There is nothing that I despise more then dealing with Insurance. It is such a racket where I live. The Insurance companies can tell us what our home is going to be insured for. We have no say in the decision. I should have not even commented on your post. I could go on & on.

Perhaps that's why it's called an umbrella. Cover's standard home and auto(s) and listed drivers/occupants as well as some items that a good portion of the population may have. Additional residences, rental properties, motorhomes, boats, and off road vehicles (in this area) generally are rated on the policy and charged an additional premium. As long as you are not being itemized for those items, does it really matter? The policy will generally extend out to items rented, not necessarily owned. Have you ever rented a boat, an atv, motorcycle or motorhome? My guess is the umbrella would extend to those items if you were so inclined. Just a thought.

My mother went through that with her place in FL....she was insured for outbuildings she didn't have and other things she didn't own....including something as I recall about a gravesite or some such thing. But that was how they write the policy, no you couldn't change or reduce it, and that was right after a hurricane so State Farm was like the only insurer left in the state so she was stuck.

Excuse me for not being sure but don't you rent out a condo in Hawaii? An umbrella policy needs to cover what may happen If your tenants sue. . Even if they don't use watercraft and rvs belonging to you. If someone vacationing at your property is injured they can (and might) sue.

Don’t get me started on State Farm either after what my DD has just been through with her agent for the past several months. She just switched to another insurance.

Outside, I wish her good luck. I think horror stories and happy stories can be heard about every company, depending on what does or doesn't happen. It's the nature of the insurance business. I think the same is true of banks and likely for many of the same reasons.

Our carport (and cars) were targeted by a serial arsonist (was a BIG deal here) about 20 years ago. And the crew hired by the insurance company to repair the carport and repaint the side of the house that was heat damaged burgled the place during the repairs. After paying the claims for the arson fire and the claims for the burglary, State Farm in its inifinite wisdom cancelled our policy!! WTF?? Isn't that exactly what the insurance is for??

Because of the cancellation, we were deemed "high risk" and had to go with another company that specialized in that sort of policy and we wound up paying about triple what we had previously paid for a two year period where we were claim free before going with another insurer with normal rates. btw, we had never claimed before or since that for anything other than a couple of minor car things.

Don't get me started on insurance companies......especially Sate Farm!! 'Good hands' my ass!!

To keep the see-saw level, I've used State Farm for the past 40 years for houses and cars (and always owned 3 or 4 cars at any one time over the period) and I have no complaints. An odd fender-bender here and there, parking lot dings. Rarely have we been at fault and no major incidents.

I get at least two quotes every few years and have always found their premiums to be competitive (and consistently lower than some like AAA).

Having said that, I don't doubt for a minute that Outside's daughter and gardengirl both had awful experiences. I'm not sure what to attribute it to. I sincerely think insurance companies are fungible, one is the same as the other and I think any one is as likely to provide a great experience as an awful one. And when they do, you change.

She and her DH switched to the company we have used for over 25 years with no problems. They couldn’t believe what the agent was telling her. He just was lazy and wasn’t doing what he was being paid to do.

"You're in good hands with Allstate" ...

... but what part(s) of my body are your hands on?

o j

If you're eligible for USAA, give them a call. They are usually cheaper than other companies, but one must be eligible (web site will help you with this).

anglo, I think it depends. Maybe 10 years ago, my periodic "get quotes" exercise came up with a 15% savings on homeowners insurance with USAA. It was enough to entice me to switch and I did. The next year, when the premium bill came, the annual cost doubled (yes, 2 X). I called and asked why, they said they were "realigning" their rates.

I thought - you're free to do that but it's a huge cost increase I don't want to pay. I called up State Farm and I was able to get home coverage again at a similar cost to what I'd walked away from the year before.

I do other business with USAA, including banking. But no insurance.

USAA was more than 40% higher for car insurance than what my independent agent found for us. $950/6 months vs $1235 for a year.

I know...insured for everything...you need it! I just switched to State Farm from Allstate.

Let me tell you about Allstate. I spent 6 hours in the agents office getting my new home insured, auto, umbrella and 1 landlord policy. I thought...OK....done. Nope. They came back and said the rental needed a new roof...it doesn't & the deductible was $5k. I wasn't going to claim a roof on THAT policy anyway.(No prior claims on anything, ever!). Then they said my home was 1500 sq feet bigger than the tax accessor said it was. Not mitigated for fire(fire mit is included in the HOA) and I owed another $1000 & had to cut trees down within 30 feet of my deck. They also did not enter the home, just walked around the outside and deemed it had a wet bar and was worth double what I'd paid for it. ?????? I cancelled the policy. Called to ask why I owed $18 & she said it had been turned over to collections(in less than 20 days?) and laughed at me! Yesterday I had a manager calling me back....never called. I called back today....we shall see if a manager calls.

Imagine if I ever have a claim....

Nothing was said if these were Riders or part of the main policy. Many Riders cost extra and should be able to be removed. It sounds like a visit to a different agent might be a good idea if these are Riders.

It's a *package*. No riders. All or nuttin'. I feel like my premiums are paying to insure claims against somebody else's use of a snowmobile, boat, pogo stick. I don't care if a lot of people own or use these things. I don't.

Pogo sticks can be very dangerous.

The good news is, most umbrella policies are relatively cheap. They're easy to get quotes for.

PS - make sure there's no gap between the top of your auto liability coverage and the bottom of your umbrella policy. The two numbers should be the same (the umbrella starts right where the other one ends). Otherwise, you're uninsured for that gap.

"If you're eligible for USAA, give them a call."

My father was career Army - retired as a Lt. Col. after 20 years. My parents always had their cars insured through USAA. When I started driving and had a car, my parents had it (and me) insured through USAA also. Same with my older sister.

More than once over the last I-don't-know-how-many years, I've contacted USAA for quotes, and each time I've been told I am not eligible. They claim to have no record of my ever being insured by them. They claim to have no record of my father, mother, or sister being insured by them. I have given them my father's Social Security number and service number, as well as my SS number yet still they claim no one in my family was ever insured through them. And because it was so long ago (my parents died in 1970, and I've been insured by other companies since the late 1970s), I no longer have any paperwork that proves them wrong.

"I feel like my premiums are paying to insure claims against somebody else's use of a snowmobile, boat, pogo stick."

Our current house was built (and we bought it when it was in the framing stage) in 1990. All of the houses around here were built with wood shake roofs. (Not wood shingles - heavy shakes.) A couple of years ago when we were going to be getting a new roof, I contacted our homeowner's insurance agent to let him know, and I asked him how much of a discount we'd get.

Bear in mind that wood shake roofs are generally unrated, meaning unless they are treated with fire retardant, they are going to burn like crazy. A composition shingle roof is Class C rated, meaning that it is somewhat fire resistant, but they will burn. Our new roof is a Gerard stone-coated steel roof, which is Class A rated - one of the best roofing materials you can have (which would also include concrete or clay tiles).

Anyway, our agent said that the new-roof discount would be very minimal because we do not live in a fire danger area. The risk of there being a fire was so low as to make a substantial discount not possible.

That was January 2016. In 2017, as everyone knows, there were horrible fires in California. And when our policy renewed towards the end of 2017, our premiums were increased by 17%.

Hubs and I have owned three homes together for a total of 37 years (6 years for the first one, 3 years for the second one, and 28 years for our current home). I have made ONE claim against my auto insurance, and that was back in 1979 when someone smashed out the rear window of my car. My husband has never made an auto insurance claim. No one has ever made claims against us/our auto or homeowner's insurance. And in 37 years we have never made a claim against our homeowner's insurance.

So, I asked our homeowner's insurance company why our premium increased 17%. Yep, you guess it. It's because the insurance industry is trying to recoup the losses they suffered by paying out claims to the people whose homes were lost/damaged because of the fires.

There is no fire danger to our home so we don't get a decent discount for having a brand new Class A roof, but we live in a state that suffered devastating fires so we have to help bail out the insurance company.

Don't get me wrong -- I have extreme empathy for the folks who were (and are now) affected by California wildfires, but shouldn't insurance companies do a better job of investing their assets to have funds to cover payouts, rather than placing the burden on the folks who don't make claims?

Insurance companies operate by pooling and diversifying risks and then managing claims. When claims increase, premiums increase; decreasing underwriting losses does the opposite. You shouldn't expect anything else. Each customer is part of a pool, no matter whether the adverse claim experience relates to all or just some profiles. Similarly, if claims from house break-ins in urban areas spike, all customers will see their premiums increase, not solely those living in urban areas.

If USAA membership matters to you, you could check to see if your father's service records or papers of any kind can be retrieved from the Military Personnel Records Center in St Louis. I contacted them recently because I never got an actual copy of my Honorable Discharge and I contacted them when I learned it might be find-able. Indeed it was and I got it in just a few weeks. Some military records were destroyed in a fire somewhere, some time, you may run into that.

The years destroyed by the fire in 1973 were:

Army
Personnel discharged November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960
80%
Air Force

Personnel discharged September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964
(with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.)

75%