While it's a cast iron bitch to shop around for insurance, I have no problems stating that if you DON'T shop your insurance needs around at least every 2 years, you're being extremely foolish. I say this, admitting that I myself did NOT do this for quite a while, so hold off on your letters to the editor about my tone.
Our homeowner's went up, up, up, until we switched to Farmers. The old company wouldn't even TOUCH the lake house, but Farmers would. The lake house was insured at that time by the existing policy of my parents after they had passed, but before I had been able to take over ownership, so I needed to get something. Farmers insured the lake house via Foremost, like many here have mentioned that Farmers seems to do. I eventually ended up skipping the middle man, as I learned that Farmers was CHARGING me to subcontract the lake house, and I went directly with Foremost.
I had vehicles through State Farm, until they absolutely screwed me on a claim. That was the impetus for me to start looking EVERY year for a newer and cheaper insurance company, for EVERYTHING. Yearly turned out to be a waste of my time and the headache of dealing with the sales pitches of every Tom Dick & Harry who wanted just a moment of my time to offer me higher prices and less coverage than I already had.
I went with EVERY vehicle through Progressive. Had one claim that was handled quickly and promptly, and the other claim FIVE YEARS LATER, where my wife was hit by a jackass as she was turning left into the driveway, and he tried to PASS her on the left, hitting the car. They nickel and dimed everything they could off the payout - the wheel that was hit wasn't included, because the scrapes on it "look like that's from parking too close to the curb". I raised holy hell, because who parks next to the sidewalk ON THE DRIVER'S SIDE, typically? They sure showed their ass to me, and I dropped them for Geico for the cars, and saved some money.
Progressive ALSO didn't like the number of "motorized vehicles" I had - 4 cars at the time, 4 mopeds, and the boat. They weren't insuring the boat, because at the time I bought it, they wanted $200 MORE than the old insurance company, even with EIGHT "motorized vehicles" that I had with them. Fast forward to last year, when the boat insurance wanted to double my rates. Progressive now saved me $400/year on the boat, because I was a longstanding existing customer with....4 mopeds
My moped insurance DROPPED after I left their car insurance, but added the boat.
Moral of the story is, as
@Exciter 220 said, READ YOUR POLICY, and being a former fool myself, DON'T BE A FOOL, SHOP YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS OFTEN. The political reasons behind some of these insurance companies is enough to piss me right the eff off, but that's not for discussion here - just know that your wallet doesn't care WHO it's relinquishing all those fancy green fun tickets to, it just wants to keep as many of them on-hand for you as possible.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk
