TLDR: Call your insurance company and tell them a competitor has a cheaper rate, they will try as hard as possible to lower the price of your policy.
I have car insurance with GEICO and I felt that for the amount of driving I do, my rate is too high. So last night I called customer service with the intention of cancelling my policy and switching to MetroMile pay-as-you-go insurance. What happened next was not what I expected: the representative went into full-blown Savings Mode and tried to lower my rate as much as possible. From dialing the number to hanging up it took 32 minutes (around half of that was on hold), and this is what I got:
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She gave me the student discount, which took 10% off my rate. I even told her that I was 25 and taking 9 units of college courses, and she said I was eligible. This was nice because I thought I was too old.
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She changed my payment settings to use a bank account instead of a credit card. The monthly service charge went down from $5 to $1.
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She recalculated my policy. Apparently, insurers in CA cannot set rates for the age of the person, it has to be for the number of years with a license. I got my license at 17 and just turned 25 recently, so this brought down my rate by another $6 a month.
Altogether, my next bill decreased from $87.50 to $79.20, and when my new policy starts in October, my rate will be $70.xx. This is a good improvement for me, it makes GEICO competitive with MetroMile, especially for the 100/300/100 coverage that I have. I decided to keep GEICO after all of this.
September 25, 2017 at 12:03AM
