out on some benefits paying for the cheaper insurance.

BritanyV · November 2011

haswelljme:
Switching agents is a good idea! I don't know why I didn't think of that as an obvious answer , especially since I don't want to go through the hassle of switching our housing insurance. I think it is much easier to switch car insurance, and Allstate is cheaper.

I'm not saying it is Allstate's fault, my extreme frustration has to do with how it was possible for our agent to somehow not get notified that payments weren't being made. I figure as an agent, that is kind of something that gets reported to you. Add that to his lack of adequate responses, it doesn't help the situation.

I'll definitely look into switching agents, thank you!

Yeah, definitely switch agents. I have Farmer's and I almost always get my agent on the phone immediately when I call her office. She usually answers the phone, herself.

I will say that I had a mix up with our home owner's insurance when we bought a house last month. I saw online that the policy hadn't been paid and I knew the title company was supposed to send the money to them. My agent didn't have any idea that it wasn't paid but did find the problem since the check was mailed directly to her office and everything was fixed before our payment was late.

I think that the local agents are there to facilitate new policies and changes and etc but it's the main corporate office that handles most of the financial aspects of the policies. So the local agents aren't necessarily kept in the loop about missing payments and etc.

However, your agent doesn't seem with it regardless whether or not corporate keeps him in the loop or not.

cbkeni · November 2011

If you had just said your Insurance Agent and didn't mention he worked for Allstate I would have been convinced that we had the same guy! But my guy is this like elderly senile old crazy man so I feel guilty yelling at him. But I have NO tolerance for bad customer service. I would have torn that guy to shreds...so congrats on not doing that!

Here's what I always try to tell people, if you screw up and own up to it and do everything to rectify the situation then I will give you as many second chances as I can possibly afford and I will appreciate everything you do. If you screw up, take no responsibility and act like I'm being a b!tch for getting upset you don't even get to make it to a second chance. I will make you cry.

Ugh...I just got mad thinking about YOUR insurance agent...thanks a lot! :P

Eleni&Josh · November 2011

I don't think you're being hormonal at all. If something were to happen to your home and you didn't know that your insurance was cancelled, you'd have to cover it yourself. You've been paying someone to do a job, and it sounds like he's not doing it. Definitely reason to complain.

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(NBR) Am I overreacting about insurance agent?

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