Credit based vehicle insurance rate
Filed under: Free insurance quotes, Insurance comparisons
Vehicle insurance company after company is claiming nowadays that they can show research that the worse your credit it, the more likely you are to file a car insurance claim. But is that really true? After all, the research that they show tends to be more about correlation than causation, and it just isn’t the same thing. It’s the sort of thing that really bugs the head of Georgia’s department of insurance. According to John Oxendine, car insurance companies keep on using the word correlation when justifying their use of credit in insurance risk scores because they don’t have any real evidence that it does. Causation is evidence, he says. Correlation is just coincidence.
Oxendine does say that credit history does have some use when it comes to car insurance companies. They can be used to help vehicle insurance companies avoid the growing menace of fraud just by looking at a person’s credit report. This won’t help in all instances, but it is a good indication. However, he doesn’t trust any type of insurance scoring involving credit, especially when the end premium is determined by some kind of statistic.
If you put plenty of numbers together, you can get anything out of that, and it won’t really mean anything at all, he claims. He says that the government should start regulating more stiffly the way that car insurance companies decide how to charge people, because a lot of their new methods now that they have a more complicated system–a lot of them just don’t make any sense, and are randomly used to charge good drivers higher premiums.
Oxendine has been doing his best to get the vehicle insurance companies to fess up to the method that they use to calculate the insurance risk scores. We have some idea of what factors go into them, but no real idea of how they get to the result. Oxendine says that they are deliberately trying to hide the way they do things to keep people who buy insurance in the dark. The reason for this, he says, is because the more that people know about their car insurance the more likely they will be able to avoid getting tricked into higher premiums.
According to Dan Kummer from the National Association of Independent Insurers, Oxendine couldn’t be more off the mark. He claims that the process isn’t so cut and dry as Oxendine seems to think and believes that the credit based insurance risk score is one of the best factors that has come into the premium determination process in the past few years. The reason, he says, that the vehicle insurance companies don’t want to share their methods is because it took them so long to come up with them. They are, in a way, trade secrets. They don’t want to have to tell other car insurance companies what their secrets are.
The Texas Commissioner says this is a very tricky way to go about things. After all, the longer the car insurance companies keep secrets, the less we know about what relatively harmless actions and qualities have an effect on our car insurance premium.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
At fault vehicle insurance claims lies
Dealing with another person’s car insurance company when they are the one at fault for a car accident can often end as an upward battle. One of the most difficult situations is when the other person says up front after the accident happens that it was their fault and that they will accept the consequences, but then after you have gone through the whole claim filing process with their vehicle insurance company it turns out that your claim is rejected. And why does your claim get rejected? It could be because the person who was so apologetic after the accident has now flipped around and is telling their vehicle insurance company that it wasn’t their fault at all. This may be true, and the company probably knows it, but they’ll try to take the other person’s side anyway.
According to many attorneys, this is a very common occurrence. Insurance companies want to deny your claims, so they will look for any excuse to do so, even if you have the documentation to back up your position. They do this because some people don’t know how the system works and will just back down. Don’t be like that.
Usually this happens if your accident isn’t coupled with an accident report by the police. Sometimes this is because nobody called them to the scene of the accident to do a report in the first place. Other times it’s because the police might have looked over the damages to the car and decided that weren’t enough to warrant making a report, usually less than five hundred dollar. However, when you take your car to get it repaired you find out that your bill is going to be several thousand dollars. So how do you fix that?
You can never force the cop in question to file a report on the accident, and if it looks like he isn’t going to, you need to take matters into your own hands. That means finding witnesses and getting their information, that means getting all of the contact and vehicle insurance information from the other driver. The more evidence that you have, the more your position is backed up, and the hard it is for the insurance company’s rejection to stand up.
Never take the cop’s word for it that the damages aren’t much, even if it looks like that to you yourself. You never know what’s going on internally, nor can you say for sure if the next day you won’t start hurting. Even if the bump was small, one time I barely nicked a car and my car completely shut down and was out for weeks before I could get it fixed. The smallest thing can cause a big reaction. If you just take the officer’s word and think you got off scott free, and then it turns out these repairs are actually pretty expensive, who do you think the vehicle insurance company is going to believe? You? Not without substantial evidence.
If you come into this situation, there are a few actions you can take. You can tell the insurance company to prove that it wasn’t the other person’s fault and that the accident really went the way they said it did, because a lot of time someone’s made up story won’t mesh well with the facts.Or, if it’s a pretty small claim, then there’s always small claims court. If it’s a little bigger than that, you probably should get a lawyer to take care of it.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
How to shop for online vehicle insurance quotes
Filed under: Free insurance quotes, Insurance comparisons
Reader question:
How do I find vehicle insurance quotes online?
Mac
Great question.
Researching your car insurance policy online is extremely easy, and so is finding out information about different companies and comparing rate quotes. Before you start shoppng for car insurance by getting online vehicle insurance quotes, remember that you need to have your information at hand or it will be a long, drawn out process. Even if you do take a few minutes to fill out the forms required to get an online vehicle insurance quote, though, it will be much less time than it would be if you were shopping for car insurance manually.
The first thing that you can do is go to a website that allows you to get quotes from several different companies. The more the better, and don’t just limit yourself to the main ones. Companies like Progressive claim that they show you the prices of their competitors, and they do show you the prices of a couple, but the scope is too narrow for you to make a decision. Websites that offer vehicle insurance quotes through a bunch of different companies are all over the place, and it only takes a few minutes to fill out the form, after which you will be provided with quotes from all of the companies–from only one form!
After you have picked out the quotes that you like the best, you can take your online research to the next step. The next thing that you can do is go to the websites for each of the car insurance companies that you picked and then further look into their policies, and possibly get another rate quote, there.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Car model based vehicle insurance rates
Filed under: Free insurance quotes, Insurance comparisons
Reader question:
Do different car models get different vehice insurance rates?
Thomas
Yep.
It’s not necesarily true that any car that you get will automatically cost more or less than another car that you get, but there are certain qualities unique and common to a car model, or even a car model’s year and make, that will make it more like for a car insurance company to give you different vehicle insurance rates. Most people realize that there are a few kinds of cars that will cost them a lot when it comes to car insurance, and these cars, in common knowledge, include any new car, sports cars, roadsters, foreign cars, top end luxury cars–all of that. This is all true and a good rhythm to follow by, but they aren’t the only ones getting charged.
But even the insurance rates for sports cars are not the same all the way across the field. It varies depending on the make and model and year. The reason for this is that each make, model, and year has a set of loss rates, be it loss to destruction, vandalism, or theft. Cars that are more likely to be filed as a total loss after a car accident will cost you more on your premium, as will cars that are stolen often.
Insurance find out these loss rates from actuarial companies, usually the company Insurance Services Office. With the information provided by the ISO, they can decide how much they should charge for collision on cars that get damaged more easily, and how much they should charge for comprehensive, for cars that get stolen more easily. You can’t find out the ISO loss rates because they aren’t available to the public, but you can ask your car insurance company.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Cheapest vehicle insurance rates for those who don’t have any claims
You know what the best way is to keep your vehicle insurance rates as cheap as they can possibly be? Don’t file any claims! This is naturally an unreasonable suggestion if you are already in a situation where you have to file a claim, because you shouldn’t make yourself pay for your car’s repair or replacement just to avoid higher vehicle insurance rates. After all, that does happen to be what car insurance companies exist for, to handle your claims and make payouts based on what you have been paying them for.
However, for anybody who doesn’t already have claims, it may be a necessary wake up call. Many people don’t drive extra safe just because they already have high auto insurance rates and want to keep them low. Many people don’t even think about it until it comes time to pay on their premium or buy a new or used car. Constant awareness of your car insurance rates can help you avoid dangerous situations and keep a good driving record. This is both good for you, because it lessens the risk of your likelihood to get into a car accident, and it is also good for your legal record, because you are less likely to get a ticket.
If you are driving in unruly weather conditions, then if you aren’t willing or able to stay home, you should practice safer driving so that you won’t get into an accident. It helps if you have such safety features as stability control or all wheel drive equipped on your car, but even if you don’t, you can be proactive by going slow and watching your brakes.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
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