In future posts I will be writing about people who have paid the cost of not having an insurance agent. Everyone believes that having an insurance agent is more expensive than doing it yourself with one of the 800# companies. As long as the coverage is correct that may be true, however, there is a real cost when the coverage is wrong.
Our first example is a person who is disabled and has a specially equipped vehicle so they can drive. The cost to equip the vehicle was $25,000. When they purchased the coverage from the call center the person helping them did not ask enough questions concerning the vehicle and the equipment to know that special coverage should be added to the car to cover that equipment. When the loss occurred the insurance company paid to fix the basic vehicle but the damage to the specialized equipment was not covered, causing the insured to pay $3,495.00 to completely repair the car.
In this case the cost of not having an agent was $3,495.00.
At The Haas Agency we bring the desire to create a lasting relationship into the picture. That means questions are asked to provide protection for the long term. In the situation above we would have discovered the special nature of the vehicle and provided the proper protection. The goal is to be cost effective not cost focused.