Unneighborly

According to the Wall Street Journal, State Farm sales agents are up in arms over a scheme to reduce their compensation and benefits, now that State Farm has lost the title of premier auto insurer to Progressive.

I don't blame them.

I used to be a State Farm customer. I was with them for many years.

One day, my car was in the parking lot of a local drugstore, when some yahoo hit it and drove away. I called State Farm and was told to use their online claims tool. Which I did. A week went by, with no response. In the meantime, I learned that I really needed to have my car fixed, because despite the fact that it ran perfectly well, the fact that it was now down a headlight and turn signal meant that it wasn't street legal.

So I called State Farm. And was told to use their online tool. I told customer service that I had. The agent looked, and, with clear surprise, told me that the company had simply dropped the ball; for reasons they couldn't explain, my report was still sitting there, waiting to be picked up.

Things went downhill from there. If someone had told me in advance how poorly things would have gone, I wouldn't have believed them. It was an unmitigated disaster. And completely unexpected, given that State Farm wasn't just some random online-only insurance startup.

And so I switched insurers. My State Farm agent, who I really liked, sent me a letter, asking me to come back, and promising me a discount on premiums. I felt badly for him; none of what happened was remotely his fault, yet he was the one expected to grovel. And I told him: what I was looking for was from someone for State Farm corporate to get on the phone and say that they hadn't met expectations. One mistake can be chalked up to human error. When literally nothing works as promised, there's a process problem that needs to be fixed.

I understand State Farm forcing cuts on agents, due to falling revenues. But when I stopped buying insurance through them, it wasn't due to premium rates; it was the impression that I couldn't be sure that I would get the services I was paying for. I shopped around when I switched companies, and the rates were pretty much all the same; the only real way to reduce what I was paying was to drop certain coverage. Given this, I suspect that I'm not the only person who didn't find State Farm to be good value for money. Making the agents take it on the chin won't fix that.