Picked up a GLB 250 in April for a deal, my insurance agent informed me the effective monthly premium would be ~$75/mo. I noticed a decent jump in the withdrawal from my account this morning and dug into it. After going back and forth with my agent, they indicated the current rate was the best (effectively $171/mo). This seems extremely high especially since my model 3 is about ~$120/mo.
Am I crazy for questioning this? What are you guys paying?
Background: my wife is the only other driver on the policy and we’ve both been licensed for 14 years with clean driving records. I’m also bundled with my home and 3 other cars (4 total).
Could be something with MB gas car premium. My new GLE is $60 more per month than any of my last few cars some of which were more expensive in cost and definitely repair possibility.
What state/city are you in? I’d shop around. With auto insurance, it’s worth shopping around every year. Also need to see if you’ve maxed out any/all applicable discounts. Affiliates, Costco, military, first responder, educator, defensive driving, etc.
It won’t hurt to get a FREE quote with COSTCO (if you’re a member) They’ve been the cheapest for me in SoCal for the past 10+ years. My 2023 Mirai cost me $600 for 6 months and when I had 2025 Tesla Y Performance $750 for both cars
Sometimes brokers don’t always tell the truth
With some of the GLB mania, I asked my agent (State Farm) for a quote. I’m in CA.
IIRC, my quote was ~$1000 per 6 mo (which is pretty close to what you have). I have also several policies w/ my carrier, have a totally clean record (at least over the past 14+ yrs), and am younger middle age.
This quote is ~50% more than what I pay for my current car (VW Golf Sportwagen). I’m assuming the premium hike is more about loss data (or whatever it’s called) for the GLB…
I think people underestimate how much loss data matters for insurance rates, especially in states where insurers are not able to use a lot of the available information due to various regulatory requirements. Two years ago, there was a reason my XC90 cost almost the same to insure as my Jetta. In my car shopping/insurance quoting experience, the cheapest insurance rates relative to MSRP have been the XC90, MDX and Subaru Ascent. All of which fit a certain profile of driver and have loss data that supports their drivers being much safer than average.
You can find some of the loss data on the IIHS HLDI website although the data there is a bit out of date and hard to use. The insurance companies of course have better access to this data plus their own internal records.
Brief off topic (about the GLB specifically but not about insurance premiums)… Do claims related to theft (besides the collision/accidents you allude to) also figure into loss data?
I ask b/c, when I priced the premium for my Golf’s many yrs ago, I was also looking at a Camry and had my agent price that. The premium for the Camry was higher. I imagine a car that sells in the numbers of a Camry probably has a broad spectrum of owners, but my prototype of a Camry owner (at least the first owner, if that makes a difference) is one is driving in a pretty safe manner.
I wonder if the ubiquity and anonymity of a Camry makes it more appealing to thieves and, if so, if that could be a reason for the higher premium.
Theft is rolled into “comprehensive” which is one of the six categories of HLDI (thanks Claude).
As for the Camry, my guess is it’s prevalence in gig economy work, even for newer models, is a problem. But any way you cut it, the Camry has really bad HLDI numbers. Makes sense it would be more expensive to insure.
I haven’t owned many cars over my life and had never priced an SUV until the GLB. Have you noticed that SUVs historically usually cost more to insure than do sedans?
