What Everyone Should Know About Their Car Insurance Company

How much do you know about your vehicle insurance company and the policy you are purchasing from them? Did you shop around, or did you just stick with the same old company that mom and dad used? You may want to call your representative with some questions after you read my story. (To be fair-not that I need to-I won't mention the name of my company in this article.)

When I married my husband, he had insurance through the same company his parents went through. He had been with them for a long time, so he got a "preferred customer" discount. So, when we merged our lives, we merged our insurance. I got my car insured under his plan, and we got a "multi-vehicle discount." We thought we were doing great-lots of discounts--saving lots of money. We had a "home owner's discount," a "safe driver discount," and a "valued customer discount." Plus, we loved our agents! They were the best people ever, always willing to help. Always asking, "What can we do to make your life easier?" They were real. So, even at times when we weren't necessarily enthused with our company itself, our agents were wonderful so we stayed. We really thought that if anything ever happened, there would be no stress, it would all be okay.

Then, on December 21, 2006, my husband left for work; he's in construction. It was about 6:00am, and about two minutes after he left, he called me from his cell phone and asked me to come pick him up. I didn't ask any questions, I just left. Once I picked him up, I found out what had happened. He was fine, but a deer had run out in front of him. He swerved to miss the deer, hit a cement culvert pipe in someone's driveway, and ended up in the woods. When he hit the culvert pipe, both passenger side wheels were busted to pieces. Not just the tires, I mean the rims were smashed. There were dents in the truck, but we weren't worried about that. Remember I said he's in construction? Well, there were dents on the truck already from him working out of his truck, so we weren't worried about the body. We had the truck towed back home, and we called our agents.