Soooooo.........story time.

It's rare that someone talks about how great a company is, most time is spent bitching about them so, I'm going to tell you about my life dealing with Progressive.

(Can you tell its the Holidays and I don't feel like doing anything even resembling work, I'm on this site 24/7 the last week)

Two weekends ago on my way to a Holiday party someone decided to turn into my TL. Yay! I call the police and they cite the other driver for failure to yield. (How this guy managed to get across 4 lanes and into my TL is beyond my comprehension but whatever.)

Their insurance is Titan... has anyone ever heard of this company?! It's been about, I don't know 7-8 years since I've had to deal with an auto insurance company other than paying my premium every 6 months. I have no recollection of how this crap works.

However, I file a claim with Progressive and Titan. They both find the other driver 100% at fault. At first I close my claim with Progressive since I don't want them to raise my rates, I have 5 years of clean history (actually 6) and I pay like ~$520 every 6 months for my auto insurance or something ridiculously low.

I spend a week and half trying to get Titan to call me back and come estimate my car and fix my car, etc, etc, etc. I finally get their estimate back $900 to fix, both passenger doors, rear quarter and bumper... now... I'm not a mechanic, but I know for damn sure that there is no way my car can be fixed for that outside of taking it to Maaco. The private estimate I got was for $3300.

I then ask politely how this difference in estimates can be resolved. His first answer was well don't go to a Scottsdale Auto Body. They do quality work, but they don't work with us anymore. You should try some place in Mesa. My response is, I live and work in North Scottsdale why would I drive my car 30 miles to some Joe's garage to have them fix my car? But fine, what place in Mesa? He responds, I don't know, some place, can I just cut you the check for $900? At this point I'm now angry, but decide that I should just get my grip, so I tell him that I need to make some phone calls and he will be hearing from me again soon.

So... I go back and call Progressive and tell my claims adjuster, Katie, what happened. I tell her my concern about my rates going up and she suggests I talk to underwriting and get the specifics of how the rates are determined. I agree and she transfers me to underwriting. Now this is where I am officially impressed with Progressive. They explain to me that because the accident was "coded" 100% the other drivers fault no points will go against my policy and we can still go through subrogation without having my rates going up because of the accident. This may be common knowledge to others, but it is not to me.

So tomorrow I am taking my car to Progressive's concierge service. They take my car, put me in a rental and handle getting the car fixed. They will inspect the car when its back from the body shop and sign off. I will come inspect the car and sign off. I get the shop's info and the shop's guarantee for their work for the life of the vehicle. All of this at no cost.

I wish I would have understood all this better last week since I would have just done this sooner instead of trying to fight with Titan on my own.

Anyway more on this as the process continues; however, I'm happy so far with the way Progressive is handling themselves and just wanted to share. More details on the concierge tomorrow.

 

i wouldnt say thats impressive, i thought most insurance do that?

couple yrs ago my car got rear ended. the guy had auto insurance but not for that car he was driving. that guy was 100% at fault as he was not paying attention to the road ahead. my insurance ended up giving me a check for repairs and they took either the guy or his insurance company to court (i forget which) and my rates did not go up.

 

so do you have to pay your deductible or not? you coulda hassled that insurance company for the money w/o envolving yours prob.

 

Titan is a high-risk insurance group, which is a part of or a partner with Allstate insurance.


As for Progressive... one of their clients hit my car almost two weeks ago, and they haven't even sent anybody to look at it yet. They keep dragging their ass. They may go to the bat for you if you are insured with them, but I guess they do that by saving money by fucking other people. My car's alignment was totally off and wore out the inside of the tire in 5 days. It's dangerous to drive, yet they won't do anything. I had to pay out of pocket to get an alignment for now. I fucking hate Progressive and I hope this adjuster burns in hell.

AAA, on the other hand, sent out an adjuster right away and currently has a check waiting for me, in case Progressive decides to fuck me all the way and deny my claim. I will be sure to sue them and their client, since the police report clearly states it was the other driver's fault. I hate the cunt of a mother of the driver because she is denying liability and is dragging out the whole process. It seems purposeful to me. There is no way it should take DAYS to get a police report. It took me 5 minutes to get a copy. And now I have to drive 900 miles to Michigan on Friday with a bad tire and a busted front fender. I've never had an insurance claim take this long. This is getting absolutely ridiculous and just shows how Progressive works.

 

I have personal reasons not to use Progressive Insurance.

 

AAA is awesome. my neighboor hit my car, and within 2 hours of the incident AAA(her insurance) had contacted me and setup and appt for the adjuster to check out my car. check was in the mail in less than 5 days. they are expensive but it seems like they have good customer service both ways.

 

Progressive wanted to raise my rates $400/6 months for no reason other then "higher operating costs in FL" This after 3 years with them & clean record.
I switched to someone else.

 

I have Geico (100% happy), but I checked rates on progressive (same deductable, liability, ins., etc), Progressive was about 300 higher. Staying with Geico.

 

Hmm, interesting stories guys. Like I said they have been good to me so far. As of now, I'm not having to pay my deductable, we'll see how things go going forward.

 

I had Progressive in PA. Never had a problem with them. When I moved to Jersey, they didn't write policies here, so I switched. I got my lowest quote from Progressive when I switched companies last month, but I went with State Farm. The discounts from State Farm was better since Progressive doesn't do residential policies.

I had a really bad experience with one of those companies like Titan. I got rear-ended by someone with one of those type of policies. Their company stated that the driver has a policy that covered just their driver. It's lower than liability. Fucked up. I had to file a claim with my insurance company and it was treated as an accident involving an uninsured driver. I ended up paying my deductable, and 2 years laster, I still haven't gotten it back.

Either way, I decided the first call after the police and tow truck is to my insurance company. I pay them to sort this out.

 

As long as the other company is covering it, you should not have to pay the deductable. The thing is your insurance company does not want to cover the claim at all. So, they will usually lean on Titan to cover the claim quickly.

 

So far I dropped the car off at the concierge service. They're going to send me updates on the car as its getting completed. They put me in a G6.

They're leaning on Titan to send me a check for $500 to cover my deductable, but my claims adjuster just went on vacation and wasn't able to get ahold of them before she left. Doesn't bode well for me getting out of paying the deductable.

Additionally Titan doesn't answer any of my phone calls and is terrible about returning my phone calls. I don't have to pay the deductable until I pick up the car so hopefully shit will happen before then, but its holiday season. Worst time ever to have to deal with this crap. I'm probably going to have to wait to get reimbursed.

 

I guess my agent was able to get ahold of them before she left. Just found out from Titan that they put my check in the mail for the deductable yesterday. So I'm set.

 

I guess you should have asked the Progressive guy to explain the events that would happen after you made a claim so you knew what the process would be.
When a dumbass plowed into my CL-S head-on and sent me flying into a brick wall, progressive took care of me and I had a check for more than I think the CL-S was worth in less than two weeks. The guy called me every other day or so to give me updates in that timeframe. I didn't have to pay deductible or anything - it didn't affect my rates.
Before that, when I did something dumb and took a turn too sharply in an underground garage and scraped the rear pass. side 1/4 panel, they came to my parking lot in one of their asessment cars, told me how much it would cost, and gave me a list of bodyshops. The guy gave me the option to drop the claim and forget it ever happened if I wanted to go out of pocket so it didn't affect my rates, but at the time I couldn't afford to, so my rates went up for 3 years.

I've been with progressive since Feb, 98 and have had three cars insured with them. I can't complain, but I've heard some pretty bad horror stories about them from others, so I admit I'm a little wary.