Complaint / Review
State Farm Insurancefarm.com
State Farm Insurance, State Farm Insurance Companies Heartless Company

This is not so much a consumer complaints as it is a cold-blooded-insurance-company report. I let my auto insurance lapse (G43 9788-B05-43E) because of terrible financial troubles beyond my control. When I went into the agent's office to make good on the premium this week and pay the past due amount I was told the policy was canceled for being over 60 days and would not be renewed.

The underwriting department would not budge, even though they would have received two months premium for free (the time they were not at risk), even though my driving record is spotless, and even though I have been with the company for over ten years. They would gladly write me a new policy, though—for about three times what I was paying.

For the life of me I cannot fathom why it's 60 days in the first place, instead of the normal 90 days like other companies in the real world. Well, I can think of one reason: maybe the government passed a law that says they cannot renew a policy after 60 days, but then who on earth would lobby for such a law but the insurance companies themselves? Certainly no citizens' rights group, that's for sure, and not any public official who held the public's interest first and foremost in his/her mind...

Now it is true that they have reinstated me in times past, and had they advised me at one of those times that the cutoff target is 60 days I would have borrowed the money for the two days I needed to make the deadline, since by then I knew the money was coming in. But no agent ever gave me any advice... Just took the money.

So we are back to the basic bureaucratic cold bloodness for which insurance companies have been referred to as our own home-grown Evil Empire, and State Farm Insurance Companies have shown here that they are members in "good" standing of that Empire, all their PR stuff and community involvement not withstanding. Don't ask the ones they donated money to and then boasted about it on their website. Ask a policy holder. Excuse me, former policy holder jettisoned against his will for being the victim of 9/11 and the economic aftermath of that crisis, not to mention the weak economy on top of all that.

And that is the ultimate example of cold bloodness: when a national tragedy and the suffering that it causes down the line isn't factored into business decisions affecting people's lives.

And that is why I say that State Farm Insurance Companies have no heart.