State Farm Cancelling My Auto Policy

Hey guys,
Need some advice. Less than 30 days after switching to State Farm for auto, someone blew through a red light and destroyed my Infiniti. I was OK, but the car was a total loss. I live in FL, where we have no-fault and she was found to be completely at fault. The woman who hit me did not have enough property damage coverage to cover the total cost of my car (pay off the leased Infiniti vehicle), so I was forced to make a claim through my insurer (State Farm), who covered the whole amount. Yesterday, I received a call from my local State Farm agent, informing me that I have been dropped from State Farm and will need to find another auto insurance provider by March. I have no traffic tickets of any kind on my record and no other accidents. I am wondering if this is normal/Legal and will this now negatively impact my rates when I try to switch to a different insurance. Has this ever happened to anyone else? I was not given an explanation, the agent just assumed it was because I made a claim within 30 days of opening a new policy. Very irritated because I was saving ~$100/month by switching to State Farm. Thank you in advance for your help!

Yes it is legal. Insurance companies are private companies and owe nothing to you beyond fulfilling their contractual obligation, which it seems they have done.

I suspect your record has more on it than this one accident. Get in touch with some insurance agents, I’ve found they’re much easier to deal with than trying to quote 50 different companies yourself. Good luck!!

Yep. Insurance companies basically have the “right to refuse service”. It comes to no surprise to me, that they are dropping you due to an accident. Not only is it a sizable expense for them (you said the car is totaled), you are also basically a brand new customer. Your risk has went well past the reward for State Farm. It also would not surprise me if this causes your rates to increase - a claim is typically a claim in their eyes, little importance as to what happened, where it happened, or why it happened.

Insurance companies are just bankers, if they can’t make enough money off you they jack up your rate or drop you, they’re pretty terrible. Ask around your circle of friends and see if anyone has a good insurance broker, they might save you allot of time and money.

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Yeah this sucks but is the nature of insurance. They make unsophisticated decisions about what kind of risk people pose. This is a big reason luxury cars cost more to insure though. If you had been driving a Nissan Altima, State Farm’s liability would have been much smaller. Maybe they wouldn’t have dropped you after a 15k lose versus a 30-40k lose.

You got screwed because Florida only requires one to carry 10k worth of insurance for damaged property. Sure, this woman is going to be in a world of hurt when State Farms sues her for the portion of damage caused not covered by her insurance but that doesn’t help you.

Obv too late now but wouldn’t GAP have covered the difference between her insurance payout and your lease balance?

GAP probably kicked in here but still didn’t cover it. assuming a Q50 3.0, figure the car was worth 30k with OP owing 40k for payments and turn in/buyout.

GAP covers the difference between 30k actual value and the 40k actual owed amount. But the lady probably only had 15k in insurance so State Farm had to pick up the difference between 15k and 30k.

Numbers are fake but I’m pretty confident in the basic premise, that lady didn’t have enough insurance to cover actual value of the Infiniti.

Surprising that there are no Car Insurance Brokers on LH. Might want to post that you are looking in the Wanted Forum, considering the amount of helpful folks on here.

It’s not a gap issue.

Sounds like he had uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage which kicked in.

If the question is wouldn’t Infiniti’s built in gap coverage kick in, my guess is that serves as secondary, and would only apply if he didn’t have the underinsured motorist coverage.

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biggest confusion about being a no fault state is that people apply that statement to property damage claims and who was at fault for CAUSING the accident which is completely wrong.

being in a no fault state applies to medical / personal injury claims in which that if you are in a no fault state regardless of fault your own policy will pay out to cover injuries in your vehicle.

and yes, statefarm has every right to cancel your policy. you basically paid a few hundred for a month of coverage, had them pay out 10-15k+ on your car to cover it which will take years to recover back from you, they’d rather cut their losses now instead of having another potential claim with you in the future.

terrible situation for you since the woman did not have enough coverage in which you couldnt avoid using your own carrier but it is what it is now, expect higher rates when shopping around.

I see what you’re saying, based on the comment that FL has a low min for property damage (10K) which is probably what the other party’s insurer paid out. In which case your own insurer has to cover the difference between that and ACV. The difference between ACV and the lease balance would be covered by GAP.

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If you’re a Costco member, check out Ameriprise Insurance through Costco. At least in my case, no one could touch their prices. I shopped around at some point to see what’s out there and had multiple insurance agents tell me that the price I’m paying with Ameriprise is too good to be true. But it’s not!. I’ve had coverage for them for many years now and a great overall experience including a couple of claims. At one point they stopped offering auto insurance in my state (MI). I was able to work out a deal with them, where I got grandfathered in and was able to keep my policy. This caused my rates to go up a bit but still much cheaper than anything else out there.

I agree 100%. I have been Ameriprise Auto through Costco Executive Membership (which saves additional 15-20%) since 1997. No other insurance company quotes come remotely close for the premium I pay currently.

StateFarm are notorious for dropping customers (even long-time customers of 20+ years) after filing claims. Especially if it’s shortly after a renewal (regardless of how long you’ve been with them).

The reason I know this: I remember years ago when my old car got keyed, I asked my agent if it was worth filing a claim. I’d been a StateFarm customer for 5 years, perfect driving record, and had never filed a claim before. I was told that because I changed addresses within the last year, they recognized me as a “new” customer with a “new” policy – so my 5 year tenure with them was completely disregarded – and if I filed a claim, a review of my account would take place and I’d likely be dropped.

That conversation inspired me to turn to Google to see if this was a common practice, and I discovered this was par for the course with State Farm. It was so eye opening that I switched to Geico the same week, and have been with them ever since. I’ll admit that Geico have sucked – someone hit and run my car like 4 months ago (damage was fairly minor) and Geico never return my calls, but at least it isn’t State Farm.

Moral of the story is stay away from State Farm. Do a quick Google search and you’ll see how many cases like yours exist.

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Do yourself a favor and find an independent agent at www.trustedchoice.com. If you can find one with CIC after their name I recommend it. Don’t fret about leaving State Farm behind you.

Just note that not every carrier works with brokers. Geico, for instance, does not. You’ll need to contact them directly for quotes.

That would be a deal-breaker for me. I could never continue with an insurer who doesn’t return calls or that it feels like pulling teeth

I know - my problem is that Geico is by far the cheapest option, and it’s not even close. I re-quote with several dozen insurers every 6 months and every quote is at least double my monthly premium.

They may be cheap but I found that they were always recommending limits that are far too low. My suspicion is that they have focused their pricing to be especially competitive on minimum limit policies which enables them to get the most premium per dollar of coverage they’re providing. To be fair, one of my buddies has very good coverage with GEICO and I could never beat his pricing.

Our coverage story is quite the contrary - we have extremely comprehensive coverages (plus, you’re required to have pretty comprehensive coverages anyway with leased vehicles). I don’t know how the algorithms work, but somehow across 3 different states, Geico is always so much cheaper for me.