When it comes to buying car insurance online, there are two main players: GEICO and Progressive. You’ve seen the cute gecko commercials and Progressive’s insurance super market commercials. Which online car insurance company should you insure your vehicles with?  That depends.

Both GEICO and Progressive are solid financially, with GEICO having the backing of Berkshire Hathaway and the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet. Both companies provide easy online quote forms, and a plethora of insurance options that can be customized to your needs.

Both companies also have extensive experience servicing policyholders no matter where you live. Progressive does sell through the independent agent channel, so if you prefer to have an agent to call when the need arises, then Progressive may win your business for that reason. Read the rest of this entry

Progressive Insurance has some changes coming to their car insurance policies that may lower your car insurance bill. Drivers will now be rated by averaging the driver risk across all the vehicles on your policy rather than on a specific vehicle. The changes include:

• Household Averaging Driver Assignment – This change means drivers are averaged across your vehicles instead of rating a specific driver on a specific vehicle. Occassional driver status will be taken into consideration when factoring these rates.
• Occasional Operators – Drivers age 25 or less who drive your vehicles less than 50 percent of the time will get a lower rate as long as they are not rated as a principal operator on any vehicle on your car insurance policy.
• Minor Child Discount – Drivers on your policy for at least 12 months who are 19 years or younger and children of the named insured will receive this discount.
• Distant Student Discount – Students who live at a school more than 100 miles from home and do not have regular access to your insured vehicles will get this discount.

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I thought I’d write a bit about an experience I had with Progressive car insurance. Keep in mind that I’m an independent insurance agent and I can insure my family’s vehicles with any of about 15 different insurance companies. I chose to insure my cars with Progressive, primarily because their rates were very competitive. From an agent’s standpoint, Progressive is one of the easiest companies to work with due to their investment in their agent website.

I’ve read plenty of claim experiences where consumers take delight in bashing their former insurance company. I thought I’d put this one out there as a positive experience, for what it’s worth. My wife and I were traveling down I-80 to a college football game one September morning when we were passed by a Chevy Suburban, the driver of which proceeded to veer off the left side of the interstate, over correct and slam head-on into a concrete construction barrier on the right side of the road, completely blocking my lane.

There was one vehicle ahead of us in the left-hand lane and they collided with the rear of the Suburban. I couldn’t stop in time and our Honda Accord collided with the Suburban right between the front and rear passenger side doors.  Our airbags deployed and there as an eary silence before we heard the screetching tires of a car preparing to sandwich our car with the Suburban. Luckily, the car that rear-ended our’s was about the same size and did not completely sandwich our car. Had the 18-wheeler behind that car not seen the accident and slowed down, it would have plowed through the accident and who knows if I’d be writing this today. Read the rest of this entry