Provide Decent Coverage at a fair price
Written: Apr 25 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very fair prices
Cons: None Yet
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| dbhoutx's Full Review: Travelers - Home |
Before I get too far into this review, I want to mention that I have never filed a homeowners claim, so I am focusing on everything but claims experiences. Perhaps someone who has filed a claim will read this review and will be inspired to write about their claim filing experience.
I bought my first home 4.5 years ago, before I was married and a few months after I returned to Houston from Tampa, where I attended graduate school. (Read my review on USF - Tampa.) I was very excited when I was offered a job at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital (Home of the Texas Heart Institute) since I really wanted to be back in Houston. I decided to rent an apartment for six months and would find a house during that time. Thus, I knew I had my work cut out when I arrived back home. Fortunately my parents live in Houston so moving and the associated problems were a bit easier to deal with since my parents were willing to help me out!
Three months after returning home, I found my house. Now, it was time to get insurance and do all of the other things associated with buying a home. Since I already had my car insured through GEICO, I made my first call to them and asked if they could provide homeowners coverage. They transferred me to that department. Through my conversation with them, they explained that another company underwrote the insurance and they acted as agents selling the policy.
I got my quote and to my surprise, the price was very reasonable. Of course, I had been covered under a renters policy through them previously so it gave them an idea that I was claims free and a reasonably good risk. Getting the insurance was painless. All I had to do was provide GEICO with information about the Title company so they could coordinate the coverage periods. This was easily accomplished. My house was insured at the time I took possession.
My rate was very reasonable considering I what I was used to paying for renters insurance. I got tons more coverage for only 5 times the cost of my renters policy. In fact, the total exposure went up by a factor of 10 or so. Since the day I purchased the initial homeowners policy, I have increased the coverage 25-30% including adding excess personal property coverage, up to the maximum allowable limits, and have only faced a 15% increase in the policy costs.
Each time I need information about the policy, I make a quick phone call to Travelers representatives and have an answer within a few minutes. Only once did it take longer than a five minute phone call to get the information I needed and that was because the representative needed to talk to an underwriter about what could be done to increase the coverage. Even then, I had an answer within a couple of hours. Most recently, I decided to consolidate all of our insurance and other financial information into a single spreadsheet. I called my representative at Travelers who coordinated obtaining all of the other insurance information about all of my other policies. My home fax was busy that day collecting all of the face sheets from each policy so I could track how much insurance we had and how much it cost us.
In addition to our regular homeowners policy, when I got married, we added a valuable items policy to cover our jewelry. Unfortunately this is a very costly policy. We pay a premium of about 75% as much as our homeowners policy for a very good jewelry policy. Or course it does cover a lot of jewelry and provides for coverage for virtually any loss. I am sure a self inflicted loss would not be covered, but I did not read the policy to be sure. Since it covers our watches and wedding/engagement rings and some other jewelry I have given my wife, I figure we will not loose the items for any reason other than an accident.
So far as a policy holder paying premiums and having not filed a claim, I am a happy policy holder. I hope that should I ever need to file a claim, I will still be as happy! The rates are better than most of the other big insurers and I make sure each year that this is true. Give them a call and get a quote.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dbhoutx
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: David
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 324
Trusted by: 223 members
About Me:
David loves outdoor activities, travel, breeding Registered Texas Longhorns.
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