Erie Insurance Continued

Today, I received a response to my letter I sent them at the end of June. In my first letter to them, I addressed the three incidents, stating clearly I was only at fault for two incidents, not three accidents and they never paid out on the third incident(which was December 2008 and my fault). To be clear, in case you are not, the first incident in January 2007 was not my fault, the latter two incidents in 2008 were my fault but Erie never paid anything on the last one because I closed it out. I also addressed the fact that the same day I received their notice for dropping my auto insurance, they decided to renew my home renters insurance. I thought it was rather insulting that they renew my home rental insurance and advised them so.

Erie's response to me in the letter I received today was basically they would not renew my auto policy (for some reason they thought I wanted them to reconsider their decision, which was never my intent. I only wanted to express my point of view and I never asked them to reconsider their decision). This is also where becoming an informed consumer comes in handy. Erie advised me that they had not dropped me last year because Ohio law dictates the policy can only be reviewed every two years (and since my policy started in 2002, they could not drop me). They also advised me that they compared my claims to other policyholders, meaning that if someone has 0 claims vs. someone like me, then they will take that into account. Of course, the first five years with them, I did have a perfectly clean record, which they did not seem to care about or take into account. Erie also noted that my claim frequency was high, meaning that I had too many claims in three years. This is not entirely accurate as the first claim was January 2007, which would have been 3 1/2 years ago.

Erie did not choose to address my second issue with them, which was about the home rental insurance, which I asked them to discontinue. I found their response letter to be rather insincere and unoriginal. I will say they did address my concern about why they didn't drop me last year, I must give them credit for that. I have written them another letter which states the following:

"My complaint with your response letter is that you completely misinterpreted my letter to your company. Since reading comprehension seems to be a problem for you, then let me explain. Nowhere in my original letter did I ask your company to reconsider renewing my policy, nor did I ever express disappointment in your decision. The intent of my letter was to explain my position to you, since your original letter was quite vague and impersonal. I already accepted you were not going to renew my policy." I then address the home rental policy again and ask they cancel it, since Erie never addressed that portion in their response letter.

I guess my point of this is to never be afraid to be assertive and do not let these companies take advantage of you. These companies do not appreciate loyalty, nor do they appreciate the face behind the customer. It is the consumer's responsibility to be informed and to care about where he/she puts his/her money. Ask yourself, why would I want to support a company that only cares about the dollars and cents (let's face it they are in it for the money) and does not listen to the customer? If you want any more proof than this, then go back to the generic "Dear Policyholder", ask yourself how does that make you feel? We are all more than just policyholders!

Again, my rant is not to discredit Erie completely, I had some decent years with them and I will move on with my life. Perhaps, Erie will survive, then again they may not. However I cannot recommend them, especially if you have younger drivers or are a higher risk driver, even if you are not high risk, would you want to take a chance that you may a bad year or two? I left Erie with this final paragraph in my letter, "I understand this was a mere financial decision on your part, however how you treat people is a reflection of your company's character. If this is how you decide to treat people, then you must accept the consequences of your actions because every action has a consequence and people never forget how you treat them."
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The End