My insurance is due next week so I decided to shop around and see what I could be saving. About half way through the phone quote with Liberty Mutual insurance, their salesman named James askes me, "How many vehicles do you have?". To me, this is a loaded question and not at all specific enough to just answer with a number, so I ask him, "How many vehicles do I want to insure?". He gets a little smirk in his voice when he responds back with a smartass answer of, "What's the difference?'. So I respond back with about 2 minutes of babbling about," Well I have about 9 vehicles, some are street legal, some not. Some have four wheels and some two, even a couple with three. Some are insured with other companies, a couple I'd like to get new insurance on... blah blah. So what were you saying again?" He get's my point and finally butts in to say, " the ones you'd like to insure with us." So it goes on for a minute status quo until he gets to the point of what modifications have you done to the vehicles. As soon as I say it's lifted, he rudely cuts me off and says, " Well we wont cover that one, what is......" I didn't hear the rest because I hung up on him. Both my Jeeps and my F250 are lifted. As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't see any future between me and a company that anal regardless of whether I had lifted vehicles or not. Just passing on a little experience... maybe it will save some of you guys and gals some time down the road.

 

Good info. Some auto insurers have a hands off policy regarding modified vehicles, others like State Farm are fine with it.

If Liberty is blowing smoke at your hit up Jeff, he is a sponsor on this site and understands modified vehicles.

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22261

 

I have my insurance Through Progressive, they are fine with Modifications, with my policy I get to 1k of Modifications for free with my coverage, since i don't have extreme mods on my Rig that is fine for now, but if I add more stuff i can increase my Mod budget that is insured but it will cost a little more per month. All they stated was to keep the receipts of everything u put on the Jeep

 

Spent a week getting quotes and going over the details of a bundeled policy with Ameriprise (three vehicles and home) and then I get mail where they are asking for additional information. Send all that in then they want specifics about the modifications to the jeep and pictures. Send that and then call them. The folks there say that they need to remove the jeep from the policy due to the suspension mods so I told them to cancell the pending policy. I guess I'm shopping again.

 

I'm in the collision repair business and I have more to say about insurance companies than I care to type about. The ONLY insurance company I will use is AAA. State Farm would be my next choice if AAA wouldn't cover me. The worst bottom feeders are Progressive with Geico coming in a close second.

I'm actually at the point that I just hate the collision repair industry altogether. Those of us that are fixing your vehicles have zero say anymore in how it's done, and the most aggressive cost cutters won't even pay you to come close to doing it right. Progressive for example only pays their contract shops (that is anyone they recommend) to blend one panel. And if you take the blend, you don't get paid to tint the color. So if I replace a door on a silver Jeep, I have to blend the quarter panel and butt match the fender and no time to tint the color. I get robbed out of money and you get robbed from getting your vehicle fixed the way it should and Progressive takes that money and gives it to Flo.

The main problem is they treat all cars and all colors the same. One car you may not need to blen anything, on another color you may need to paint a whole side but they'll never pay for it.

And don't get me started on aftermarket sheetmetal...

But anyway, AAA is the only company left that works with us in a reasonable manner.

Rant off

 

I bet your favorite days are when a new adjuster from Progressive, Geico, Farmers, etc walks in, and tells you how to repair a car. He prints out his "version" of the estimate that includes aftermarket and LKQ parts from twenty different suppliers and grossly under-estimated repair times for any sheet metal work. Maybe you repair the car his way, or maybe you don't, to save your reputation. Either way, if the customer is unhappy, the adjuster is going to tell them to contact YOU. I feel bad for you guys who take the time to do things right. I was an adjuster once, very early in my career, and I found that I sided mostly with the body shops. It got me in trouble a number of times, but you know what? The claims closed quicker, the customers were happier, and the guys at the body shop were a LOT easier to work with. There were some that tried to take advantage, but a lot of the shops were mostly guys trying to make a buck by doing good work. I did that for 2 years and then I moved on.


Anyway, back to the OP's topic. I've had really good luck with State Farm. REALLY good luck. Just keep calling around and getting quotes, remain polite. There are no loaded questions, because you should be answering truthfully so that your ass is protected when you need it most. Most people don't understand this, but they can refuse to cover an accident or revoke your policy and/or charge you BACK premiums for misrepresenting yourself, your vehicle, or what you've done to the vehicle. Insurers ask questions to appropriately gauge their risk. After all, it's a business transaction...

 

Those fights always come and go. Our current battle is with a noob Gieco adjuster. He's tried to get us to repair bumpers with baseball sized holes in them for 1.5 hours. He's even attempted to adjust our rates, which are already on the lower than average cost side. He tries like hell to treat us like a contract shop. We don't contract with them because we would lose money on every job.

What drives me nuts though is my estimator will cave, and actually ask us to do the work as it is on the estimate because he can't get paid to do it right. Look, make whatever concessions you want to the insurance companies, but don't expect me to hack out this job, or perform color match miracles. (I recently had to butt match a 3 stage red pearl that was so far off, I spent 10 hours making a custom bench mix color for both the base AND pearl costs. I got .5 for tint color on that one)



I painted the quarter panel on the right of that photo. Color is butt matched to the trunk. If we would have blended everything like we should have, I could have probably saved 8 hours of tinting time. But it's cheaper to screw me from both ends.



3 stage pearl red, the hardest color to match.

 

Cut rate insurance on a $60k car. Kinda like discount bungee jumping or laser eye surgery on sale at the mall.

I'm no body and/or paint man, but that looks like you did a nice job on that Lexus.

 

Thanks. I was very proud of it. I don't think any painter I've met would have even attempted to custom bench mix a three stage pearl red.

As for the Lexus, it was a customer pay. Guess the guy who owns this car let his hottie GF drive it and she backed into something, messed up the bumper and the quarter panel. My estimator was sympathetic to the hot girl stranger who was "forced" to pay for it and wrote the estimate way short, and refused to go back and ask her for the money he should have asked for up front. The body man got hosed too. Bumper was cracked in three places and he got an hour to fix it.

 

No problems with Liberty mutual here