It Took Years to Find a Liability Insurance Quote That Made Me Happy
I see these ads for car insurance on television, and I still wonder why I paid so much for so many years. My rates were higher than all of my friends' rates for nearly 10 years, even though I had a perfect driving record and no accidents, and the only type of insurance I had on the car was liability.
I remember when I went to receive my first liability insurance quote. I was 18 at the time, driving a 1980 Chevy Caprice Classic with well over 100,000 miles on it, and was quoted at more than $100 a month. I was very inexperienced with such matters at that time in my life, but I remember coming home and telling my parents, and they looked shocked.
That's really high, my mother said.
I didn't know how to react, so I called the insurance company and told them what my mother had said. I asked them why my liability insurance quote was so high, and they really could not give me any kind of satisfactory answer. I figured I would stay with them for a month or two, and then move on to another company.
In the meantime, I called some of my friends and asked how much they were paying, and some told me that they were not paying that much more than I was paying for full coverage. I had one person tell me that he was paying about a third of what I was paying, and could not believe that I was being charged as much as I was.
I started calling around to other companies, and every liability insurance quote I received seemed to be very high. I got it knocked down a little bit from what I was paying with the first company I chose after a few tries, but I was still paying a lot more than anybody else I knew.
I figured that I would just wait out, keep a perfect driving record with no tickets or accidents or any other traffic violations, and it would go down on its own. I did all of those things, but the price never went down, and this was after years.
By the time I was 28 years old, I had finally managed to get the amount I was paying down to $77 a month, when I finally learned why I was being charged so much. I was told that how much you paid for car insurance was due in part to your credit rating, and my credit was bad at the time. Even though I had never had any kind of problem, and I had never missed a payment, I was still being penalized for my credit score.
I did some research online, and found an insurance company that did not base your rate on your credit score, so I went in for a liability insurance quote. I was very pleased when I was told that I would only have to pay $37 a month for liability.
If anyone has received a liability insurance quote that seems high, I would check into this and find out why. There is almost always a reason, and sometimes you are not told the reason unless you ask the right questions.