COVFEFE might give us a break on car insurance

[Frank Lee]

He all-knowing just like he say.

[Vman455]

My insurance company announced today that we're getting 15% back at the next policy renewal. I shop around every year or so but they're always the cheapest, and every time I've had a claim they've been easy to work with. I probably won't change anytime soon.

[redpoint5]

Insurance companies are always easy to deal with so long as you don't disagree with anything they propose.

I find that they lowball everything and require push-back to get something approximating fair compensation. I think it was State Farm (other party's insurer) I haggled with for 3 months to get $1,500 more for my totalled Subaru. Their initial offer was $1k, saying my car had extensive body damage before the accident and lots of miles. My counter was that it ran perfectly, and that you couldn't replace it with an equally functioning vehicle for $1k (and provided tons of comps).

[Daox]

Like Vman, I got an email from my insurance company saying I'll get a 15% discount as well.

[redpoint5]

Yeah, Geico just sent me that email. I guarantee they are getting more than a 15% reduction in claims, but it's nice they kicked back some of their profits regardless.

What do you think, they are at 75% fewer claims? They've probably furloughed roughly that same amount too, so their fixed costs are less too.

[Xist]

I used to only make phone calls and do paperwork from home, but now I work twenty hours a week for the school and currently see three teleclients.

Then my Monday clients on the reservation completely quit. I am going to try one last time and send a Zoom invitation.

I used to drive two hours a week for them and two hours for three clients on Tuesday. A mom canceled for the duration of TPGate, but I only saw her kid once last quarter and once the previous.

There was rarely a drive time. They live pretty close and I usually saw them on my way back from other families.

I also haven't driven to Phoenix in months. It turns out that I have an N95 respirator. My sister doesn't want it so I will call the Phoenix VA--after I go grocery shopping with it.

Ooh! I could go grocery shopping at Winco!

USAA announced they were returning 20% of two months' payments to members for a total of $520 million.

$520,000,000 / $38.18 = ?

They had 11.9 million members in 2016. If the average member is receiving as much as I am there are 13.62 million of us.

[redpoint5]

My friend is a claims agent and says claims are down 70%. We're getting 15-20% off our premiums... someone's making a profit.

Not complaining, just pointing out that there's a bit more available than what we're getting. Nice to see all the insurance companies giving some of the money back.

[Frank Lee]

Nice to see all the insurance companies giving some of the money back.

I read that regulators were looking over their shoulders. It's not as altruistic as it may seem.

[Fat Charlie]

Mutual insurance companies are technically owned by their policy holders, similar to credit unions. They've still got their fat cats (management is usually in it for themselves no matter what the industry) and fun ways to spend money, but right now no one's going on vacation... I mean travelling to important, work related conventions. The owners are still the owners, and profits get rolled back to them. I've seen checks from my insurance company in the past, always a result of "claims last quarter were less than projected".

Claims may be down 70%, but it's going to take a while for that to show up on a quarterly report, and they may still find novel ways to spend money.

[Frank Lee]

Ha Ha, COOPs and Mutuals. I'm an owner/customer of my electric COOP so I guess that means I like screwing myself.