I ran into a couple of situations that irritate me. First, in general, I'm anti-insurance. I don't like betting against myself, which is essentially what insurance is.

I was taking two short trips last month. I was renting cars from San Jose del Cabo, Mexico and Denver, Colorado. I rented both from Enterprise and they were confirmed. Twenty-four hours later I received an email from Enterprise indicating that my reservation at Cabo was cancelled. Turns out Enterprise won't rent a car in Cabo to anyone over 75 years old. Neither will Avis. I ended up using Cactus, a Mexican company. They did a great job and had excellent cars. I don't intend to use Enterprise anywhere, ever again.

I was looking at Medivac services for my trip to northern Brazil fishing. The cost was $139 for seven days. When I punched in my age, it popped to almost double. Damn those actuarial tables.

I carried insurance during my working career and on my houses and cars, but after retiring I decided life and long-term care insurance was a rip-off and went without.

Insurance companies are low-lifes in my book. Aetna screwed me out of $500.00 in 1973 and cost them a lifetime of business opportunities and a lifetime of lousy word of mouth.

I bought a life insurance policy from another company in 1972 and after reaching 60 years of age they tried to cancel me, twice. I sicced the State of Texas on them each time and they reinstated me, twice. They caught me between moves from Jakarta, Indonesia to Perth, Australia. I paid the premium late and they canceled me. nothing I could do about it.

There is a reason insurance companies can build all those skyscrapers and name all those NFL stadiums.

I never bought life insurance, no point to it if there are no children involved.
Insurance is "take in what you can, pay out what you must".
Their biggest problem is where to park the money they don't spend.
Long-term care would sound better if you knew the company would still be in business when it was needed...

It's a racket for sure. Since 0biden and the rona, both of which caused the price of everything to spike (besides spreading spike proteins), homeowner's and auto ins have also spiked. They say because materials, basically everything costs more, so if your house burns, car gets destroyed they all cost much more to replace.

Right now my ins co is wanting me to increase my deductible significantly to lower my payment.

Home and auto insurance in this part of the world (SE Colo.) is insane. I am driving a 14 year old pickup and an 8 year old Honda and, guess what, both are at the top of the most stolen vehicle lists. I would guess that probably half of the drivers here are driving uninsured and the cops and courts won't enforce the law because 'it picks on poor people' and they are the ones that elect the people that are supposed to see that the laws are enforced. People here don't call Uber, they just steal a car. I don't think car theft is even a felony any more. This is a very sore subject!
C.G.B.

quote:

Originally posted by cgbach:
Home and auto insurance in this part of the world (SE Colo.) is insane. I am driving a 14 year old pickup and an 8 year old Honda and, guess what, both are at the top of the most stolen vehicle lists. I would guess that probably half of the drivers here are driving uninsured and the cops and courts won't enforce the law because 'it picks on poor people' and they are the ones that elect the people that are supposed to see that the laws are enforced. People here don't call Uber, they just steal a car. I don't think car theft is even a felony any more. This is a very sore subject!
C.G.B.

You can reduce your premium if you install a tracker in your cars.

We trackers in all ours.

It costs about $100 a year each one and we can see their location in real time.

We can play back their trips for the past 3 months.

Like I've mentioned here before about my Jeep getting stolen a few years ago. Since I only had liability, they wouldn't cover any of it. I saw no reason to pay for full coverage for a vehicle that's only driven maybe 3 months out of the year. Of course, when I got the policy, they never told me that theft wasn't covered. (yeah, yeah, I know, it's my fault for not reading the fine print). The kid that stole it caused a 3 car accident + all were totaled. Since the car was stolen, they wouldn't pay anything to the other drivers either. All I heard was from the wrecker company that had my totaled out Jeep was that I owed $750.00 for towing + storage. I told them to just keep it. And then the kid that stole it was only charged with "unauthorized use of a vehicle", and walked off Scott free. I was out 10K + all I got out of the deal was T.S., Elliot. Yeah, there's something definitely wrong with this whole picture. And you're right about a lot of the "poor folks" not having any insurance. Another AR member was telling about how a wetback hit him + totaled out his truck. The illegal had no license, no insurance, 3 times over the drunk limit + they just let him go on personal recognizance. He didn't have any money, so there was no profit to be made. If it was me, I'd be under the jail + most likely lose everything I own. Yes, sir, it's a racket.

Norman, I hope you didn't pay that bill. You didn't owe it. Neither did your insurance company by the way.

I represent insurance companies for a living, so I'm ready to get flamed by a lot of you, but back to life insurance.

A life insurance policy is a hedge. You are not betting against yourself, you are just insuring against the worst possible scenario. No different than an oil company selling or buying futures on oil to dampen market fluctuations.

Lavaca, no, I didn't pay it, nor did I see much point in driving to Bastrop to pick up a totaled out vehicle that wouldn't even part out for much money. The wrecker company had also refused to send me any pictures of the vehicle so I could see the extent of the damage. In retrospect, hindsight being 20/20, it might have behooved me to take a day off work + drive the distance to Bastrop + see if it was even worth my while. I am curious however on how one could legally pick up the vehicle without paying the wrecker fee if they chose not to release it. Let's just say that at that point I was just so disgusted with the entire situation that I just let them keep it to deal with. That might not have been the best decision, but appeared to be at the time.

Yeah, it is like my guaranteed single premium life insurance policy. When I reached 65 I got a letter saying low interests rates were such that my paid up whole life policy was now forced to increase premiums 5 fold to maintain my insurance. Now that interest rates are back up, do you think I got a letter saying the premiums were going back down? Not a chance. Wouldn't want to play poker with them.

Standard-straight shifts are in two of my vehicles.
They are considered by law enf as unofficial theft prevention devices...


The gang-bangers can't drive them..............

It’s a racket, no doubt.

Whole life is a scam as it’s sold as an “investment”. Ripoff

When my kids were young, I bought a term policy in case something happened to me and not to leave my family in trouble. I do believe in that.

As hard headed as I am, I finally convinced myself to drop Allstate after a 27+ years. Terrible service and a rejected claim that still boils my blood.

All said and done I saved thousands of dollars

I'm with you on that one, Jason. I had a life policy when my kids were little, but now that they're grown, I got rid of it; just more money down the drain. Besides, they'll make out just fine on my estate. Not to mention that they have their own businesses + are doing better financially than I am.

Insurance companies like most business are run by MBA's. One of the things that help insurance companies is that people are lazy and don't like to change so they offer lower rates for new customers and slowly increase rates every year. I found this out many years ago when I was with Allstate. What you can do to counter this is to shop for insurance. I watch my insurance and every 5 or so years I go out and get new quotes from other companies. 90% of the time the quotes will be significantly lower the current insurance price for the same coverage. The companies have found that most people will not shop for new insurance so they have them on the hook and just keep raising the rates. I end up switching insurance every 5 or so years because of this, its not that hard just takes a little work. I have seen as much as 50% lower rates when I switch.

The last two posts were fantastic!

I bought a motorhome a month back. Allstate quoted we $2,100. The company I bought the motorhome said it was high. I called Progressive and the quoted me $777.

Needless to say I switched my wife’s Suv and my other trucks.

I had a high school economics teacher whose fundamental lesson was that self-interest is and should be the driver of all economic decisions.

His prime example involved advice on life insurance.

He told all of his students not to buy it as it only benefited survivors and provided no benefit to the insured!

We said, "What about your wife and kids!?"

He said, "I'll be dead, and they'll be on their own! Let them take care of themselves. I have better things to spend my money on while I'm alive!"

Mike, along those same lines; I used to work with a guy who thought that Christmas was the best time to buy a present for himself, not to mention that he got into a big argument with his wife about getting his kid a present that was from Santa Claus. He was adamant that the kid knew that the gift came from him and not some fantasy character. He ended up dying alone too, BTW, with no one to mourn his passing. Maybe he didn't care, but we'll never know.

Randy,

Are you trying to tell me that Santa Clause is not real!!!

Hip

Like I always told the kids; you don't have to believe in Santa Claus, that's your right. Just remember that when you do, he'll stop bringing you presents.