My Insurance was increased significantly based on a service request notification stemming change in my mailing address. I reside, own my home, pay taxes, and have two vehicles registered in Mississippi. I am working part time in another state and wanted my mail to go to my Bother-in-laws residence near my office there. When progressive got the notification from the post office, they changed my policy to a dual residence policy and changed the garage address of my wife's mini van to what they ASSuMEd was my new residence. I discovered this weeks later when I saw the payment automatic draft increase by a hundred dollars over the normal amount.
I called Progressive to try to get to the bottom of the extra charge. First I was told it was for a change of address fee. I asked who submitted the change of address to them because it was not me I was told the post office had informed them of the change. I explained that I was working sometimes out of state, but I still resided at my same address in Mississippi and asked them to refund the additional charge. I was asked why my wife and I were not living together anymore. What?!? We do live together in the same house most of the time, and why is the state of my marriage and our employment situation any of Progressive's business as long as I am paying my bills and my cars spend their time at the garage address declared in my policy. I asked for the supervisor.
While discussing the situation with her supervisor Roxanne, I was told that the notice from the post office is lawful notification of my residence. And that my failure to properly notify them of an address change is why they set my policy to not renew. Roxanne then told me they would have canceled it immediately, but the state insurance department has told them that is illegal. I explained that I did not notify them of a change in address because I still live in the same address that is in my policy. I had moved like 5 years ago and notified them then giving them reason to trust me to notify them when I move. I asked Roxanne to have Progressive refund me the amount they damaged me by charging me $100.00 per month more and possibly making my policy invalid by incorrectly identifying my wife and one vehicle as residing in the wrong state. I was told that I needed to prove myself to get any consideration. I had to provide a current utility bill from my Mississippi address, which Roxanne accusingly said "should be no problem if I really still live in Mississippi." Implying that I was lying. I was again insulted, because I already had the utility bill in my hand. Now the best part, I have to Fax (or mail) it to them which would take 48 hours to be received, then about 7-10 business days for them to process. Then if they decided they should refund me any money it would at most be the additional 100 dollars they had charged me over what my policy should have been. Any amount they chose to refund was up to them and not subject to negotiations. Now I have to go and find a FAX machine in when they can email me all the crap in the world all the time. I could hardly contain my frustration.
I asked what Roxanne as a person thought about that her company was doing to me another human being. I am just like everyone else struggling to make it through the hard economic times. She said she was a Progressive policy holder also and she would have the same thing happen if she changed her address. Sounded like she avoided my question, but I guess you sell your soul to your company store as the line from the song goes.
I called another insurance company and setup a different policy and then called Progressive back and canceled my policy.
When my wife called back a few minutes later concerned that they were going to also charge us a cancellation fee for terminating our policy Serena assured us there would not be a fee and offered to have their system email us a statement of our effective cancellation and the refunded amount for the unused prepaid insurance.
I guess this should not be too big of a deal I was just really hurt that Progressive has such bad policies and customer service procedures.
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