Progressive Insurance -- how can they do this??

[MushyMushy]

I'll try to make this short as possible, I promise.

We've had our car insurance through Progressive since 2001. Payments come out automatically, always on time, every month. Somehow within the last three years after we bought our house, they put our address in the system incorrectly (one number off, as in ours is 101 and they had it as 201). So someone down the street has been getting our ID cards every six months. I have no idea why we didn't catch this! Now that I've looked at it, it's as clear as day, but between my husband and me, we honestly didn't see the mistake! Talk about feeling dumb. Everything else like billing is done online. I could never figure out why we were never getting our ID cards, so we would just order them online, no harm no foul (so we thought).

I went to get proof of insurance today and the website wouldn't let me do it, so I had to call. Good thing I did! The CS agent told me that the neighbor has called them NUMEROUS times about the incorrect address. Not only that, but our NEIGHBOR, in HER NAME, cancelled our policy, so we were no longer up for renewal. I got it all straightened out and taken care of, thankfully, before we were without insurance. But how on earth can they let someone else cancel our policy when it's being paid every single month for 9 years?

Oh, and the kicker? The neighbor is our town's district attorney! We're going to have words with her. We get her mail all the time and walk it down the street to her house. Never again.

 

[ajk912]

That's horrible, I can't believe she did that. Appalling!!!! AND WHY did Progessive let that happen?

Waiting with popcorn for the inevitable "Devil's advocate" DISer who is going to jump in defending your neighbor for cancelling your auto policy.

 

[MushyMushy]

That's horrible, I can't believe she did that. Appalling!!!! AND WHY did Progessive let that happen?

Waiting with popcorn for the inevitable "Devil's advocate" DISer who is going to jump in defending your neighbor for cancelling your auto policy.

Oh I know. Or how stupid and HORRID we are for not noticing the incorrect address. Stupid, yes, but I won't buy being horrible.

The CS rep was pretty appalled by it too! She went to talk to her manager and came back and apologized. She had no idea how the neighbor could have done this and did a double take at the notes when she saw who cancelled. I'm just glad we found out now instead of going without insurance.

 

[ajk912]

Oh I know. Or how stupid and HORRID we are for not noticing the incorrect address. Stupid, yes, but I won't buy being horrible.

The CS rep was pretty appalled by it too! She went to talk to her manager and came back and apologized. She had no idea how the neighbor could have done this and did a double take at the notes when she saw who cancelled. I'm just glad we found out now instead of going without insurance.

Just to clarify I wasn't calling you horrible, I was calling your neighbor horrible for cancelling your auto insurance. You made a simple mistake that any one of us could have made. Glad it's fixed though!

 

[golfgal]

WOW!!! If a spouse isn't listed on a policy THEY can't make any changes to that policy let alone some neighbor down the street

I am glad you got it straightened out.

 

[bumbershoot]

We get her mail all the time and walk it down the street to her house. Never again.

Ugh.

What's weird is that the rep didn't notice the address oddity.

I know that on my Allstate (and previously State Farm and before that Geico) car insurance forms, there's the address where the car is garaged AND the address where they bill things. Right now, we're getting MIL's insurance mail b/c she wasn't getting even half of what she was supposed to get. So they have her car-garage address (also her renter's insurance address), and her send-mail-to address.

You'd think the rep could have noticed that your garage address was 101 while your mailing address was 201, and go from there...

She went to talk to her manager and came back and apologized. She had no idea how the neighbor could have done this and did a double take at the notes when she saw who cancelled.

I hope the manager takes it up with the rep that did it!



I'm still stunned by the neighbor who KNOWS YOU and still did this!

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I can't believe she did that either. Just be careful about her mail.

Return to sender, but don't hold it.

I wonder if you should call her boss as driving without any insurance is illegal and essentially her act caused you to break the law (or almost break the law).

 

[tvguy]

Waiting with popcorn for the inevitable "Devil's advocate" DISer who is going to jump in defending your neighbor for cancelling your auto policy.

Here I am.
A local realtor has a cell phone number 1 digit off from my wife's.
This real estate agent keeps putting the WRONG phone number (my wife's) on her flyers.
I e-mailed her. I got a snooty response that "she was too busy to double check the flyers". No "I'm sorry, I double check my flyers in the future".
I now every time we get a wrong number, we ask the caller to read us the number they called , and ask what they are reading it from. If it is from one of her flyers, and it is our number, we point out that the number there is our number, and that we have repeatedly asked the agent to be more careful and put the correct number on her flyers, but she refuses, and that they might want to find a more competent real estate agent.

I think that's more than fair.

 

[MushyMushy]

Yeah, we don't *know* her, know her, but we see her 3-4 times a year at another neighbor's parties. You don't think at any point in the past few years she could have mentioned this to us?

At any rate, I doubt I'll be voting for her in the future.

 

[AKL_Megs]

So wait, for NINE years your neighbor has been getting you Progressive mail, and in NINE years she couldn't tell you that fact? Even when you brought over HER mail, she couldn't mention, "Oh, we have been getting certain pieces of YOUR MAIL for NINE YEARS!"

The clincher is not even asking you, "Do you happen to have Progressive insurance, we keep getting letters from them addressed to you but at our address. Is this information of any importance to you?"

No. She just cancelled the policy, which I don't even know HOW is possible.

I'd be mad at your neighbor, yes, but I would REALLY want a MAJOR explanation from Progressive.

 

[okeydokey]

I can understand that your neighbor was frustrated after telling the insurance company repeatedly for 9 years that they had the address wrong. I would be beyond frustrated. However, to solve the problem, I would have let you know so that you as the insured could have taken care of it.

Honestly, what is wrong with a company that gets requests every few months for 9 years to change an address and still doesn't?

 

[MushyMushy]

Here I am.
A local realtor has a cell phone number 1 digit off from my wife's.
This real estate agent keeps putting the WRONG phone number (my wife's) on her flyers.
I e-mailed her. I got a snooty response that "she was too busy to double check the flyers". No "I'm sorry, I double check my flyers in the future".
I now every time we get a wrong number, we ask the caller to read us the number they called , and ask what they are reading it from. If it is from one of her flyers, and it is our number, we point out that the number there is our number, and that we have repeatedly asked the agent to be more careful and put the correct number on her flyers, but she refuses, and that they might want to find a more competent real estate agent.

I think that's more than fair.

Now see, maybe I'm just a sap. But we had an insurance agency who had a similar mix up with our home phone -- people would leave messages on our machine on a regular basis. If at all possible, we'd call these people back to tell them they got the wrong number, especially if they were calling to report an accident or whatnot.

It wasn't as bad as the number being on flyers though. Her attitude would have gotten to me too. But this is a neighbor we see socially once in a while and have been friendly with!

 

[MushyMushy]

No, we've been their customer for 9 years and only lived in this house for 3. So it's been sometime in the last 3 years that the address has been wrong.

But still. Three years is a pretty long time!

 

[Kath2003]

Wow

Here, no one will even TALK to you unless YOU are the account holder. It even gets to the point when it's ridiculous here - we bought some furniture recently and the company called the number I gave them and refused to talk to my partner AT ALL - all they wanted was to confirm the delivery date

I would be having some serious words with both your neighbour and your insurance provider. I don't know how it works there but here it's illegal to drive a car without insurance. I'd be expecting a VERY low insurance premium on that car this year as a result of this...

 

[L107ANGEL]

Mushy did you communicate with Progressive through emails all this time?

 

[wdwfan16]

I can't believe the neighbor did not just walk the mail down to you. I find it even harder to believe that the neighbor had the nerve to cancel your insurance and that the insurance company let them!! Then to find out the neighbor who did this is a distict attorney is just icing on the cake!

 

[Bethenny]

I wonder if this falls under mail fraud?

 

[Chesire]

You are not alone I fear.
When my husband and I first got married, we had AAA insurance (same company as his mother). About 6 months into our marriage, my MIL called in an canceled me from our policy (which was completely separate from hers). We didn't find out about it until it was renewal time.
We switched to Allstate!

 

[rigs32]

Remember that you don't know what exactly was said by the neighbor to the CS rep. The words used may not have specifically been to cancel the policy but more along the lines of "Do whatever you need to in order for me to not receive these mailings" and it resulted in the CS rep keying in a policy cancellation.

 

[Pakey]

Yesterday I called Progressive to make a payment for my son's car insurance while he's in the hospital and I wasn't even allowed to do that (I had his account number but I didn't have the pertinent information/super secret security code). I had to have him call and authorize them to take payment information from me. I'm thinking that the neighbor called to complain and someone at Progressive made an error in cancelling it.