Insurance Journal Forums

Online Auto Insurance Quote Process: I work for a direct to consumer auto insurance company and I wanted to get some feedback from those with knowledge of the industry about the quote process. I am curious to hear what people think about shopping for auto insurance online- good aspects, short comings, areas prime for improvement, confident in privacy, confident in quote accuracy, confident to buy? I am hoping to keep this informative and fun for all participants. Thank you in advance for your feedback!

"the person that represents themselves, has a fool for a client". Buy through an Indepedent (Trusted Choice) Agent that represents many companies and let the professional do the insurance shopppoing for you. Use an agent/broker and obtain some professional advise. It is not all about price. I can offer free coverage...it is called self insurance. In the long run, you get what you pay for.

I've been a P&C agent for 40 years. I did an online PAP quote for myself a few years ago. The website had no mention of extended non-owned coverage. No way to obtain a specimen policy to examine. Combined single limit BI/PD was not available. No stated amount or other options available for physical damage. All owned vehicles should be on the same policy - no mention of this nor was it a requirement. Yes, specialty vehilces are an exception. There was no option to call a company employee (licensed in NY) to ask questions. If an individual wants to act as their own broker, be my guest. Don't come crying to anyone but yourself when a claim occurs and you don't have coverage, enough coverage, or a deductible you can't afford. Insurance is not fungible goods. That's why it doesn't come in vending machines. Neither do wills, trusts, good investments, retirement programs, etc. These are important and critical financial instruments and must be put together by competent, knowledgeable individuals - not a website/vending machine.

To Darnovak:

Possibly the best post I have seen in these forums. With your permission I would like to copy/paste this and use it on many of the inquiries I receive.

jackwehoca, Please feel free to do so. Dar Novak

Darnovak is right. Getting quotes online is not that reliable since insurance companies would just quote you for the default coverage. Though buying insurance online is cheaper, it is still best to talk with an agent so all your questions would be answered

I recently, against my better judgment, obtained a quotation from several online direct company websites.

Because one of them may not have written business in my State, it tossed me to an aggregate site, which I figured out too late.

It sold my email address to EVERY possible spam email advertisement junk company in the world.

I KEEP unsubscribing, blocking, marking as spam, etc. I can not stop this nightmare. I give online quotes on my agency website and would NEVER sell the interested parties to anyone.

We make ourselves look like garbage selling names to third party spam companies...

It continues to annoy me...

Hutch

Well, mhutch69 here is the solution: get a 'junk' email at one or more of the free email places like gmail, etc. use the junk email address for experimenting, sending wacko posts to sites like this (the posts to the news artiucles used to be chock full of cutesy little names...), etc. When it becomes so clogged with spam you can't keep up with it, abandon it and get another one. Never give out your good email to ANY site. Also, make your good email name very strong (G41g830dqd) like a good password because there are 'guessing' programs one can purchase to blanket send bulk spam to email addresses something like ************@msn.com The sample I gave is extremely unlikely to be bulk emailed by a 'guessing' program. My agency's email address only goes to insurance carriers, brokerage houses, and vendors we contract with and they still leak it (but not too much) because we get the spam also. Our agency managment system email uses Outlook and my email in there never gets any spam. How does Applied do that? regards, DarNovak