Geico Car Insurance – Complaints & Law Suits
Geico car insurance has those cute commercials, with the cute lizard, talking in a cute English accent. But is Geico car insurance really so soft and cuddly?
Geico Car Insurance – Better Business Bureau
Having read through the customer complaints on the Better Business Bureau website, maybe not.
Here is the page https://www.bbb.org/us/dc/washington/profile/insurance-companies/geico-0241-8768/complaints
There are the usual complaints you get about car insurance companies ie, not agreeing on the value of the car in a total loss claim
But there seems to be other themes among the complaints, namely charging customers extra without their permission either by charging a customers card without their permission or by adding people to the customers policy even though the customer was simply asking for a quote to add that person to the policy
For example
“When I questioned MaryAnn about the email, her response was that my daughter had to be added because she’s a licensed driver in my home.”
“my policy monthly payment was increased by $50 due to a family member being added to my policy without my permission or authorization.”
Geico Car Insurance – Yelp Reviews
Yelp has some reviews here but I’m not sure how accurate they are
https://www.yelp.com/biz/geico-chevy-chase
The Yelp reviews seems to have a theme of Geico finding ways and reasons not to entertain insurance claims, for example
“Accident happened in august. It is now march I have been calling and emailing thru claims almost every day, and they are finally getting back to me. And they are claiming that 90 days after a claim they cant help you at all. “
“When I called and spoke to a Geico rep, they said I would have to pay a $750 deductible since I put my damage happened on 7-06-18 instead of 7-16-18.”
“The combined damage to both of the vehicles caused by Geico’s driver is only $6300 but Geico claims that it exceeds the max insured limit on their driver’s policy.”
Geico Car Insurance – The Law Firm
Ingerman & Norwitz have a page on their website dedicated to detailing two class action lawsuits against Geico Car Insurance.
It is pretty horrendous reading but here are some of the claims contained in the law suits.
“Geico deliberately and fraudulently portrays drivers as responsible for accidents they didn’t cause.”
“Geico assigns drivers to a high-risk status to keep customers from switching to other insurance carriers (which might not accept “high-risk” drivers).”
“Geico uses software that reduces or denies claims without any reasonable basis or justification – it’s just random.”
full article here https://www.ihlaw.com/geico-is-facing-two-class-action-lawsuits-for-shady-behavior/
Geico Car Insurance – Summary
As is always the case with these things, nothing you see on the Better Business Bureau website is going to be positive, you are not going to see a comment on the Better Business Bureau which says I want to open a complaint to say how great X company was.
Yelp reviews can be positive and negative and in my opinion Yelp reviews, their overall rating, comes down to how well they are managed by the business owner so I would say the bigger the company the more likely the overall rating of the Yelp reviews will be lower/negative.
The lawsuit is obviously a worry but I have no idea how common this is ie car insurance companies being the targets of class action lawsuits.
In short, take all these negatives at face value
Keep in mind that these sites are not the places you will go to in order to hear about how fantastic a company is
And keep in mind that Geico is one of the largest car insurers in the United States, even if 0.01% of their customers are unhappy, that is going to mean a lot of people and a lot of complaints on the internet.
As with anything, word of mouth is the best recommendation and when it comes to car insurance, make sure the recommendation is coming from someone that has actually been a customer of the car insurance company they are recommending and also a customer that has made a claim (important!).
You never know how good or bad a car insurance company is until you have to make a claim, all insurance companies are great until they need to pay out money.
If you are in the UK and have a high performance car, we have a directory dedicated to high performance car insurance providers in the UK, you can see it here
