Dear GEICO:
I’ve been a long time policyholder and yet I plan to cancel my auto insurance coverage soon. But I thought it might be worthwhile to send this note as a final attempt to appeal to some type of business sanity.
In theory, I seem to fit the type of customer profile that your company would want: married, conservative lifestyle, age 55, no moving violations in more than 30 years, homeowner with multiple vehicles, no claims ever submitted, passed both motorcycle and auto defensive driver courses, tend to stay with the same insurance carrier for many years, pay the full policy premium in advance, etc. My family members also have policies with GEICO. But when I went online to renew my policy I found that the rate had more than doubled. When I asked why, the explanation was unbelievable.
You reminded me that in early 2014, more than two years ago, a woman tapped my rear bumper while my car was stopped in a construction zone lane merge. She got a small scratch on her car, made a claim, and this claim was charged as my fault. The logic was that the lanes were merging in a construction zone and even though I was stopped at the time that she struck me, it was my fault because I had just previously entered her lane in a slow speed merge. You admit that she actually hit me on my rear bumper, not the other way around, and that she immediately hired a lawyer to submit a false medical injury claim that you dismissed shortly thereafter. Your claim investigator later told me that this woman had a history of such false claims. Apparently she knew the law well enough to know that she could deliberately strike my car and still claim to be a “victim” of an accident. Even so, I can’t imagine had you paid more than $500 to fix her small barely visible scratch.
Yet even under these conditions you think it fair to more than double my premium rate. What a crazy system! You are allowing another person who is a known abuser of the insurance system to ruin a relationship with your good customer.
I’m sure you are aware that other insurance carriers will offer me the same original lower premium rate. As a consumer my only logical response in this situation is to cancel my GEICO coverage and move to another insurer later this month. It’s too bad for both of us.
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