The trick to choosing the right Direct Auto insurance provider is to be open-minded about your options. Otherwise, you could just go for a name you recognize just direct auto insurance and ignore the rest. You need to keep in mind that every company, small or large, has their strengths and weaknesses. What really matters is your opinion at the end. You need to gather sufficient information to form an opinion though and below tips will help you assess the choices.
1. Read through J.D. Power Consumer Satisfaction Ratings
J.D. Power and Associates publishes customer satisfaction studies every year. You can read the 2014 US Direct Auto Insurance Industry Study here. This and similar other studies carried out by independent experts and websites can be very helpful to read. They rank Direct Auto Insurance companies according to data they receive from policyholders and come up with an easy to understand index.
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Tips for Choosing Best Auto Insurance Companies |
2. Check Your State’s Department of Direct Auto Insurance Website
These websites are great and reliable source of information. They readily make the complaint ratios for each Direct Auto Insurance company that is licensed in the state. They publish the ratio that tells you how many complaints a Direct Auto Insurance company has received for each 1,000 claims made. This is a more reliable data as you are looking at how well they have done across the state. Don’t forget to check state attorney general’s website for any regulatory actions taken against a particular insurer.
3. Shop Around
You can find out a lot about each provider by searching a little today. However, there are too many Direct Auto Insurance companies to go through and therefore, you could bring the number to manageable few Direct Auto Insurance companies by shopping around for their prices first. You need to make sure that your choice will be within your budget. No good finding the perfect insurer and realizing that it is too expensive for you.
You can quickly get a few quotes using comparison websites. Once you have the quotes you can afford and the coverage you are happy with you have a list of direct auto insurance companies to look deeper. This approach works pretty well for people who want cheap auto insurance as well as finding the ideal provider. If you have no money concerns you will have a few more choices.
4. Try to Find Reviews from Professionals like Lawyers
They should know because they always deal with direct auto insurance companies that are not willing to pay unless they are forced to do so. The last thing you want following a claim is to go to war with your insurer. That is why reviews like this one can be a real help. Alternatively, you can check for news stories that are covering the court battles between insurers and their policyholders.
5. Ask Around
Nothing is better that real experience people had with a particular provider. If your friends, extended family members and colleagues can vouch for their insurers it is a good sign. Nonetheless, you should ask them why they think their insurers are good. Sometimes, people may feel comfortable with their insurers because they have been with the direct auto insurance company for a long time. But they may not actually have a real experience where the direct auto insurance company came through for them.
6. Check Financial Stability of Auto Insurers
Every state runs an Insurance Safety Net program that collects funds to pay for the claims if any of the insurers in the state goes bankrupt. However, it would be hugely stressful if your insurer went bankrupt just as you submitted a big claim. Even though this is a low change you can confirm the stability of insurers online. Standard & Poor’s and A.M. Best are the two companies which evaluate the financial health of insurers and publish their findings. They try to estimate the ability of each direct auto insurance company meeting their obligations. You should keep in mind that they may not assess smaller direct auto insurance companies as they only look at the ones above certain size.
7. Check for Online Reviews
There are many online communities and websites that offer reviews about almost anything today. You could search for reviews on the direct auto insurance companies you are considering quickly. Mind that there may be one or two bad reviews about every company on earth. Someone somewhere wouldn’t like them. You need to look at the ratio of glowing reviews to bad reviews.
8. Judge them by their Coverage
Finally, you need to make sure that the policy you arrange has good coverage. Considerate and confident direct auto insurance companies try to squeeze as much coverage as they can into their policy packages. Their policies will shine in a good comparison with alternative options from other providers. On the other hand, some direct auto insurance companies may have too many conditions you need to be aware of in a policy. Those direct auto insurance companies may be cheaper but only good if you know what you are buying and can meet all the conditions.
9. Ask an Independent Car Insurance Broker
If you have/know a broker already you should ask his/her opinion. They should know which companies are safe, quick in paying the claims and have a great customer service. If you are confused after doing your own searches you can always talk to a broker. But make sure that you are talking to a licensed and independent broker rather than an agent who is tied to one company.
10. Ask Auto Body Shops
You see that many auto body shops are complaining about how little they are paid for repairs and how difficult it is to do a good job with those prices. You can actually ask them if they are having a problem with a particular company asking them to carry out the repairs as cheaply as possible. You want to avoid such direct auto insurance companies that will care less about how good your automobile is repaired but care more about their bottom line.
Also, you should make sure that your policy has every cover you need. A comprehensive policy is likely to include almost everything you can think of and some more. And some basic polices may require you to buy several additional covers that comes with additional premium. When you total them up you may realize a policy that was cheaper earlier is much more expensive now.