Because they can. They don’t even have to justify it. My car insurance goes up every year despite no accidents on my record. I look at competitors rates and they are even more expensive. Across the board they are just raising rates.
And we as consumers have no recourse, because we are required to have car insurance to drive, so it’s not like we can just boycott them. Would not be surprised to learn that there is collusion going on between all the auto insurance companies to keep their rates roughly similar and raise them all at once.
If you own your car outright, drop collision and keep liability and add glass and theft and bump up the medical on the liability.
You can get coverage a lot cheaper of you drop the collision part, but it does mean that if you’re not on the ball and run off the road and smash up your car in a ditch or onto a curb/stone wall/ whatever… it’s on you.
As I told my insurance agent, why should the insurer pay if I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing behind the wheel?
He agreed.
Not just car insurance. My house insurance went up 25-30%, and the agent said there’s not much point in switching because companies “don’t want to take on houses older more than 40yo”
While my general Province hasn’t been great for various disasters, my city and neighborhood are on the safer end. The house itself doesn’t have any of the nasty stuff like asbestos, aluminum wiring, failure-prone plumbing, etc. The furnace was replaced when I moved in, AC and after tank are new within 5 years, and the roof was just done.
It’s just a fuck you tax at this point
I suggest finding a new insurance agent. Sounds like yours didn’t feel like looking around for you.
I go through an insurance broker and they said that it’s important to check around every renewal to see what is being offered. They rely on customers getting complacent. If everyone actually shopped around every year, it would theoretically drive prices down. They would have to resort to price fixing to keep their massive profits.
For some unknown reason i have total irrational hatred towards this concept and really short fuse towards haggling.
My countries telecom companies do the same or at least the most. Every 2 years the special offer they did ends and i have to start switching my number after which for a month every single telecom company starts to spam me with better offer which all are the lowest they can go. Last time they even started sending me chocolates. Like WTF, i just want a phone, not a bloody chocolate.
At this point i flipped them all off and accepted I don’t need phone that much. My wife took over as she does want me to have a phone.
I always hear about the importance of shopping around for insurance, and I don’t necessarily do it every single year, but probably about every other year
And everywhere I look my quotes are always about the same, within a few bucks of what I’m already paying.
And I guess if you add it all up over the years a couple of bucks a month difference does eventually add up to something kind of significant.
But having been with my current company/agent for a while and having had to use my insurance a couple times over the years, I don’t mind that so much because I’ve found them pretty easy to work with. They’ve paid out when I needed them to without any drama, and they’ve been willing to cut me when, like when I had some billing snafu that was kind of my fault they were saw that I’d been a customer for a while with otherwise perfect payment history and we’re willing to waive some fees that were otherwise tacked on. And jumping ship to save very little money and not knowing if the new company is going to be as decent to work with just doesn’t seem like a smart move to me.
Still pisses me off to no end that my insurance goes up every year though. My car’s not appreciating in value any, and I’m not getting any younger or more reckless on the road, nor have I reached the age yet where my mental faculties have started to nosedive, and I have a very clean driving history.
Same as the other responder, it’s the homeowner’s insurance I’m typically shopping around for. I also have a habit of limping aging vehicles I purchased for $1000 beyond the 150k mile (240k km) mark. They tend to try sneaking full coverage in there and are VERY SURPRISED to see the cost come down significantly. If I’m lucky, I can get an overall discount by bundling both together.
I’ve had a similar experience with car insurance. Home insurance, though, my rates went up ~40% two years in a row. Switched companies and pay less than half of the inflated rates.
They don’t already price fix?
Truth. I have a broker and every year before my renewal she price shops every provider to keep giving me the lowest price. Before that, my car insurance had steadily creeped up almost 50% higher than everything I was quoted. Do I have to change apps and remember who I’m with every year? Yes, but I’ve saved a lot of money in the process.
In my country for liability insurance at least, national traffic insurance fund website has a comparison tool. Just enter the data and get results for all the companies (minus the banks for some reason, they also offer insurance). The difference can sometimes be 5x or more and they offer the exact same legally mandated coverage (some have minor bonuses like “moose insurance” or legal aid, and no, those aren’t even always the most expensive ones).
Well you gotta insure your moose
And you’re gullible enough to think they aren’t/won’t price fix?
Well you see with all the harvested data they have on everyone, including knowing what you pay now, it would be really difficult to offer you something cheaper. so really its your fault for paying so much already, and fitting into a part of the population that based on A/B testing can have their rates raised a certain percentage before they feel its too much to bother looking for alternative insurance companies /s
I don’t understand why someone would downvote you. You added the /s, lol
Seriously though, insurance companies spend more money trying NOT to pay the
markcustomer than they do just paying out for claims.
I think they are “gullible enough” to believe that losing business is the only thing that would keep corporations from being shitty.
Insurance companies not being shitty? LOL
How is it a thing that someone is belittled for saying something likely true and makes no implications unless you invent them? No one is saying it’s the customers fault or that insurance companies would be angels if we forced them to.
Uhh… you did, though…
losing business is the only thing that would keep corporations from being shitty
The thing about words is that they can mean many things. Your choice to read them as uncharitably as you can imagine is not damning evidence.
Yes your refusal to admit that you making shit up in your head not being objective reality is what I’m talking about
Except it’s a captive market. When it’s a law that you have to have something and there’s only a dozen or so “options” (especially when those options end up being owned by the same entity) they will never lose enough business to have to stop being shitty.
No one is saying they’d clean up their act. But yes if they were constantly losing customers they’d obviously lower prices a bit. Keep in mind this is not blaming customers.
This is why consumer coops are so so important for stuff like this.
The insurance of a person I’m close to from their coop is around 9% cheaper than other non coop alternatives.
Consumer coops (irrespective of sector) always tend to have top notch customer service in my experience.
I was with Erie insurance company for 15+ years when they pulled this, except it was closer to a 100% increase. No tickets or accidents but suddenly much higher rate. Switched to Progressive and was back to my old price.
Just did much the same with Farmers (was with them for 10 years). Last accident was around 2018, not at fault. Went from a '14 Prius to '24 Ioniq 5, and my premium went from ~$1300 to ~$2500, the excuse being “EVs are more expensive to repair”. Which I get, the batteries are pretty expensive. But that’s an insane increase. I switched to Progressive for both auto and home, and they got my premiums down to ~$1100 and ~$1600 respectively (home was just shy of $2k). We’ll see if the decision was worthwhile.
Is this AI upscaled or am I going nuts?
it is
sir I cannot believe thye let you out.
every year I get a letter from my health
scaminsurance company that essentially says “due to the law (that we’re going to eventually pay the right politician to get rid of) we’re informing you that our rates will increase by 30% next year.”Every year 30% more.
That shit keeps happening to me. It’s a new scam they’re running. I know because I keep changing companies due to it. Each time they pretend that’s just how much insurance costs now, or try to blame it on me moving (each time to a lower crime area). Then I find another company that’s offering me slightly more than I paid last term- the kind of increase you (unfortunately) expect from these vultures. But now those old standard increases have become not enough. Seriously had these sons of bitches try to raise my insurance rates 50-200% multiple times in a row, multiple companies doing the same shit. This ought to be investigated by a government agency and multibillion dollar fines issued. Instead, it’s just “how it is” now in America.
“this should be investigated by the government”
you are aware your government is intentionally allowing anti consumer practices, right ?
That was kinda the entire point I was making actually
Replace car with bike and no longer need insurance. Insurance companies hate this little trick!
Oh I wish I could but my local infrastructure ain’t human centered, it’s car centered.
I may only be 13 miles from where I work but with roads near me being 50+mph with no shoulder or streetlights
Aren’t US ebike regulations super generous, like to the point its pretty much just an electric equivalent to a 50cc bike with pedals on it.
Ours are so restricted I don’t even see the point of a legal one outside of disabled or elderly users. Once I am up to speed I usually cycle at just under 30kmh which is above the speed limit for pedal assist ebikes, IIRC most of Europe has that sort of limit. If there are a lot of stop/starts then maybe it could be more useful, but I tend to avoid roads like that in the first place.
Depends greatly on the state (and in some cases city too) you live in but many have speed limits on them of 25mph (among many other restrictions based on motor wattage breaking them into classes). Any faster, pedals or not, it’s considered an electric motorcycle with all the restrictions that apply there.
But the biggest issue is the lack of cycling infrastructure in general. A shitton of the US has little support for that kind of transport, or any support for those not in cars.
And there’s legal restrictions on what kinds of roads you can ride on as well.
It’s a headache.
Go 25mph then. At some point it just seems like looking for excuses. Tbh I hear the same sorts of excuses here from people trying to justify why they “have to” drive 800m to the corner shop.
It would literally be illegal for me due to the only road being an interstate bridge during part of my commute, not to mention riding at night on winding roads with no shoulder (blind corners abound) with speed limits of 50+ mph due to my work hours. And of course some roads that have a bike lane (rare in my neck of the woods but improving), it’s illegal in my state to ride any vehicle with a motor (yes even electric motors) in the bike lane. So I’d have to ride in traffic on a bike on aforementioned roads.
I’m not saying other people shouldn’t try to ride bikes or ebikes to work, I’m just saying for me that it’s not possible.
so simple. if only everyone could live within a few miles of their workplace and all their other responsibilities.
oh wait, they can’t, unless they can afford crazy high rents of urban centers.
Yeah if only I could bike 35 miles each way every day to work.
If your shitbag local government isn’t developing mass transit, that’s your fault. Start making some elected officials miserable until they start funding a real transit network.
But don’t pretend like your choice to shit on the only habitable planet we have for the minor convenience of having a stupid little zoom-zoom cage isn’t just that: a choice.
my shitbag local government has the best mass transit in the country by many metrics.
still, it doesn’t go to rural areas or anywhere that isn’t a wealthy suburb full of white people.
but yeah, i’ll get write on that. ii’ll just donate a few trillion to my local government so they can build electrify trains through all 351 towns and cities in my state.
Stop living in massive cities then if they are so expensive. Always lived in towns rather then cities, can get anywhere by bike in not much time at all.
Oh no wages are a little lower. So is rent and tax. Plus much better access to green spaces generally - though I now live on the coast so green spaces are mostly replaced by blue ones. Decent green spaces are like 20 minutes away by bike rather than 5 now.
most small towns in america have no jobs that pay a living wage.
that’s why people drive 3-4 hrs a day to a city. so they can afford to live.
glad you live in your little bubble, did you inherent your home from your parents too, like every other lazy townie? not everyone gets hand outs like that in life. they have to pay their own way and their inherent little to nothing.
people live where this is economic opportunity, because they need it to survive. many folks jobs don’t exist in rural areas.
and nobody in small town america rides bikes.
sounds like you are talking about europe.
Yes, I am talking about Europe. Why so aggressive about assuming I inherited anything? I haven’t.
you realize there is a whole other 6 continenets, 5 of which aren’t europe where many people live? that has massively large distances between population centers.
or not, i guess.
I could say the same thing about America.
I don’t know take a bus/train then ¯_(ツ)_/¯
those things don’t exist outside of urban centers.
i own a car because I like getting out of the city and to the countryside. also not possible by bicycle or public transit.
This is 15’ from a bus stop. What more could you want?
Shelter?
Like this? (1’ from previous photo location)
(Also this could actually be fun to GuoGuess)
Time to switch and save lol. I change phone plans and car insurance about once every three years at least because no matter what they find a way to run up the price on you over time, so there will always be much much better offers out there
I’ve been on $30 per month T-Mobile with unlimited data for almost 20 years now.
Gonna ride this one to eternity.
Wow thats a good quality version of the meme. Share the template plz. I got potato quality in my library:
Your Tom is just fine the way he is.
Your version is also more historically accurate.
it’s ai enhanced
Many such examples.
