Along with finding out the final “discount” … which worked out to a total of $117 per 6 months, I also got my new renewal policy. That discount sounds pretty awesome when you consider that just over a year ago I was paying $900 every 6 months. Then came my “initial” Snapshot discount in May. I was down to $813 per 6 months.

So after my new $117 discount, you’d think I’d be even lower than that, right? Nope… went up $45 to $858 for a 6 month premium. So even though I saved a total of $234 per year thanks to my Snapshot data, my policy actually increased $324 in that same period for no apparent reason. What. The. Fuck?

Of course I took to the Twitterverse to  express my frustration and was met with the expected reply from Progressive:

We’re always here to help review your policy w/ you to see where we might save you $$ on your policy. Plz call us at… blah blah blah

OK, that’s awesome. So a year ago, after being a customer for 6 years previously, my policy was getting out of control and I had to call to get a “new policy” and save some money. That’s fine. And now barely 18 months later I’m being told to do the same exact thing again?!

As I replied on Twitter, this is NOT something I should have to do on a regular basis to keep an acceptable premium price. Once… OK, that’s fine. But just over a year later doing it again? That’s messed up.

Someone is getting a phone call alright… but it’s going to be to get some fucking answers. This is not how you keep your customers happy.

If you recall, the initial discount was 7% for me and 13% for Jen – which saved us about $15/mo (or $174 per year). After another 2-3 weeks our discounts are both going up! Jen is up to 16% discount and I’m up to double digits at 10%. At that rate, we would save about $20/mo (or about $230 per year) over the original rate! That is, unless my math is wrong… which it might be.

We’ll obviously find out more when my renewal comes due again – which should be around the first of August.

My discount? A measly 7%. But Jen’s discount? 13%.

I have to say that I’m kind of disappointed by both of them. I was sure Jen would do great and get a good discount and kind of assumed mine would be a little less than hers, but not this much less.

Of course it’s not all bad. I went from a $900 six month policy (2 cars, 2 drivers) to a $813 six month policy – which reduced my payment from $149/mo to $135/mo. This means that so far, I’m at an overall savings of just under 10%. Can’t really complain too much I guess.

But then again, I can. And will.

Here’s how it broke down… that is, our “performance factors.”

My Performance Factors

Jen's Performance Factors

The one part I don’t understand is the Average Driving Behavior. BTW… the little asterisk on that item says the following at the bottom of the page: “Your savings or surcharge is calculated by comparing your driving data only to other Snapshot Program users in your state having driver characteristics, accident and violation history similar to you.”

So WTF Progressive? Where did that come from? There was no mention of that in the sign up of the discount. Sure, it’s not a negative number reducing my discount, but what exactly is being compared? What part of my “driving data” are you using? The only things in the sign up were the miles traveled, hard brakes, and high risk driving time.

I think this might warrant a phone call.

Getting beyond that, the one thing to consider here is that this is only the initial data. We basically need to leave the devices connected for the next couple months until my next renewal goes through. At that point the discount could be greater – but it’s hard to tell. It could be worse too, I suppose. Hard to say.

I’m sure I’ll be reporting again once that stage of this stuff goes though – but I may need to put in a call to them and figure out wtf the deal is with that comparison data.

At this point, I can say that I’m slightly less worried about the “hard brakes per 100 miles” portion, but I still don’t know what to think of the number. At this moment, my weekly averages look like this:

• High Risk Driving Time: 0 hours
• Miles Driven: 190 miles
• Hard Brakes per 100 Miles: 14.58

So, is that good? Honestly the “miles driven” part is probably a bit misleading. I don’t normally drive that much. We had an unplanned trip to Rochester last weekend (100 miles one way) so that is likely throwing the average a bit out of whack. I also had a really bad day of hard brakes the other day.

I had to pick up a package at UPS but the truck wasn’t back yet. So I went back a little later when they expected the truck would be back. It wasn’t. One of the guys called the truck and he was apparently running really far behind. They got the street that he was on and I was going to try to meet him and just pick up my package that way. It wasn’t far (maybe 2 miles).

Problem was that this street has a ton of stop signs and is a very residential area. So while I wasn’t speeding around like some asshole (seriously, there were kids everywhere – I’m not an idiot), I was stopping at all of these stop signs and looking around for this truck. I’m sure that my hard brakes number was also not helped by my frustrations of not even finding the truck. So by the time I left that neighborhood and headed home, I was probably quite annoyed. That doesn’t translate very well to slow, calm, casual braking.

Then again, that’s why they look at the averages I guess. Hopefully it’ll sort itself out in the next 11 days and won’t look so awful when they go to review the data. Who knows.

Jen’s data is actually a bit more consistent. She probably drive’s a bit less than I do (we take my car more often) and typically only has 1 or 2 hard brakes per day… if that. This is good. And honestly, her car is really the initial reason I signed up for the Snapshot thing in the first place. I know it doesn’t get used very often (just barely broke 16k miles after 2 years) and she doesn’t drive like a mad (wo)man or anything either. Somehow though, her car needs 2 more days of data than mine does before it’ll be ready.

Can’t wait to save some money.

No idea what I’m talking about? Super simple version: It is a small device that connects to your car’s diagnostic port (any vehicle after 1996 is required to have one). It tracks 3 driving characteristics: time of driving, total miles, and “hard brakes.” It does not contain GPS of any kind and has no idea where you are. It also does not track any information related to exceeding the speed limit (so they’re not going to turn around and say “it looks like you speed a lot and that’s unsafe”). That’s it. So plug this little guy in and you can end up saving up to 30% on your premium. And worst case, your premium will not increase because of this device. So what is there to lose?

Let’s take a look at those 3 factors though… time of driving. Basically any time between 12am and 4am is a really high risk time. So if you end up driving often within that time frame, that’s not good. We are typically never out at that time of night. I would say maybe once a month or less – and even then, we’re probably on our way home at 12am.

The total miles driven. This one is kind of obvious – if you drive less, your risk is less. We both have very short commutes. Hers is less than 4 miles round trip and mine is less than 6 miles round trip to work. Outside of that, it’s about 12 miles to the mall or anywhere else we would go. To put our driving in perspective, her car is just barely 2 yrs old and just very recently passed 15k miles. That’s not a lot.

The 3rd factor is the more interesting one. They track the number of “hard brakes” you make. And thankfully they do provide a definition of this… it is a decrease in speed of 7mph per second or greater. That doesn’t sound too bad – but turns out it’s kind of hard to gauge. It is really the one factor I’m concerned with.

Even with me being fairly cautious for the last 3 days, I’ve apparently had 6 hard braking instances in just 38 miles. I’ve been trying to pay attention to my braking and all, but apparently not enough – or my guess of deceleration is a bit off. Believe it or not, the whole 7mph per second thing is pretty hard to estimate.

The initial data for my WRX, last 3 days.

The question becomes, how much of a factor is that? And do they take other factors into account when looking at it? According to their Twitter account, they do to some degree. So that’s good. I look at it this way, if you drive a lot of highway miles commuting, you’re probably going to have a much lower “hard brakes per 100 miles” number. But I drive much more in the city than the highway, so with more stop and go traffic, it is very likely my number might end up higher than I would like it to. But again, I’m hoping some of that data is taken into account.

We’re still a month away from knowing whether or not we’ll save anything from this – but I’m expecting we will. Neither of us drive a whole lot and it is almost exclusively during the day. So even if we don’t get that full 30%, even 10% or 20% would be nice. Our 6 month premium is about $900 for both cars and both drivers with full coverage. A 30% savings of that would knock off almost $300 and could save us $45 per month! That’s pretty significant.

In the end, there’s no real downside to trying this program out. It can’t really get much worse… and I’m honestly expecting SOME level of discount, regardless of the number of hard braking instances. Just have to wait a while to see what that will be.

So in a minor bid to change that a little, here is a little positive feedback in terms of “word of mouth.”

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently had to deal with Progressive with regard to my insurance policy continuing to skyrocket (up to $1028 for 6 months if I renewed straight up – for 2 cars, 2 clean drivers – crazy). After an ordeal of calling up and essentially “complaining” about my policy continuing to climb, they worked with me to start essentially a new policy with all of the same info – which saved me something like $240/six months. And even beyond that – the payments are now every month (instead of 5 on and 1 off) so that’s spread out further, thus making the payment even lower. Suffice to say I’m going from what would have been about $212/mo to $130/mo.

Anyway… after the new policy started and I made the first deposit payment, my online policy kept reminding me to submit proof of my security system and such for the discount. Uh whaaa? The guy that setup my new policy assured me everything would transfer and I’d be good to go.

Well I emailed Progressive again and basically said “I was told this… and it says this.” That was last night.

Got a reply this morning confirming that I’m set. Nothing to mail/fax in or prove. The policy is ready to go and I’m all done with having to fight for a lower rate (for now).

So nothing big. But it’s nice to contact someone about something you think is a problem and then are assured that it is actually OK in the end and you don’t have to worry about it. So thank you, Progressive. You are still showing me that you’d like to keep my business (even though I had to essentially call and ask if you still wanted it after you kept jacking my rates up).

This makes it very difficult for me to understand why my insurance continues to climb EVERY six months. “Oh we had to adjust our policies for NY state.” Shenanigans! There’s no reason for my policy to go up $60-$70 every six months for “adjustments” or whatever. Can’t be possible.

Well today I received the renewal notice for my policy which would be effective 3/28. It would now go up to $1028 for six months (note: that is for two cars and two drivers). That is ridiculous when just this past six months it was $900-something. And $800-something before that. Come on people, we need to put a stop to this.

So in a bit of frustration I (politely) called Progressive and pleaded my case asking for some sort of understanding. The girl I first spoke with told me there’s nothing obvious on my policy that would be causing such a hike but instead blamed it on the “updates” for NY. I explained I live no where near NYC and was hoping that wasn’t having an effect on my insurance. Well what they change/adjust for one part of the state is carried out for the rest of it basically.

BUT, she said she could direct me to a NY licensed agent that would be able to review my policy and see if there’s anything they can do.

Well this guy must be a miracle worker or something then because he knocked over $200 off of my six month premium after a few minutes. How? Ya, I’d like to know the truth on this one, but here’s how I understand it at the moment…

Les (the guy I talked to) explained that he was entering my stuff (same coverage) into their “new program” to generate a completely new quote. OK, that seems fine. But if this “new program” can save me that much just by creating a new quote – how is this “new program” not the “standard program?” Why is this not used by every quoting system Progressive has?

If I go online for a new quote, it’s not anywhere near that. So while I’m super happy my payment went from $214 for the first month to around $140 for the first month, I’m still left a bit curious how I could save this much money from a requote after being a customer for 6 years – and why I have to go through this much trouble to get a new quote. Just feels to me like if this new system were the standard for them, my renewal would have gone through at least close to this rate without my having to call and whine about it.

Oh well though. I have to call back on Thursday to finalize it and provide the first payment (that’s the catch) but it’s WAY worth it for the premium I’m getting. So I’m happy overall – just have to question why it was this hard and how it is SO much cheaper this way. I would strongly encourage any of you to call and ask about your policy if it feels like it goes up for no reason.

Geico, Progressive, Allstate, State Farm, everyone else… really, we get it.

Yes, people can save money on car insurance. There are lots of ways – even without changing companies. The thing is, if you haven’t shopped for car insurance for many years, you will probably save money with ANYONE compared to where you are now. If you haven’t learned that much at this point, just give up. On everything.

If you want to try to save more, evaluate your policy. Ask your insurance company what they can do for you. Adjust your deductibles. Do you have more disposable income? Consider increasing your deductible to lower your policy premium. Consider changing your coverage. Do you really need $100,000 in property coverage? Do you need the $45/day rental coverage instead of the $30/day?

OK, now the cat is out of the bag. CAN WE STOP WITH THE FUCKING COMMERCIALS ALREADY??!!

And to no real surprise to me, it has gone up again. Totally lost count how many times it has gone up in a row. It is absolutely retarded. And now that Jen and her car are on my policy it gives me a comparison for rate changes.

Mine went up $31 for 6 months. Her’s went up $2 for the same period. Not to mention that the “law enforcement fee” doubled now. That’s BS too.

People with tCs need to seriously calm themselves and stop thinking they’re race cars (I know, irony…) and learn how to drive. Stop wrecking your cars and making my insurance go up!

Oh… on a more positive note, my credit score (according to Credit Karma) went up 8 points this month! I didn’t expect it to go up at all for a while, so this is a nice change.

I had emailed their customer service last night to inquire about their “inexperienced operator” charge, considering how long I’ve had my license. I got a reply this morning basically saying to fax them a copy of my license (and whatever an MVR is… maybe motor vehicle report? driving record of some sort?).

That was dumb… but I figured I’d call to find out what the MVR thing was. Before I could even get to that, I explained why I was calling to the guy (Rick, I think was his name) and he immediately offered to go ahead and fix it – since it was obviously a mistake. He mentioned I may have selected the wrong option for years driving somewhere… since their record showed 2. I’m really not sure where that would have been though – considering I’ve had them for over 4 years now.

Anyway, he made the correct and my upcoming policy will now go down by $68.

The part that impressed me though was that he offered to go ahead and refund the last 6 months worth of overpayment (about $62). So that should be deposited anytime into my checking account.

So by calling and asking about this thing that had been on my policy for a while, I just saved myself about $130 overall. Not bad.

Between this and the experience I had in filing the claim this past fall for my rear bumper, I can definitely recommend Progressive if you’re insurance shopping.