I bet you have seen this woman on television.  Flo is the face of Progressive Insurance, our home and auto insurer.

The Sneeds have been happy Progressive customers for several years now.  We signed on with Progressive after the AARP whores at Hartford insurance kicked us off for having the nerve to house our disabled son and his conditional drivers license.  Never mind that he never drove our cars and that we had released Hartford from responsibility for any of his actions, should he ever do so.  Rules are rules, you know.

But back to Progressive.

Progressive contacted me back in January to offer me the opportunity to save up to 30% if I let them install a device in our cars so that they could monitor our driving habits.  Drive slow, don't ever slam on your brakes, don't drive much and don't drive between midnight and six in the morning and the 30% could be ours, all ours.   So we did it.

For five long months we endured the minder under the dashboard.  When you know it is there, it can be maddening.  It turned out that simply stopping for a red light could be interpreted as a "hard brake", a Progressive no-no.  Every decision to stop or not stop was filtered through the prism of the dreaded "hard brake".

But, in the end, we got notice that we are eligible for a 28% discount on our renewal next month.  Or as Progressive put it a $162 discount.  Sweet!

Imagine our surprise to learn that our cool discount is partially offset by an 11% rate increase put in by Progressive.  So our $162 discount was from their new prices, not our existing rates.

I guess the old adage that there is no free lunch is true.








Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky