These Are Your Worst Car Insurance Stories

Good customer experiences with car insurance companies are becoming rarer and rarer, even as drivers are paying through the nose for coverage. We asked our readers earlier this week for their worst car insurance stories, and I have to admit a few of the responses left my jaw on the floor. There were brokers who viewed themselves as petty tyrants and an insurer who told a mom that her son was killed in a car crash despite him still being alive at the hospital. Without further ado, here are the most frustrating tales shared:

My insurance company story actually involves getting insurance on my motorcycle. When I turned 16 in 1969, I bought and insured a 50 CC Honda. When I retired I decided that I would relive the dream. I bought and restored a 1965 C 100 (50 CC) and approached the same company with whom I had conducted business for over 50 years. No way would they insure such an old bike. Flat out – no way. I had to go to an “insurance broker.” The charge: $350/year, but only public liability & public damage coverage. No collision, no fire + theft, no nothing! Thanks. The following year after having no contact with the broker, no claims, nothing, they raised my premium to $500 / year, take it or leave it. I left it and sold the bike. To top it off, I then restored a 1982 Honda Passport, essentially the exact same bike as the 1965 C100 and my regular insurance company was quite ready to insure this much newer (40-year-old) for $280 / year with PL, PD, fire, theft, collision, asteroid impact, continental drift upset, etc, etc, etc. Go figure.

Submitted by: justtoombs

I had a rental car. Ran over some debris. No injuries. Just $1,400 property damage with $1,000 deductible. I paid my deductible. USAA REFUSED to pay the balance of $400. USAA claims adjuster told the car repair facility that they knew they owed the money, but they refused to pay ” . . . because they could.”

Rather than sue, I change insurers and never miss a chance to badmouth USAA.

Submitted by: Patrick Hannon

I’m from one EU country and now temporarily working/living in another EU country (let’s say, the equivalent of being from Florida and now working/living in Ohio). I’ve had a valid driver’s license for over 25 years, and my wife has too. We both had car insurance back home on several cars for a long time with no claims or penalties. But now that we’re here, even though it’s still in the EU, they totally ignore our driving experience and treat us like we’re fresh 18-year-olds who just got our licenses with 0 experience! We have to jump through hoops just to get our licenses recognized here, and we don’t want to deal with the hassle, costs, and time it would take to replace them with this country’s ones (because – why?). So, our first annual insurance premium ended up being like 6 or 7 times more expensive than it should’ve been if they actually recognized our experience. It’s just frustrating having to deal with this type of discrimination, and a confirmation insurance is just one big scam anywhere you go!

Submitted by: GentleGiant

I got hit by a car riding a bike in Chicago and I was deemed not at fault (in bike line and car turned right, cutting me off). Concussion, broken bike etc. State Farm insurance completely ignored me for 3 months. I called 100 times, every number possible etc. they finally pick up so I hosed them for 6k on property damage, maybe not so bad after all, but 3 months of no contact was criminal. I used my bike to make money too.

Submitted by: NoPractice

Currently going through it. Was hit after making a left in California, I was 80 percent into the other street and around the blind corner came a speeding BMW 7 series with blacked out windshield. Hits me all the way in back on the rear fender/wheel. Not even my door. Causes $7,500 damage to me and $32,000 to himself. But since I’m making the left through his lane, I get stuck with the at fault. His car wasn’t badly damaged, it was some broken plastic, but it’s BMW 7, brand new. He wasn’t remotely injured. No airbags. Originally my insurance said we all settled at me 70 percent, him 30 percent. My coverage would have covered that, didn’t have high coverage at the time. Then, 6 months later, he claims he’s injured, but not pursuing money for that, but I get another point. Another 6 months later, I find out they lowered him to 20 percent at fault. Now I am $750 short. I have no money. Can’t pay rent/food. But for the past two years keep upping the amount I owe them. Now they’re claiming I owe them $7,500. My insurance has told them a dozen times there’s no more money. But they call me and my family and send letters consistently. My insurance went from $149 a month to $550, now it’s down to $440 and I have much higher coverages. But I’m pretty scared of this. I work 9-10 hours a day, 6 days a week and am struggling to support my fam. I hope they stop.

Submitted by: ItWorkedIFinallyLoggedIn

I’ve been pretty lucky. My worst experience, or at least the strangest, was going to the insurance agent to swap from my AMC Eagle to my 98 CVPI, an objectively safer car. My insurance rate went up because of the weight of the Crown Victoria.

Submitted by: Drg84

I persuaded my parents to leave the emu outfit when I first started driving because the premium for my car went from $181/yr when it was just an additional car to $593/yr after I was added to the policy to $823/yr the year after that. I had no tickets and no claims, but hey, teenage driver, let’s squeeze ’em, right? To put it in perspective, that’s 1979/80/81.

At age 21, I thought I’d look into getting my own policy. A rep at a local Allstate office quoted me a premium that was more than I made in a year, and when I protested that that was ridiculous, he smirked and said, “You need to get another job, then.”

Then, when I bought my first new car in 1986, our then-insurance company waited until after I’d made the purchase to inform me that they were declining coverage because one of my sisters had backed Mom’s Dart into a parked car the year before. I was the only driver in the house who could drive stick (my new car was a 5-speed). They only agreed to insure my car if I signed and returned a 30th-generation copy of a typewritten form releasing them from liability if anyone else in the house drove my car.

Submitted by: Paul Balze

Last month, my wife got side-swiped in her 2018 Mazda3 by a 4WD Landcruiser. He was changing lanes from the right-hand lane and simply didn’t see her in his lifted truck.

Anyway, we reported it to our insurer (RAC in Western Australia) and they took all our details etc. and said from our story he’s at fault and that our excess won’t be payable as a result. He then tried to claim that my wife was also changing lanes and that it’s a 50/50 fault. Luckily my wife took a photo of the position that the cars ended up in even before she got out of the car and then took a bunch more so that shot his story down straight away.

RAC still sent us a 10-page &*$#% NON-WRITABLE .PDF file to fill in. I had to open it in MS Word to be able to fill it in because not everyone has a printer/scanner. It took me over an %$#$@% hour because of course Word mucked up all the formatting. When I returned it by email, I added a very cross comment about this…

Biggest hassle overall was that car repairers here are still picking up the backlog from all the summer crashes over Christmas/New Year so it took 3 weeks to get it booked in. Luckily, apart from a deep, long dent along the right-hand side, the car was drivable. We got it back last Friday looking as shiny new as ever. 🙂

Yeah ok… Not exactly overwhelmingly bad. In fact the RAC are pretty great at Insurance and I have my House & Contents Insurance with them as well. Premiums are ok-ish (could always be cheaper…) but their service is top level actually.

Submitted by: Sean Ellery

When I first started driving, I went with the insurance broker my family had used for years – a little mom-and-pop organization where most transactions were handled either in person or over the phone followed up with a letter in the mail a few days later. And if your payment was due and they hadn’t received a check, then a woman named Charlotte would call you with a polite reminder.

Maybe I was naive, but that’s how I thought insurance companies worked.

Then I moved out of state to Delaware in 1990.

I kept the same insurance company, but obviously, I had to choose a new broker; I selected a broker only a few miles from my apartment so I could easily drop off a payment.

Everything was fine for the first few months, then for some reason, I forgot to drop off my payment. One day, I get a cancellation letter in the mail, with angry red letters on the outside of the envelope. I called the broker the next morning and told them I would stop by with a check later that morning.

I got to the insurance broker’s office and asked to speak to the person handling my account, guy was named Robb, IIRC.

I apologized to Robb and pulled out my checkbook; Robb reminded me to include the $12 late fee with my payment. Grrrrr. Fine, whatever.

After our business was concluded, I casually mentioned to Robb, “I’m used to my old insurance company; they would call me when a payment was due.”

Robb sighed and snarkily replied, “Do you really need a babysitter?”

I hada  new broker before the next payment was due.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

I have two, both from Geico.

1) March 2016

TLDR: I get hit by a car when trying to render aid to a previous accident caused by a drunk driver, but it then becomes a chain-reaction accident involving six cars (mine included) and my body. As I’m in college and very lucky, I was still on my mom’s car insurance policy – The next day, Geico calls my Mom, the main policyholder, while I am on the operating table and … APOLOGIZES FOR THE LOSS OF HER SON.

(While we hate Geico for other reasons in this instance, that was a big one – and it became a 4 year legal process)

2) Dec 2016

I’ve graduated from college, moved back home, and am recovering from my injuries from getting hit by a car (See above) 9 months earlier. I turn left on a green arrow and I am t boned by a work truck pulling a trailer. which runs a stale red light Turns out both I and the red light runner are insured by Geico. Because of my previous accident, the foreshadowing of how long the legal process of proving blame, I had made the decision to buy a dashcam – BUT Geico’s online system wasn’t capable of uploading videos and won’t accept a link to a video on YouTube/Google Drive. It’s also 2016 and I no longer have a CD Burner to mail it in to them. I end up having to buy a new USB drive to mail it into them. They finally place blame on the redlight runner … Then the real craziness begins.

After moving home, i was gifted my mom’s hand-me-down 2014 Ford Edge with only 4000 miles on it. At the time of the accident, it had nearly 10K miles on it. While I was t boned, the side airbags did not deploy, and Geico decided to repair the vehicle. It, of course, ended up having frame/structural damage and in order to repair it, they had to remove the entirety of the corner of the car. From wheel well all the way to D pillar. The repairs took 4 months, and the day we got it back, I traded it in for something else.

Submitted by: Andrew Jimenez