The Cute Gecko Isn't the Only Way They Lure You In....
Written: Oct 19 '09 (Updated Oct 19 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cute Gecko, Reps sound polite.
Cons: Lie, Don't correct mistakes, Refund as little $ as possible, Inconsistent, Expensive.
The Bottom Line: Some may have an ok experience w/ Geico, but w/o even filing a claim, I've already gotten ripped off. Only 2 weeks b4 I had to find a new company.
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| anthroblog's Full Review: GEICO Direct |
I was recently shopping around for car insurance for my husband and I; I having just gotten off of my mother's policy months prior & my husband needing to obtain his driver's license for the first time. In the same week he planned to get his license we had also planned to obtain a car as a gift from my parents.
We explained all of this to the seemingly polite Geico rep who was putting together our quotes. The first quote we requested was for a non owner policy which we would only use until we got the car and my husband got his license in the following week. The second quote we got was for after getting the car and license with my husband listed as primary driver. I also gave the agent the details about the vehicle. The two quotes sounded very nice to us and the agent was rather pushy and wanted to get the deal sealed during the call, so he made further adjustments to lower the rates even more. I then decided to go ahead and paid for the 6 month premium in full and was told that once I make the changes discussed it would go up to the second quote and we'd need to just pay the difference.
Got the license and the car and proceeded to add the changes to the policy as planned and WHAMO....the policy sky rocketed to over $1000 (around $800 more than both of the original quotes). I called right away to see what was going on with it and of course got a totally different rep, so I explained everything that I had discussed with the original rep who'd set up our account. This agent admited that the rep gave us an incorrect quote and that they could not offer us the policy at that price and they were very sorry about it and that they'd be able to offer a payment plan since we weren't expecting a premium that high. Although I was concerned about the extremely high price I was more alarmed and the lack of emphasis placed on integrity--a payment plan to help me cover their mistakes does not make it all better by any stretch of the imagination!
I asked to speak to a supervisor who admited that they had no protocol for handeling the errors and mistakes of their reps that negatively effects their customers. Although she did ensure me they'd repremand him I still needed to pay this new extremely high mystery price if I was going to keep my policy with them.
After thinking about what steps to take next I called other companies to get more quotes and found that several were offering much cheaper rates that what Geico was trying to suddenly rob me for. I then contacted Geico again to inquire about how much of a refund I could get for the original payment I had made. I got an email back saying I'd only be entitled to less than $50 of more than $200 paid for a policy active for under 2 weeks!
By this time I am extremely upset and emotional, now seeing that cute Gecko in my head in a pirate costume, as a hood thug with a gun, as a mob boss, coming to cyphen the cash right out of my wallet.
I called back and asked if the rep could restore my policy to how it was before I had added our car and my husband as primary driver, choosing to not drive the car and continue to shop around for another company to insure us. The rep said no that she could only get it down to $500 by putting me as the primary driver, she then almost recommended that I cancel the policy because she seemed to feel genuinely sorry for me after hearing the trouble I'd been through with the original rep setting us up like that. I asked her to calculate the refund I'd get back if I canceled today and she said I'd get back exactly half of what I paid. I then told her what the other rep I had spoke to said the refund would be and she was appalled. Not even the refund amounts I was quoted are consistent! Truly Gieco should refund all the money I paid to them under false pretenses and I will be sending a letter to corporate for the purposes of obtaining just that. I ended my policy with Geico which was less than 2 weeks old and now have a policy with 21st Century.
I can't say that Geico is a bad company because a lot of companies seem to have done similar things to their customers. None of them seem all that ethical to me. But I simply couldn't imagine how a company who allows a rep to lie so drastically and do nothing for us to rectify the situation, attemp to keep more than 90% of what we paid for a policy under 2 weeks old, could possibly treat us fairly in the event that we needed to file a claim...I just couldn't see it.
For your own safety always record all of your phone coversations, get quotes and other agreements in writting so that when you need to have these types of major abuses addressed by higher authorities you have the information at hand to unarguably prove the company's wrong doing.
Recommended:
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anthroblog
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