A Plug: Wawanesa Insurance

So a few months ago I was still in LA when the car insurance needed to be renewed. Since I was living alone in an expensive loft I wanted to cut my costs, so I of course hit all comparison sites and plugged my data into all web forms for car insurance in CA I could find. The results were miserable. My homeowners insurer was the funniest one of all: they promised a discount for already having a policy with them, and still ended up twice to half as much as Geico. Not that Geico was any comfort, I was not all amused by what they were quoting me, even with high deductibles. But the small fender bender I had had at the beginning of my time in LA was doing me no favors.

So I am also on gay.com chatting that afternoon, and someone asks what I am doing, and I bitch that I am looking for car insurance, and this one long-term chat buddy privates me and says, have I got a tip for you. A company nobody has heard of. Canadians setting up shop in the USA. Wawanesa.

I'm like, sure whatever, and plug my numbers into their quote generator, that asks questions in a different way then most insurers. I am not impressed at the number that comes up, totally in line with the discount insurers. Until I notice something: that quote was for a whole year. The name-brand insurers quoted me for 6 months. Ok, this made me pay attention.

I asked my chat bud how the claims resolution was, he said he was very impressed. So I went with them. Filled in the form a week or so before my then current insurance would expire. Got called back because I seemed to have transcribed my VIM wrong. When that was resolved, they timed my insurance to start just as my current one expired. I could do my payments over the web. And they still qualified me as a good driver deserving discount because my fender bender was just not expensive enough according to them. My previous insurer was raising my rates because of the event.

I just got off the phone with them to cancel my insurance since, well, I sold the car and moved to London. The rep saw my point and took my contact address to mail my refund. Very polite, but it did take a while of being on hold before I go to that point, and I did not need to hear the muzak version of "Here Comes The Rain Again". My experience has been that if you leave a number, they do call back, but I didn't want to use international minutes off my international calling card, so I stayed on the line. I have no experience with their claims resolution, though. But I am otherwise a very happy customer who saved a lot and always got polite service.