I thought this was a little weird.
So I changed my car insurance today – from esurance over to Progressive. Or rather, back to Progressive, as it was about six or seven years ago when I left them to come to esurance because the prices were cheaper.
What stood out as strange to me was that in both cases, I called up my current insurance company and told them what the other was offering, and neither one did much to lower my current bill.
This time, esurance tried to offer me their creepy tracking tool that you plug in under the dash and you get a discount if it doesn’t detect you driving like a maniac, which I declined.
I think last time Progressive tried to beat esurance’s rates by removing the coverage from one of our two cars.
Huh?!
At the end of the day, I’m only saving about $40/month … so $240 on a 6-month policy term or a little less than $500 a year.
I was just kind of surprised that there wasn’t any retention effort other than what they’d offer any day of the week to keep me from switching to their competitor. So I’m curious why.
Is it a case where there’s simply so much churn in their industry that they’ve decided retention isn’t really their strategy, kind of like cable and cellular providers that focus more on earning new customers than keeping existing ones happy?
Or do customer service reps just not have much they can offer, so it’s really just another call in the queue for them to deal with?
Thankfully it was a surprisingly seamless transition from one to the other – I asked the guy from esurance to cancel mine policy, effective tomorrow, after he reviewed it for discounts, and I was finishing the new purchase from Progressive before I was off the phone with esurance.
It’ll be interesting to see if I end up switching again in a few years if the prices sway back in the other direction. I hate doing it, but at least it’s easier than switching cable or cell providers because it’s just a question of whose site I’m printing my new ID cards from.
Which reminds me, I probably need to do some research into our homeowner’s insurance, too. We’ve had the same company there for seven years now as well…