Pros/Cons of Geico?
 

I'm thinking of switching...

Anyone have any thoughts? I have State Farm and I'm getting tired of them (bs) after all these years.

I mainly want to know of good or bad experiences with Geico.

Thanks.

I made the same switch. One day I was pulled over and realized I didn't have an insurance card. No problem under normal circumstances. I called my agent and they told me I did not have coverage for the past 4 months.

I checked with my bank and confirmed that they cashed my check, which they had. State Farm gave me my money back, I moved to geico (which was half the price). I had them for 3 years with no stories, no tickets, no wrecks, no claims. I really cannot comment on their service after the accident because I never had one.

I have since switched to progressive, they have my 3 cars and 2 boats for the price geico had 3 cars. I have had no claims with them either, but like the original poster, I would love to know how any of these "No storefront" insurance companies work out when you have an incident.

I am with GEICO, and this is my 2nd time around with them. Lured away by Progressive because of rate only to have the rate increase and exceed GEICO a year later, so I went back. I was never unhappy with GEICO, just tried to save a buck.

I've never had a claim, but my sister who is also with GEICO did and they were great to work with. Had an adjuster there the next day and my sister's claim was settled within the week - fairly.

Don't let rates rule you. Your individual state's insurance laws have as much to do with rates as anything. Each Ins. co. has a proprietary rate formula, which in my state must be submitted and approved by the State Ins. Commissioner. Once that happens (and it's an involved process) the ins. co. is locked in, they cannot easily change in order to compete with co. X. Progressive is waay higher in my state because of this process than say GEICO.

State Farm is a very good co., but inclined to cancel you if you have a claim (or jack your rates to the point you wish they had).

Btw, my Boxster is not insured w/ GEICO. I am under an agreed value policy with a Collector Ins. co. - I get full coverage for 7500 mi. annually (I store the car in winter, and it's not a DD - avg. 5800mi./yr.) and I pay $244/yr. full coverage. Don't have to be in attendance, not restricted to parade or club activities, etc. Just need to be a PCA member and send proof of an alternate car for each licensed driver (we have 6 cars + 1 bike, 2 drivers) and send a photo of your garage, which must be at your primary residence.

Sometimes a switch can be a good thing. If you find it's not, you can always switch back as I did.

lil, is that with any PCA chapter? I am paying 1400 a year for my boxster!

I've been spending time online tonight and found that Geico would save me about $75 a month for the same coverage as I get with State Farm (for wifes Passat, My Audi and Boxster)... I have to see if my home owners insurance would go up if I dropped the cars from SF though. I doubt it would much, if any...
I think a savings of $75 a month would be really nice! I'm going to call them tomorrow though and make sure that their quote is on the level.

Geico uses independent photographers for collision photos. The idiots they chose in my town never had time to take my pics, next thing I knew my collision was canceled. So, I ditched Geico, went back to state farm and they didn't even make me get new photos since the lapsed time was only a couple weeks.

bmx,

I switched to Geico in October. I was paying $180 / mo for the Boxster, Benz, and Harley with Farmers.

With Geico I now pay $80 a month for the Boxster and Benz ( and the Benz is now fully insured, it only had comp & coll with Farmers ) and $20 a month for the Harley ( which is still with Farmers ). So, $1k less a year for more coverage. I haven't had a claim yet, but so far I have been pleased with their customer service.

Hope that helps...

Nick

Thanks for the feedback... I've pretty much decided to give Geico a try. I talked to a rep about the pricing etc... Everything is apples to apples... I think it's basically cheaper because there's no agent/building etc etc. like State Farm has in about every town.
My premium will go down by about $900! But, I will not get a discount on my home owners through State Farm... so I'll pay an extra $100... still a good deal for me though.

Not having a Brick & Mortar operation certainly has something to do with it.

But companies set their rates using their own proprietary tables and algorythms. These are largely drawn from their own experience with a particular demographic (State, Zip code area, Age, Sex, Marital status, Credit history, Car type, etc.). Since they cannot access the records of their competitors, they can only calculate their risk from their own.

Would you agree that switching from Geico to Progressive was... So easy, a Caveman can do it!

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...es/caveman.jpg

I had geicko about 2 yrs ago, my rates were incredibly low as it was only 200 bucks full coverage for 3 cars(miata, audi s4 and a bmw745), also i was about 21 at the time so you can imagine my rates anywhere else would have been much higher. i got rear ended at a stoplight when i was in the miata, clearly an accident that was not my fault at all . Regardless, I had a ton of problems with them to get the car fixed or well get the money to fix the car, they didn't pay for a rent a car even though it was stated i would get one in this case (good thing i didn't need one though because i had other cars) but in general it was a really bad experience. it took about 6 months for everything to get cleared up and I never got my deductible back that i was told i was going to get back...about 6 months later I switched to farmers, I pay now about 240 for my boxster and audi but I think m willing to give a little more money for a piece of mind.

IF you are a shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway, you get an extra 10% off your GEICO auto insurance.

I suggest the BRK.B share which can be had for roughly $4600 each. The BRK.A class runs roughly $139,000 per share, which might be a bit much to save a few hundred bucks on your car insurance...




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Geico
 

I've been with Geico since 1980. I haven't had any auto claims, but they paid on hail damage to my home a few years back (new roof and siding). The annual premium on my 2002 S is $440, with a $500 deductible and $300k bodily and uninsured liability coverage.

pros: you get to pretend to have a pet lizard with a british accent, which makes as much sense as a chihuahua with a german accent...

cons: its jsut another company




(i pay $80/mo for full cov for my boxster w/ 250 ded's)

Great commercials - so I went online for a quote and entered all my information (my daily car is an Infiniti and I have no points on my record). The rate came back as almost THREE TIMES what I pay for the same coverage at Allstate. No thanks.

another variable in the calculus...
 

I have liberty mutual... four cars... 05 Box S, 07 335i BMW, 08 BMW X5 (3.0), 06 Nissan Frontier 4X4... annual premium for all four is $2200...

Not tickets... however I do have a 16 year old that will be coming out of the 'permit' stage shortly... I'm expecting at least $1k more for that privilege...

Two things you should know about Geico.

First, the company has, for many years, had a policy of buying radar and laser speed guns, and donating them to law enforcement agencies. This has often been written about in car magazines.

Second, if you get speeding tickets with Geico, your rates get increased dramatically. If one has speeding tickets on one's record, it becomes harder to get new insurance, so one may be stuck with the jacked up rates of Geico.

It's an interesting business model... make it easier for law enforcement agencies to give out lots of speeding tickets, and then jack up the rates of the people who do get speeding tickets.

Seriously? That's kind of twisted.

But there's more
 

Geico cancels people who track or autocross their cars. Many people have had their Geico policies cancelled because their names appear in AX results on the web. Google it!

Not really. It's in Insurance cos. best interest (and perhaps their policy holders too) to reduce/minimize risk.

Reducing the number of speeders accomplishes this, lots of accidents occur at speeds higher than the limit, or are worse because of the speeds involved.

There is a deterent effect to giving out speeding citations, get enough tickets and most people do slow their driving down.

I'm not talking about the arguements that: everybody does it, the States/Municipalities are just generating revenues , they watch for fast cars (especially Porsches), etc., or anything like that.

It's a really simple arguement. When you speed, it's a conscious decision to exceed the posted limit. If you casually exceed the limit, by not consciously watching your speed, that too is your fault - it's you who are controlling the car.

Sure we all do it, both consciously and casually, and most of the time, we don't get caught. But when we do, you gotta Man Up and accept responsibility.

I want the roads to be as safe as they can be. For me, for my wife, family and friends. I'm with GEICO, and I don't mind that some part of my premium goes to these types of programs at all. Yea, I hope they never get me, but that's a separate arguement.

Problem with Lil Bastards argument is the erroneous belief that "speed kills". I will not deny that very high speeds produce more deaths then reasonable speeds.

But adherence to slow speed limits can be just as dangerous as exceeding them by 10-20 mph. There is a comfort zone that most drivers have and for an open 4 lane highway that comfot zone is about 70mph. Artificailly lowering that speed by arbitrary limits increases driver boredom significantly and results in an increase in accident rates.

So where do I get my conclusions?

A Unversity of Texas test of more than 200 drivers involved covering up speedometers and asking drivers to run 4 lane roads with little or no other traffic. Their overall average speed was 70mph.

When there was a National speed limit of 55 imposed traffic fatalaties per mile driven decreased significantly. This was hailed by safety advocates as proof that "speed kills" However when the ban was lifted and states began increasing speed limits FATALITIES PER MILE DECREASED AGAIN. So the "proof" that "speed kills" must be thrown out. Continuing decreases in death tolls point toward safer car design, increased seat belt usage, better road and signage design and decreased EMS response times. But DOES NOT say anything about the dangers of speed.

The public would be MUCH better served if safety advocates focused on better driver education in the forms of safe following distances, safety belt usage and keep right except to pass rules.

Tailgating at highway speeds is a major root cause of accidents yet since it is hard to prove after the accident occurs it is ignored in statistics. Yet it doesn't take a rocket scientist or statistician to realize the impact of have tenths of a second rather than 2 seconds to react to emergency that require sudden manuevers. With too short a time most drivers will overreact or not react at all. Overreactions result in spins and flips. No reaction results in high speed collisions.

Regards,
Alan

Well as far as my driving record...

I've never had a speeding ticket, in 23 years of driving... never wrecked a car or AutoX'ed my car... (nor do I plan on). The only thing is that my parked Audi was hit in a parking lot a few years ago.

Some might ask why I even have a Porsche:)

So I guess Geico is perfect for me!

Well, as bmx672, I too have had no accidents or speeding tickets in many years and many more miles of driving.

But, I have to admit that this has often been more a product of luck or fate. When I was speeding, there were no police in the area. So far as accidents, well I was in the wrong place at the right time - I've had cars both in front of and behind me get into collisions.

I do drive somewhat defensively, but I'd never be accused of being the 'Little Old Lady' or 'Sunday Driver' either.

But, I do Auto-X and Race a car on the Track and again have done so for many years. This pretty much quenches the urge to drive that way on the Street. I think that is maybe the greatest benefit of participating in these sports - it satisfies an appetite that would otherwise have no outlet and might cause me to try on public roads. This why I'm an advocate for people getting it 'out of their system' in controlled environments such as these.

As far as renzop's arguements are concerned, I don't disagree at all. There have been studies showing speed having little or no effect in the Traffic Fatality rate/mi. But, they offer no data for non-fatal accidents. Nor, do they take account of the mediating effects of increased safety devices or crashworthiness. The IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) has data which disputes these findings. Many advocates of higher speeds and less enforcement will infer a bias as the IIHS is funded soley by the Ins. industry. But, the IIHS is considered by most to be more stringent than the NHTSA in vehicle crash ratings. I think people tend to side with whichever group, test, or statistics support their own views.

In then end, I think the arguements are all but moot. The rapid spread of Speed Cameras and other unmanned devices are going to make enforcement much more prevalent and will force us all to drive at lower avg. speeds.

Geico
 

IN 2002, after 1 year of ownership of my 2001S (and 14000 miles), I was rear-ended by a hit&run driver and went spinning off the road into a tree. The front of the car was crushed, the rear was mashed, but I was uninjured. The original estimate for repairs was $16,000, but after about 2 weeks, GEICO decided that my car was totalled and gave me a check for $54,000 for a car that cost $60,000 new.

This exceeded my expectations at the time. Also, as a footnote, my Boxster held its value significantly better than my 401k during the 1-year period of ownership.

Keith

Re:
 

I switched to Travelers from Safeco last fall when my 18yr old daughter got her license. Now costs me $ 2,100/yr to insure my '97 & 2 other cars... and my daughter is insured on the Boxster too (not that I'm going to let her drive it).
Costs me $45.00 (Comp) to garage the Box for 6mo.
The switch saved me $ 1,100 on premiums. Geico was compareable to Travelers ratewise.

Rest assured that Geico is not giving away thousands of radar and laser speed guns because it has anyone's welfare at heart, or is trying to achieve some greater social good. It's all about money, plain and simple.

Car & Driver has written stories in the past about Geico's financial analyses. They do this purely as an investment. They make much more money from jacking up the rates of their 'customers' who get speeding tickets than they spend buying and giving away speed guns.

I personally would not give my money to a company whose official corporate policy and practice is to try and rape their own customers (that and I wouldn't last very long with my propensity to go faster than allowed...).

I've been with State Farm for years and am very happy with them. About four years ago I applied with Geico to see if I could get a lower rate. The rate they quoted was, I believe, about $50 per month higher than my State Farm rates. I have made a couple of claims with State Farm and they have been handled very well. Maybe it depends on where you live.