How does your car insurance help you, when your daily commute turns dangerous, and another driver intentionally drives you off the road, or hits your car, over some perceived slight? What if you are not a party to the road rage incident, but an innocent person caught up and injured in the mayhem? Your auto insurance may not cover the damage to your car, or your injuries at all! Continue reading →

Often, when someone’s car is not running, being used, up for sale, or if they have switched to another auto insurance company, they choose to ignore the insurance bills they receive. Ignoring insurance bills is a huge mistake, which can harm people’s credit score, if they continue to ignore them. I’m blogging today to tell you why this happens, and how you can avoid it happening to you.

Many people receive letters from their insurance company threatening to refer their account to collections, for an amount the insurance company says they owe on a canceled insurance policy. This happens frequently when people ignore bills and do not cancel their insurance properly. Unexpectedly owing money on a canceled insurance policy, is one of those experiences leading people to feel ripped off by their insurance company.

If you were paid to date on your car insurance, and now you don’t want the insurance anymore, it makes sense you don’t want to pay a bill to give you insurance coverage for the next month. However, not paying a bill does not cancel your insurance as of the due date on the bill.

You know you don’t want your insurance anymore, but your insurance company does not know it. What if you misplaced the bill, and forgot about it? What if the bill was never delivered by the post office? What if you did not have the money to pay by the bill due date? If you want the auto insurance, canceling the policy, because of one missed bill, would cause a lot of problems for customers.

Legally, auto insurance companies cannot cancel you for one missed bill without a cancel date on it. A car insurance company must send you a bill specifying a cancel date, and the state you live in regulates how many days you have, from the date of mailing of the cancel notice, before the date of cancellation.

For example, you receive an auto insurance bill for $100, due November 1st. You sold your car, so you ignore the bill.

The insurance company sends you another bill, 10 days after November 1st, stating the amount of  $200 — for November & December — must be paid, or your insurance will cancel as of December 1st. You ignore that bill.

10 days after December 1st, your auto insurance company notifies you your auto insurance canceled on December 1st, and you owe $100 to pay for insurance coverage until that cancel date, and if you don’t pay it, you will be referred to collections, hurting your credit score.

How could you have avoided the situation? Instead of ignoring the bill, contact your insurance company or agent to cancel the policy, at the time you wanted it canceled.

In the above situation, where the car was sold, you can have the policy backdate canceled to the day after the sale, if you have written documentation of the date of sale, like a bill of sale.

So, even if you made the mistake of ignoring the first 2 bills, you could still have your car insurance policy properly canceled as of the day after the car’s sale, when you contact the insurance company or your agent when you received the third bill, if you provide your insurance company with documentation of the sale date. If you auto insurance was paid up to the sale date, you would owe nothing.

My advice is don’t ignore any bills, and contact your insurance company as soon as you are ready to cancel it.

Your insurance company may make a few attempts to collect the money owed on a canceled policy, before it is turned over to collections.

Once your account is turned over to collections, it can still be fixed, if you don’t owe anything, and can prove it by showing proof of the sale date, or duplicate insurance coverage, if you switched to another insurance company. But your credit score will be lower in the mean time while you sort it out.

What if, instead of the car being sold, it was not being used, or it was out of service? These are situations where auto insurance companies will not backdate cancel your policy to a previous date. You can still cancel your auto insurance by contacting your agent or insurance company, but your auto insurance will be canceled only as of the date your cancel request was received.

In the previous example, if you ignored the bills, you would owe for the insurance covering you, even though you did not want it, until December 1st, and must pay the $100 owed to avoid your account being referred to collections.

Had you contacted your insurance company (contacting your agent is always preferred, if you have one) when you received the first bill due for November 1st, you could have canceled your policy sooner, and possibly not owed anything more to the insurance company.

Canceling your auto insurance when your car is not running or being used, is not usually a good idea, but I will discuss the reasons why, in another blog post in the future, as part of my blog series explaining what to do in various situations when you want to cancel an insurance policy.

There is one situation when it may be okay to ignore an insurance bill without owing money to your insurance company.

When you policy is up for renewal, and you no longer want the insurance, or if you switched to another insurance company at your renewal date, you could ignore your renewal bill, without owing anything more, even though you may get a second notice of the renewal being due.

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Also, just because you do not have to renew your auto insurance, it does not mean your auto insurance company will not try to make you pay more when you don’t accept your auto insurance renewal.

I worked for one insurance company, where in a certain state, it had to extend coverage for 7 days beyond the renewal date, even if there is no renewal payment made by the customer, as required by state law.

These policies would cancel on the 7th day after the renewal, but there was a period of time when there was a computer glitch (which was eventually fixed), where customers were billed for the 7 days of coverage beyond the renewal, which were not supposed to be billed.

Some customers knew it was not owed, and called the insurance company to correct the error. But I’m sure many people simply paid the bill. Don’t be one of those people.

Another complication arises when you are on an automatic payment plan, like deductions from a bank account, or payroll deduction, which may trigger acceptance of your auto insurance renewal.

Once, I had a customer on a payroll deduction plan, have auto insurance coverage extended over 6 months after the customer changed jobs, moved, and insured with another insurance company.

In the customer’s mind, when the payroll deduction stopped, the auto insurance should have canceled.

The payroll deduction plan from the customer’s employer takes over 45 days to show payments from the customer’s pay check, so it took a very long time for the insurance company to know there was a problem, remove the customer from payroll deduction, mail a direct bill, then mail a cancel notice.

The policy eventually canceled with a large amount referred to collections, when the customer finally contacted the insurance company to explain the customer insured elsewhere a long time ago.

The customer could have avoided a lot of aggravation, and the temporary damage to the customer’s credit, by contacting the insurance company when the customer changed insurance companies.

Simply follow this one rule:

Always contact your insurance company (better to contact your agent) when you wish to cancel your insurance for any reason.

If you receive an unexpected bill, after you have received confirmation of the cancellation of your insurance policy, contact the insurance company (agent) for an explanation. You may still owe money to the insurance company for coverage until the cancel date, or it may be in error. Either way, if you don’t expect to owe anything, you deserve an explanation of your billing.

Here is one secret your insurance company does not want you to know:

Companies often require a certain dollar threshold for it to be worth it for them to refer your account to collections.

For example, owing $5 to the insurance company may be under the threshold, and therefore your account won’t be referred to collections, it won’t be a part of your credit history, and your credit score will not be lowered.

Don’t expect your insurance company to volunteer their dollar limit triggering a referral to collections.

However, if you owe a small amount, call your insurance company, be nice & polite, tell them you want to pay it, but money is really tight right now, and you are worried about it being reported to a credit agency. Your insurance company or agent may tell you about the dollar threshold, to put your concerns to rest. But if you owe the amount, even if it is small, you should pay it.

Has an insurance bill messed up your credit? Tell me about it. Please leave a comment on my facebook page. Follow me on Twitter for important insurance consumer news and new blog entries at CarInsWatch.

It’s the weekend, your son is buying a car, but your agent’s office is closed. Do you let your son buy the car, and don’t let him drive it until you can call your auto insurance agent on Monday? Do you assume you have insurance coverage, and allow your son to buy & drive the car? Are you unsure if you or your son are covered to drive it, and take a chance, feeling confident nothing will happen until you contact your insurance company? Life happens outside of 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, so what is the best thing to do, when you need your agent, when your agent’s office is closed?

Making assumptions about your insurance coverage, or taking a chance nothing will happen requiring you to need the insurance, are common mistakes people make leading them to feel they have been ripped off by their insurance company.

Take the situation I described above, where the son purchased a car on the weekend. The father has a family auto insurance policy, and his son is rated as a driver. Why wouldn’t his son’s car be automatically covered? The Father replaced his old car with a new car last year, made the change to his auto insurance a week later, and his agent told him the new car was covered the same way as the old car, from the date it was purchased.

However, the father is the owner of the family auto insurance policy, and the son is covered as a driver for the cars the father owns. The son, purchasing his own car, needs his own car insurance policy. Neither the son, dad, or the son’s car would be covered by the father’s auto insurance.

What if the father bought the car? Would there be coverage? Most likely, yes. unless one of the cars owned by the father is insured with another insurance company. Also, if the father’s wife has her own car and insurance with another auto insurance company, there might be no automatic coverage for the newly purchased car.

How is anyone, who is not an auto insurance agent, expected to know this? In fact, your auto insurance agent might advise you incorrectly about automatic coverage for a newly purchased car, if the agent does not ask you enough questions about ownership of the car, or if the agent is unaware you have a car insured with another insurance company.

Here is one way to avoid feeling ripped off by your insurance, due to an uncovered claim, or higher than expected insurance rates:
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Always call your agent or insurance company, and change your coverage, or find out how you are covered, before you buy a car, borrow a car, use a car not on your insurance, or allow your car to be driven by anyone other than a rated driver on your insurance. Never assume how you will be covered, or take a chance you won’t have a reason to need it.

If you know your son is looking at buying a car, call your agent ahead of time and find out about coverage and pricing. Otherwise, you or your son could be in an uninsured accident, or your son may find out he can’t afford the insurance for the car after he purchased it.

It is always best to have your agent service your policy and answer your questions. But if you can’t help making an impulse buy of another car on the weekend, which you had not planned, most insurance companies have 24/7 customer service. So if you are the father in the above situation, you can call the insurance company at 8 pm on a Saturday, before your son buys the car, and find out you need to own the car to insure it on your policy, or the insurance company might be able to sell your son an auto insurance policy in his name.

Another situation is when customers suspend coverage on one of their vehicles they are not driving. I remember a customer had to drive an uninsured car briefly in the middle of the night and told me about it later. The customer assumed because it was late at night, there was no way to contact the insurance company. Fortunately, nothing happened. Having an accident may be unlikely, but getting a ticket by the police for driving without insurance is more likely to occur. I told the customer, no matter what the time, if you have to drive an uninsured car, call 24/7 customer service to insure it, even if you only have to drive it for a few hours.

You pay enough for your insurance, take advantage of the service your agent or insurance company provides you, at no additional cost, to make sure you are properly covered.

What do you do about insurance when you buy a car? Please leave a comment on my facebook page. Or, you can e-mail me at help@smartshopyourcarinsurance.com if you have questions and would like my help. Follow me on Twitter for important insurance consumer news and new blog entries at CarInsWatch.

This blog entry will tell you what you need to know about auto liability insurance coverage, how to avoid mistakes, and how to use it to get a lower price on your car insurance.

Your auto liability insurance coverage is what protects you from having to pay out of your own pocket when you are legally responsible for damage to other people’s property, or injury to other people, from the use of your car.

Auto liability is usually divided into 2 parts: Bodily Injury Liability, if you injure a person(s), and Property Damage Liability, if you damage someone’s property, such as another car, fence, house, telephone pole, street sign, etc.

Bodily Injury Liability usually has a per person dollar limit, and a per accident dollar limit. The insurance does not pay above the limits, and you are responsible for any additional amount owed the injured party beyond the policy limit.

For example, you may have Bodily Injury Liability at $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident. If a car stops suddenly in front of you, you brake, but rear end the car anyway. You will be legally responsible for the injuries to the people in the other car. If the driver has an injury, you will be responsible for the driver’s medical costs, lost wages, physical therapy, compensation for pain & suffering, etc.

Say the other driver is a middle-aged electrician. His back injury from the car accident will not allow him to work for months. The driver has medical bills & physical therapy to treat & rehabilitate his injury. The driver may have back pain for the rest of the driver’s life, for which the driver will be due compensation. Even the driver’s health insurance company can hold you responsible for their cost of the benefits they provide the driver under his health insurance for the injury.

The total amount owed because of the injured driver might be $40,000. If you have a per person limit of $25,000, YOU will be responsible for the $15,000 not covered by your car insurance. Even if you have no assets, you may have your wages garnished to pay what is not covered by your auto insurance.

Now, imagine the same accident, but this time your brakes fail, and you hit the rear of the other car at 30 miles an hour. The injuries to the driver are more severe. Imagine the driver is a highly-paid surgeon, who will never be able to perform surgery again. You could be looking at a million dollar lawsuit, just for injury to one person in a car accident.

What if the driver’s entire family was in the car? What if more than one person was injured? Your Bodily Injury Liability pays no more than $50,000 per accident. When you try to get by with the state minimum coverage, even a minor accident can leave you on the hook for owing a lot of money, and a severe accident can bankrupt you.

The second part of auto insurance liability coverage is Property Damage Liability. This coverage has a per accident dollar limit.

Say your Property Damage Liability has a $15,000 limit. What if you hit another car, which is a newer model car worth $20,000, and total it? What if you are responsible for damaging more than one car?

As with Bodily Injury Liability, it is not hard to imagine a situation where you do not have enough coverage, if you try to save a few dollars by choosing a low dollar limit. I don’t need to imagine it, because I’ve seen it happen, and the financial burden it creates on people without enough liability coverage.

Some insurance companies offer auto insurance having a Combined Single Limit(CSL), including both bodily injury & property damage liability. You would have one dollar limit, say $100,000 per accident, which would include all injury & property damage you are legally responsible for from the use of your vehicle. Once the single dollar limit is reached, you are responsible for any amount owed beyond the  limit. So again, going with the minimum amount, or low amount of coverage, can ruin you financially if you are in an accident.

My Recommendation: Buy as much auto insurance liability coverage you can afford. If you are 25 years old or older, and have a clean driving record, it usually costs a few dollars more a month to have more liability coverage.

I don’t think ANYONE should be on the road in 2011, with less than $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident, for Bodily Injury Liability, and $100,000 per accident for Property Damage Liability.

However, when you are young, or have only a few years driving experience, or have a bad driving record, it is harder to afford high auto insurance liability limits. This is unfortunate, because statistically, these are the people most likely to need it — which is why it costs more.

Even if you struggle to afford your auto insurance, have your agent show you the cost of the next higher liability limits. Try to make room in your budget to afford it. If you wisely decide to pay a little more for the next higher level of limits, have your agent quote you higher liability limits until you reach a level you can’t afford.

For example, if you have $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident Bodily Injury, & $15,000 Property Damage liability(25/50/15). Get price quotes for 50/100/50, 100/300/100. & even 250/500/100. It never hurts to know the price, and buy what you can afford.

Auto insurance is expensive, but it is worth it to pay a little more to have more liability coverage, than to pay a lot for auto insurance which will not adequately protect you when you have an accident.

Get this auto insurance discount: Having higher liability limits puts you in a group of drivers less likely to have claims. When you shop your auto insurance, insurance companies ask you what your Bodily Injury Liability limits are. The higher your limits, the lower your price quote for auto insurance! When you change your insurance coverage, you change your risk profile, and this is an excellent time to shop your auto insurance to save lots of money.

If you can afford the 250/500/100 limit, or a $500,000 combined single limit, you may want to look at an additional Personal Liability Umbrella policy, which will pay 1 million dollars or more, above your auto insurance coverage. If you have a good-paying job, and you have, or are building financial assets, you need to at least consider an umbrella liability policy.

I will blog about Umbrella Liability policies in the future. In the mean time, ask your agent or insurance company about it, and shop with other insurance companies to find the best one meeting your needs, if you wish to buy an Umbrella Liability policy.

Here are two additional things to know about auto insurance liability coverage:

1. Auto insurance liability coverage does not cover you for you or your resident family member’s injuries in a car accident. It also does not cover damage to property owned by you and your resident family members. So, if you hit your wife’s car with your car, there is no coverage for the damage to you or your wife’s car, under your liability coverage.

2. Auto insurance liability does not cover you unless you are Legally liable for the injury or property damage.

For example, a deer may jump in front of your car while you are driving, and injuries to your friend, riding as a passenger in the car, will not be covered by your liability coverage, unless you as the driver or owner of the car, are somehow negligent.

There are other types of auto insurance coverage which can protect you in these situations. I will blog about these coverage options, and all other home insurance coverage & auto insurance coverage in the future.

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Yesterday, I blogged about how to avoid problems canceling your auto insurance when you’ve sold your car. But canceling your auto insurance when you no longer have a car, may be a bad idea for you, if you are going to own another car in the next year.

Often, when you sell your car, cancel your auto insurance, and do not own a car for a period of time, your auto insurance, when you need to get it again, is much more expensive than if you had not canceled your old auto insurance policy. A more expensive auto insurance policy, simply because you did not have a car or insurance for a period of time, is another situation causing people to feel ripped off by their auto insurance company.

I will show you how to avoid higher rates with a new auto insurance policy. This blog entry will explain the reasons why it benefits you to keep continuous auto insurance, and how you can keep your auto insurance policy active, when you no longer own a car, for a few dollars a month, which can save you a lot of money on auto insurance, when you get a car again.

The best way to show you how to avoid the higher costs & headaches of canceling an auto insurance policy, and starting a new auto insurance policy at a later time, is to use an example from my experience working in the insurance industry.

I had a customer contact me about their auto insurance. The customer had one leased vehicle, and the lease would be over in a month. The customer told me they would be without a car for about 6 months, then they would buy or lease a new car.

I explained how the customer could cancel the policy, but it may be a better idea to keep the policy active, if they knew they were getting another car in 6 months. I could remove all coverage, except Comprehensive coverage, a procedure my company usually does for cars people own, but will not be used for an extended period of time.

Keeping only Comprehensive coverage, with a high deductible, is inexpensive, even on a new car, to keep a policy active for a period of time when you don’t have a car. I don’t remember this customer’s price for a Comprehensive only policy, but I’m sure it was less than $15 a month, and it was probably much less.

Here are the reasons why keeping your auto insurance policy, when you don’t have a car, is a good idea:

1. One of the major rating factors (unless prohibited by state law, which may only apply in a very few states) is the length of time of your continuous auto insurance history.

You may ask, “I have been continuously insured for 10 years, why would a 6 month break in my insurance now, when I’m not driving or own a car, hurt my rates?”

Insurance companies weigh (and often can only use) recent history very heavily. For example, you may go 20 years without an auto accident, but if you have had two at-fault accidents in the last 3 years, the insurance company is concerned with the likelihood of claims in the future. You might be having a streak of bad luck, or your driving behavior might have changed for the worse. Your recent driving record is the best predictor of future claims.

Also, insurance companies hate not having verifiable data. If you haven’t had a car or auto insurance for the last 3 years (or even 6 months), the insurance company can’t confirm your clean claims history is because you haven’t had accidents, or because you haven’t had insurance.

Insurance companies charge higher rates for the absence of recent information, such as a verifiable, clean insurance claims history, since they have less information to predict your future risk of having a claim.

Having continuous insurance without any break in coverage can give you much lower auto insurance rates. Some auto insurance companies continue to give you a lower rate, up to 6 years of continuous auto insurance. If you have a long continuous insurance history, 3 years or longer, you do not want to ruin it by having a a short break in coverage, because you did not have a car. In many states, if you don’t have at least one year of continuous auto insurance effective until the start date of your new auto insurance policy, you  do not qualify for a standard auto insurance policy, and you have to have nonstandard auto insurance,  the same as people with bad driving records, and pay high rates, all because you did not have a car.

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When you have an active auto insurance policy, you can call your agent with the information about the car you are buying. Your agent can add the car to your policy and adjust your coverage, when you are ready to pick up the car, and will most likely be able to bill you, without you making a down payment.

Without an active auto insurance policy, you have to apply for auto insurance, even if you go back to the same insurance company you had before. Insurance company rates & rules are always changing. You may not qualify for the rates you had before. Your claims, credit, & driving record will be checked when you apply for a new auto insurance policy.

If you had a speeding ticket 2 years ago, which may have been unknown, or not rated for, under your old auto insurance policy, will affect your new rates, and may make you ineligible for preferred auto insurance. A claim 18 months ago where your car was hit while parked, did not affect your old rates, but may disqualify you from an accident-free discount with your new policy, which you may have received under your old policy.

There are many factors which could lead to your new policy being more expensive, and if for no other reason, your lack of continuous insurance coverage may make your new auto insurance rates much higher.

3. By keeping your old auto insurance policy active, you keep your continuous insurance history, so you can get much better rates when you shop your auto insurance, than if you canceled your old policy, and shop for auto insurance when you have a car again.

By keeping your old auto insurance, you have the convenience, and possibly lower rates, of adding the car to your old auto insurance policy, but you also have the freedom to shop to find better rates, and having a long continuous insurance history can help you get them.

life changes, like moving to a new home address, or getting a different or additional car, may mean your auto insurance company no longer has competitive rates for you. When you have a different car, shop for the best auto insurance rates with all the leading car insurance companies, to make sure you are not paying $100s more than you need to pay for car insurance.

The customer I mentioned, decided to cancel their auto insurance. 6 months later, they bought another car, called a different agency, representing the same company they were insured with through my agency, and applied for auto insurance.

Mistakes were made with the application, coverage was not provided until weeks after they owned the new car, and their new auto insurance rates were outrageous. The customer finally called me in frustration, and fortunately, I was able to fix some of the mistakes made, and get a lower rate for the customer — but it was not nearly as good as the rate the customer would have paid, if they kept their old auto insurance policy active.

Not every insurance company may allow you to keep an active insurance policy on a car you no longer own, though it is pretty commonly done. If you already pay nonstandard rates, have an insurance history with recent lapses in coverage, or a bad driving record, it may not make sense to keep your auto insurance.

But it is best to discuss your options with your agent or insurance company (preferably your agent, with this matter, if you have one). You may be able to avoid higher auto insurance rates and a huge hassle, which make you feel like you have been ripped off by an auto insurance company.

If you haven’t shopped your car or home insurance in a few years with at least 5 other companies, there is a good chance you are paying too much.

Have you cancelled your auto insurance after selling your car, and regretted it when you purchased a car again? Comment or ask me questions on my facebook page. Follow me on Twitter for important insurance consumer news & new blog entries at CarInsWatch.