unitrin direct auto insurance

unitrin direct auto insurance

first off, i'm extremely nice to customer service reps sales people over the phone. being nice and not showing signs of frustration are the best ways to get what you want, screaming and yelling just makes THEM angry and less likely to be helpful. i spent all day on the phone with these guys. the supervisor (joe) i spoke with was really good at making me feel insignificant and small. it was obvious that he didn't want to spend his time arguing with me about the extra $300 i was being charged for a mistake made on there part(apparently your premium goes up $300 if you haven't been covered within 24 hours of starting a new policy with unitrin). this is a long story, so here goes:

at the beginning of july we called unitrin direct and started a new policy with them. we paid them with a balance transfer slip from our master card. these little slips look just like checks and are supposed to be processed like checks. they tried to process it like a credit card. twice. twenty days later my wife gets an email from unitrin saying our policy is void( an EMAIL??? why couldn't they call or send a letter? what if she didn't check her email that day?) anyway, just before checking her email, my wife called allstate and cancelled our auto policy with them. we were without insurance. the next day my wife called unitrin only to find that not only was our policy cancelled, but we owed them $50 because they processed our balance transfer slip incorrectly. my wife became upset and started raising her voice at the lady on the other end of the phone. the lady started yelling back about how we gave them an invalid account and were to pay the $50 promptly or it would reflect badly on our credit report. my wife was so angry she started crying and hung up.

i called them back, spoke with a gentleman whose name i forget, but i got the $50 charge taken away seeing how it was their fault for ringing it up incorrectly. he then transferred me to a woman who double checked all my info on our cancelled policy and made a new one for us. but the premium was $300 more than the one on the policy we just cancelled with them. i spoke to three sales people and customer service reps about this. since we cancelled our policy with allstate the day before and our original one with unitrin was now void they're going to charge me for "a lapse in coverage" after getting nowhere with the sales reps, i spoke with joe the supervisor. not a happy little worker bee and especially not happy that he has to take time out to explain things to a peon like me. i tried to be as nice as possible because i could tell this guy was just waiting for an excuse to haul off and start yelling at me like the woman my wife had spoke to earlier had done. after going in circles about how them processing our payment incorrectly was the whole reason we currently didn't have auto insurance(of course that was our fault somehow)so we shouldn't have to pay the extra $300 they were now trying to stick us with. we were still covered by allstate less than 24 hours ago(even though we thought we were covered by unitrin)"24 hours?", he said...."yes, sir", i replied. "well then your wasting your time with me, we need your allstate insurance info to verify that....you must have given our sales rep the wrong information" but i had explained this to everyone i spoke with, even the sales rep that i started our new policy with....we HAD COVERAGE FROM ALLSTATE LESS THAN 24 HOURS AGO...."it doesn't matter, there was a lapse", is the answer i got from all 3 reps.

i faxed our allstate insurance info to joe the angry supervisor....then i it hit me....we paid more with allstate, but we didn't have to deal with this bureaucrat bull crap. we knew our agent, katie, on a first name basis(who is still our allstate agent for home and life insurance). saving $500 with unitrin on auto insurance sounds nice, but what if these unitrin guys are just as difficult to deal with if we get into a car accident? what if we didn't fill out the right form or they deny coverage because they spelled our last name wrong on our policy?

i called unitrin back to cancel my policy that would go into effect @ 12.01am the next day. a lady named angel answered the phone. i told her charging me $300 for a lapse in coverage less than 24 hours was wrong. this whole thing was there fault to begin with....they have the nerve to charge me for their mistake? "they told you that you had to pay $300....that's not right...we have a free day pass...you're allowed to be uninsured as long as it's less than 24 hours...the people you spoke to were misinformed....i'm sorry. i'll change your premium right now" since we had already paid $1600, they owed me $19. $1581 for full coverage on one car and pl&pd on the other for the whole year. for that price, i'll deal with the bureaucracy....but when the years up....we're gonna try geico. jon Click this link to e-mail the message author: Email User