Car insurance companies have been putting customers through it lately. Ever increasing costs of doing business have caused insurance companies to increase rates or outright make it hard to get covered. Others are taking things a bit further to get more money out of customers. Take Progressive, who added a driver to a man’s insurance who he says doesn’t exist, which also increased his premium.
CBS News reported on the strange situation involving 31-year-old Ed Fan out of Denver, Colorado. Fan told CBS he’s single, lives alone and is the only person that drives his 2019 Jeep Wrangler. Yet his insurance carrier Progressive recently added another, unknown driver to his policy, which he says increased his six-month premium by $312.
“I have no idea” who the supposed new driver was, said Fan. “I am the only driver on my vehicle,” he said.
He repeatedly called and emailed Progressive, trying to get them to remove the charges — and the unknown person — from his auto insurance policy.
“It does appear the burden falls on me to prove this person doesn’t exist and is not related to me or drives my vehicle,” said Fan, who said he was caught off guard by Progressive’s assertions that he had to pay for another licensed driver in his home, driving his Jeep.
“I didn’t even know they could to that,” he said.
Fan isn’t alone. CBS News says online forums have other Progressive customers complaining about the same thing happening to them: despite being the only driver on their policies, Progressive added a random driver, increasing their premium. CBS says one woman wrote that Progressive had added her “ex husband, my brother, my God daughter and son” to her policy despite her not having had contact with any of them for over a year. The company added a $1,700 fee to her policy as a result.
A Reddit post from 2022 detailed another Progressive insurance customer asking for advice after the company added two drivers to their policy, one of which was 16 and drove up their premium $300. One of the replies from a former USAA insurance agent explained that what’s happening is called “driver discovery.” From Reddit:
So what Progressive did is called “Driver discovery” Insurance companies check public records from time to time to see if there are multiple people (of driving age) at an address, and typically they send you a letter stating that since they discovered a potential driver at your address, they may have to add them to your policy, unless you call and explain why you haven’t added them.
Basically, as the New York state insurance broker Bruce Swicker explained to CBS, insurance companies are assuming things until you explain otherwise. “If they are in the household, the assumption is that at some point since they have access to the vehicle that they may very well drive it.” People move or information changes and many often forget to update their insurance. This causes what’s known in the industry as “premium leakage,” which is apparently a huge problem for the industry, costing over $10 billion annually.
As for Fan, it took weeks of back and forth and a complaint filed with Colorado’s insurance regulators, but Progressive finally removed the unknown driver and the premium charge. Fan still had to sign a document saying that he didn’t know the person who they said lived with him. And the company wasn’t exactly forthcoming with how they got the information on this other “driver.” CBS News says the company didn’t say where they got the info from nor did they address other instances of this happening.
…in a statement to CBS News Colorado, Progressive did not specify where their information about a ‘hidden driver’ in Fan’s house came from or why that name was added to his policy. The company did not address other, similar complaints CBS News Colorado shared with the company. Ron Davis, with Progressive Insurance’s public relations division, instead reiterated the companies’ procedures for insurance applicants.
“…We also regularly review information from third-party sources about individuals who possibly live in the household and should be added to active policies,” wrote Davis. “When information is found, we contact the policyholder to verify the information. Identifying potential missing driving-age household members/drivers and working with the customer is important.”
