In today's junk mail, something from Traveler's Insurance warned my husband that he "might be overpaying for auto insurance every year." (Exclamation point and all caps omitted.)
I'll grant you, that bit of direct mail was considerably more on the up-and-up than some we receive: The envelope identified who had sent it and it used the term "might," rather than making a definitive statement. If you pay the most fleeting attention to the senseless holocaust of tree-pulp that finds it way to your mailbox, you should know that this is saying something these days.
The brass-tacks issue, however, lies in Traveler's definition of "overpaying." I've been buying my car insurance from the same guy since 1991, knowing darned well that I can pick up the phone and know that a problem will be Dealt With. Case in point: When I moved to another state that had higher insurance rates, Dan bent the rules to "grandfather" my Wisconsin rates for as long as possible. When a deer ran into my car--not the other way around, mind you--the claims adjuster's second question (after "Is everyone alright?") was "Does anyone need a translator?" (which weirded me out enough that I blurted, "Not unless you speak deer.")
But I emphatically do not play an entire sonata in touch-tone to reach a person whose job it is to stall me for half an hour before transferring me to the next person with the same job description. When I saw the deer barreling Hell-bent-for-election toward my car, my train of thought was basically:
1.) The stupid thing's gonna head-butt my quarter-panel.
2.) There's no way it can end up in our laps.
3.) Oh well, this is why I pay for insurance.
4.) [BAM!] Yep, the stupid thing just head-butted my quarter-panel.
I'm not exaggerating, not even for humorous effect. But that, friends and brethren, why I pitch a check to American Family every single month.
Understand that, when you purchase insurance, you actually pay in two currencies. One is straight bling (however that translates to what you have to do to coax it into your bank account). The other is the time and frustration that you'll spend holding your insurance company to the terms of their bond. It's that second currency that constitutes the price-to-value ratio that should be the basis of all purchases. Particularly of intangible services such as insurance.
Now, I don't recall whether Citibank--whose executives are presumably stimulating the Bermudan economy with my tax dollars--bought out Traveler's or vice versa. And I frankly don't care, because I have no doubt that they're financially joined at the proverbial hip in the shell games that brought this recession to pass. What I do care about, however, dates back to the last recession that bit me, and Traveler's attempt to nick me when I was already bleeding. Even a decade and a half on, they could offer me free insurance, and it would still be too expensive. Why? Because knowing that I might have to fight--to the point of calling for legal backup--for what is contractually mine is not a bargain at any price.
