Progressive Auto Insurance Company Review!

Today, I’m going to talk to you about Progressive’s auto insurance market. Here’s everything you need to know!

They’re one of the really big players in the personal auto insurance arena, that really a lot of you guys have heard of. You’ve heard them. You’ve seen them on videos and on advertisements in other different places. You’ve probably seen them on Facebook, Google, and all kinds of different places. They’re a really big player. They’re one of the top five in the nation when it comes to personal auto insurance, as well as also, they do also do different things like personal umbrellas, homeowners, condos, rental, RV, ATV, boat policies, all kinds of different things that they do, but they’re mostly known for auto insurance.

So, I’m going to tell you a little bit about them. Tell you the pros, maybe a couple of cons, and also just try to help you to really get a good picture of who Progressive is and then why or why not they may be a good fit for you.

Teen Drivers!

A lot of people have teenagers, right? And you can’t let them drive for the years that they’re a teenager, but we also know that whenever a teenager becomes of age to drive, your rates are going to do what? They’re going to go through the roof!

Well, Progressive happens to be one of the best when it comes to teenage drivers. They actually offer some discounts for teenagers, which is hard to believe, right? The way it works is you add your teenage driver and after they’ve been on the policy for a year, Progressive will actually give you a discount for that teenage driver and lower your rate for that teenager.

Another thing that they do is that they will give you a good student discount if your student has at least a B average. A lot of companies will give a discount to good students. Well, they’ll give up to a 10% discount, starting with a B average where some companies it’s going to have to be an A. Now you’re going to have to prove that by giving a copy of their transcript or whatever, probably every semester or maybe every six months or so. But, that’s a small price to pay to keep a discount that’s as rich as possibly 10%.

Home & Auto Discount

What some other discounts that they’ve got that are really great is one of them is home. You know, even if you don’t have your home insurance with Progressive, they may give you a discount for that. Whether you got a home, potentially a condo, sometimes even if you have a mobile home, they will give you a discount for it.

Multi-Car Discount

Another is multi-car discounts. Some insurance companies will do a policy per car, whereas Progressive does them all in one policy and they give you a discount from 10 to 20% per car on that policy when you list all your vehicles. So if you got more than one car, make sure you’re listing them all in the same policy.

Multi-Policy Discount

Another one is going to be multi-policy discounts. Now that may come in a form of a package such as you have both your home and your auto with Progressive, or it may be just that you got your auto and also your ATV policy with them. Progressive will give discounts for those different sorts of things. Some other discounts are paid-in-full, they give a really large discount on paid-in-full. If you will pay the policy in full for six months or a year, they give you a really large discount for that.

Preferred Payment Method Discount

Now there is an automatic draft where they just automatically draft your checking count each and every month for the payments. And also as a bonus, they give you a great deal of flexibility with that program, meaning that you can almost choose any day of the month you want your bill to fall on, regardless of when your policy date is. That’s a huge benefit to you if you’re getting paid like once a month. Maybe you’re on a fixed income or something like that, or maybe you just want to organize your bills at certain times of the month, right?

Paperless Discount

Well, another discount that they give is E-policy. E-policy is where they deliver it electronically either through the mobile app or through your email. I mean, who wants the paper around anyway, so why not just take the discount? It’s not a large discount, but why take the paper? Get the emails. Get the discount.

Loyalty Rewards Program!

A great program that they have is the loyalty rewards program. The loyalty reward are basically the longer you are a client with them, the deeper the discounts that they’re going to give you on your policy. Sometimes there are even additional coverage enhancements, like maybe lower deductible amounts or different things like that, that you gain because you have been a loyal customer to Progressive for multiple years. And it will go from anywhere from one to 10 years and those discounts slowly get deeper and deeper, the longer you’re a client with them.

Pro Body Shops

Let’s take a stop for a second and talk about, let’s see pro shops, and then we’ll talk about snapshots. So pro shops are basically it’s body shops that they have already made an arrangement with, to agree upon set costs and to work out claims for them. The way it works is basically you have an accident, you report it to Progressive, and then they will tell you, “Hey, this is a pro shop that we have in your area. You can bring your vehicle to them and they will decide how much damage is done and we will work directly with them.” This helps you significantly because one, you don’t have to go to multiple body shops to get estimates, wait for the appraiser to come out, take a look at it or to review them and then approve it. It helps speed up the process.

The second is, that it’s guaranteed. They will work with that body shop and agree upon the damages that they see that need to be taken care of. Also, the damages that are repaired by that body shop, they’re guaranteed for the life that you own that car. If you own that car for 10 more years, they will guarantee that bodywork will stay intact and stay functioning for the rest of the time that you own that vehicle. It’s a great deal.

Snapshot Driving Program

The next thing is the snapshot program that they have. It’s a telematics system. Some people call it a device. Sometimes you have these plug-ins. Remember they had these plug-ins. Well, now they really have all moved to mobile apps now. It’s just an app you install on your phone and it monitors how you drive when you drive, and how often. Now what they don’t do is they’re not tracking your data so they can resell it and try to deliver ads to you. That’s not the purpose of it. The whole purpose of it is, that they want to reward you if you are better than the average driver. They want to reward you for that. So, don’t be afraid to submit to an app like that, where they’re going to monitor how you’re driving.

The great thing about Progressive is they do have an opt-out period. Now, if you wait after that opt-out period, a lot of times it’s three months. Typically, it’s a six-month period total, you have to do the program, and then you have the first three months that you have that you can opt out. Once you get past that, it’s too late. You’re going to be stuck with whatever rate that they’re going to give you, but typically you get a discount anywhere from five to 20% on your vehicle, sometimes more depending on the state you’re in, but they will give you a discount that will be with you for the life of your policy. So if you have your policy for 10 years and you have five different cars during all that time, you’re going to keep that discount for you, no matter which card is that you own and you operate. So, if you get 10%, you’ll have 10% for as long as you have that policy with Progressive.

Now, a couple of things that maybe you’ve heard that are, or maybe you’re not familiar with that you may want to consider may be a con, or maybe it’s just a fact of how things work. One of the things is the snapshot program. Now, a lot of the telematics devices, basically, it’s all just a plus. You’re going to get a discount, no matter what. You’re going to get at least a discount for trying. And either you will just get a small discount or a large discount. It’s the way a lot of them work.

Well, Progressive’s is a little bit different. You can actually get a rate increase depending on your driving habits. If they see that you’re sorry, a worse driver than average, they’re going to charge you more. But remember, you do have that three months as a kind of like a free look to decide you want to opt-out. So, you can still try it without being afraid, but just know you need to monitor it. Keep track of how long you’ve been in it and make sure that you’ve asked your agent upfront, how long do I have before I can opt-out if I decide this isn’t for me and it does not affect my rates. Now understand when you opt-out, you are going to lose that discount that you got up front for trying. It’s going to be five to 10%, depending on the state you’re in .understand you are going to lose that discount. So just be aware, you will.

The other thing is about the pro shops or body shops. Some people, don’t like that they’re going to tell you where to go. Well, the reality is, they’re not telling you where you got to go. They’re not telling you, yes, you’ve got to use this body shop. All I’m telling you is that it is an easier route if you go that way, typically. Now, all body shops are not created equal. Progressive does their best to try to vet the body shops that make sure that they do good work, quality work, and that they’re fair. They’re not going to keep a body shop if they do not do fair work. No insurance company is going to if they have a pro body shop or preferred body shop and they see that they’re doing fraudulent work or poor work, or just difficult to deal with because that’s going to affect their name.

Sometimes body shops will complain about Progressive that they don’t want to pay them enough. Look, I don’t know where the coin actually lands on that but I do know this. I know that Progressive has been able to keep their costs lower on their insurance rates than a lot of other companies and stay profitable. They’ve actually had rate reductions over the last several years. They did have a little bit one in a lot of states this past year, but it’s been very minor, versus a lot of the other insurance companies out there. And in the previous consecutive years, they have had like slight rate reductions, where a lot of other insurance companies have had really large increases.

So just be aware of those things. And you know, you may read poor claims reviews online, sometimes about them. Look, here’s the reality is, people don’t typically just go out and just leave reviews just because they’re happy or whatever else on insurance companies. Typically, the only time they leave reviews is whenever they’ve had a bad experience. It’s not like we’re used to different online shopping and you get prompted for a review and we’re always happy to leave a review that, “Hey, yeah, this helped me and it helps other people to know how good of a product is.”

We’re used to pulling up people and you probably looked up Reed Insurance and you saw that we’ve got five-star reviews. You know, people are accustomed to seeing that but the thing is different with insurance companies is, they typically just go and leave a review when something bad’s happened and so they’re kind of skewed and they show more negative than they ought to.

So, that are some pros and cons of Progressive. Overall, they’re a great insurance company. They have a really good value inside of the insurance space and they’re a good place to have your auto insurance, especially if you have a teenage driver and you fall into one of these categories with some of these different discounts that you can get. It is an insurance company that we represent. We’re proud to represent them and they are one of our primary carriers here at Reed Insurance.

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Thank you,

Beaux Pilgrim, CEO

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Beaux Pilgrim
Reed Insurance