I missed the spam, as I am just now reading this. Kevin used to work for a rental car agency, and so he knows all the ins and outs. He had the job in Austin, and it made it easy for him to move here and transfer his job at the same time. I had him quit that job as soon as I was able to cover both of our expenses so that he could get something different. On Maui, we bought the total coverage insurance from the company, and it was not that expensive. One of the guide books we had said that there were hostile natives on certain parts of the island, and so we didn't want to be bothered with worrying about parking in a sketchy parking lot. Plus, we were used to Venice Beach and were aware of all the incidents that happen there. Nothing happened on Maui, however. I made a claim on my insurance a few years ago, and my rates did not go up at all, and they are extremely low because my car is not worth anything. I pay less than $200 a year to State Farm for car insurance, and that includes coverage for damage from uninsured drivers. In California, insurance companies cannot raise your rates if you make a claim for this type of coverage, but in my case, I had run into someone's bumper and did a small amount of damage. We take pictures of cars that we rent, but have not had issues. If we did, I would probably make a scene, something short of throwing keys into a cornfield, however. I also would not hesitate to allow my insurance to handle it. If you have not made a claim in a long time, you do not have much worry from rates going up. Lars

I had my car insured with AIG, who gave me excellent service after an at-fault accident. They rebranded the auto insurance unit as 21st Century , and that has since been sold to Farmer's, I believe. I switched (before Farmers bought them) in order to get homeowner ins. with the same company as car (was switching from Nationwide due to hugely increasing premiums even though 17 years claim-free), and 21st Century wouldn't insure a house as old as mine. Not car insurance, but I did have my homeowner's insurance cancelled after repeated burglaries (one of the joys of living in San Diego county, next to an agricultural operation). I was able to find another insurer pretty easily--I think my bank actually recommended the company, and fortunately my premiums were reasonable. However, I didn't make any more claims for the subsequent 6 burglaries in the next 18 months, before I sold the place. I think that most states have a "high risk pool" for auto insurance, so that even the absolutely worst drivers can get insured, although it will cost. You don't sound like you will need that option.

Thanks for response steve_o. I have yet to find anyone who has coverage by them, but haven't found any "red flags" on Google either. It seems like a good and honest deal.

Ahhhhh....deep breath. Thank you all for your wisdom and replies! I'm going to look into the companies you suggested as we still have time to change before our old coverage expires. Now that I'm calmer (!), I think I wouldn't have hit the ceiling if yesterday's email from Esurance had included a statement like: "Please note: if this vehicle was purchased within the past XX days, please confirm that the registration has been updated to reflect your ownership" or something to that effect. I simply opened the email and was blasted with the notice that they'd found something that we'd apparently hid from them, and my interpretation of that was that it was slamming our ethics. I'm not saying that very well, but you get my drift. I also find it terribly creepy that they put the full name of a stranger in our email. When we purchased the truck last week from a long-standing reputable dealer, never in any paperwork was the previous owner's name listed. Frankly, we're buying a used truck, and the previous owner's name is none of our business. So that email on top of the previous one that claimed we'd provided inaccurate information about a gap in our coverage on top of our current insurance agent's genial incompetence on several occasions (not that his incompetence had anything to do with Esurance!) was enough to send me around the bend. We have excellent credit and a clean driving record other than a deer hit at the end of 2009 (the deer hit last fall didn't count against us since no insurance was paid out) so this should be SO simple. Thank you all again. I'm off to do some internet research! You guys are the best!