Car subscription services a no go

Off-Ramp
21

There is always a catch, but may still be a short term option in this market.

22

Most CC auto insurance is secondary to your own insurance policy. Which means they’re pretty useless.

23

I briefly looked into the subscription concept and found that our insurer (Amica) wouldn’t extend umbrella liability coverage on top of anyone else’s auto insurance policy, and the liability limits on the subscription insurance product were nowhere close to adequate for us.

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24

Chase Sapphire is primary. But I think there is a 30-day cap on the coverage.

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25

That’s interesting. I also use Amica. Did they say they would not extend coverage due to it being another companies policy, or because the liability minimum is too low?

26

Specifically because it was another company’s auto policy.

But the second part of your question could also be a sticking point.

Last time I shopped for insurance, some insurer’s would allow their umbrella coverage to kick in after another insurer’s auto policy limits were reached, but all of them required 250/500 liability limits on the auto policy.

They may have also had other coverage requirements… I’m doing this from memory.

I don’t recall what level of coverage was available with the car subscriptions, but I would bet that it’s closer to state minimums than what an umbrella policy requires.

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27

Many (most?) umbrella insurers require the underlying auto policy to be theirs so that they can ensure they have the right to control the defense if there were ever a major claim where the umbrella coverage comes into play and a lot of their cash is at stake. They wouldn’t want someone with a relatively small stake in the outcome to cheap out on the defense. For the umbrella insurers that do allow a different underlying auto carrier (if I recall State Farm was willing to write the coverage), their umbrella rates taking into account a different underlying carrier were substantially higher and not competitive to account for the increased risk.

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28

I wasn’t questioning the logic, it makes sense.

My point in posting about the matter was to wave the caution flag for anyone with umbrella liability coverage who may consider a subscription that “includes insurance,” when that insurance may leave them with some potentially ugly liability exposure that they thought they had covered.

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29

Someone has to be first. Let us know how it goes for you.

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