So often we only report about bad customer service. This is not a paid ad or anything . . just two real life incidents we’ve had recently with State Farm Insurance.
We had the same insurance for years . . probably 10 or more and it had gone so high so a little over a year ago, I did some calling around and State Farm was about 30% less than what we were paying. For many years, but many, many years ago, I had State Farm. We had a major house fire while insured with them and they were awesome but that was almost 30 years ago. As with any insurance company, there are always bad reviews and as we all know, we do tend to report the bad more than we report the good.
We did switch all of our insurance to State Farm and I think it was before we ever paid the second car premium (we pay the cars every 6 months), we hit the deer and damaged the car. State Farm was so nice. It ended up that I had the body shop kinda glue and tie up a part of the front that wasn’t going to cause any problems so I could go ahead with my scheduled trip to MO, which delayed getting the car fixed. The customer service people kept calling to see if there was a problem . . anything they needed to do . . so I could get my car fixed. I can’t think of anything they could have done to make things easier.
Chad still had the same insurance we had because that’s what he had when he was living with us. I told him about how much we saved and in December, he switched to State Farm. Just before they came here last month, he called and he said “Mom, you’re not going to believe this. Our freezer went out and EVERYTHING is ruined!” Well, it turns out the freezer is an older model chest freezer that an older lady had given Chad because he had helped her with some wildlife issues she was having around her farm and it had an on/off knob or switch on the outside of the freezer and Miss Addie found it and she had flipped it off.
This was really just a day or two before they came here and they didn’t have time to mess with it so they turned it back on, let everything re-freeze and dealt with it when they got back home.
We were talking about all the fish, venison, sausage from Louisiana, etc. that they lost in the freezer because it was stuffed full. I told Chad . . your renter’s insurance will probably pay for some of that. Sure enough, he called and they had a $500 deductible but they were given a claims adjuster who explained what they needed to do. So much of what was in there was fish Chad had caught or venison he had killed and processed himself. They had him take pictures, weigh it all and submit the claim. State Farm was very generous in what they paid Chad. I think he was really surprised. While he cannot go to the store and buy fresh venison or fish that were caught locally, at least he got a fair compensation.
The switch/knob on the outside of the freezer has been fixed so that Addie cannot turn it.
So . . there you have it . . my praises for State Farm.
One more thing . . Chad had bags and bags of stinky meat that was frozen and he knew as soon as he put it out in the trash in July, even if he did it the night before the trash pickup, it was still going to defrost and stink up his trash can and probably the whole neighborhood. He called city hall (the town provides trash pickup . . for an additional fee) and they sent a truck out to his house right then to pick it all up. I thought that was pretty nice too.
They’ve scrubbed the inside of the freezer with Clorox, they’ve left lots of baking soda inside and I’m not sure what else they’ve done but they now have it not smelling so bad and they’re able to use it again. A hard lesson to learn but I believe it will be a long time before they stop checking their freezers every day to make sure they’re running.
wanda j says
If they will crumply up newspaper and put inside along with some BBQ bricketts it will take smell out. Also wiping it down with vanilla Extract will help too. I worked at Sears many many moons ago and that is what the repair men did to freezer and ref. that went out. Worked all the time.
Carolyn says
Amen to State Farm! Our SF rep came to the house when we were had a new roof and also had to replace the garage door. I left for work with my brown garage door matching all the trim and came home to a white one. It was SF who came to the house and made sure the job was completed as it should have been. Of course, my husband thought Silas came to make sure I didn’t have someone tied to a tree until they could make proper decisions.
Sherrill says
We had the opposite experience with SF. DH had had them for years before we married and insisted on keeping them after. He was LOYAL to a fault with SF and, because they told him he’d been with them so long they’d NEVER drop him, the rates continued to go up while our claims were mostly nonexistent save for small occasional things. I kept telling DH I felt he could do better rate-wise but he wouldn’t consider it. After nearly 30 years with them, I had to go into the office for some reason and didn’t like the way I was treated. I went home and told him to find someone else. He was SHOCKED at how much less he could get the exact same coverage elsewhere and called our agent. NO budging at all. So we switched immediately and I personally would never go back.
Michelle says
For what it’s worth, after my husband’s head on collision with the drunk driver I asked a lot of questions about how much insurance was enough and what company to go with. We had good coverage at the time (thank God!) but nothing remotely reasonable would have been enough.
Our lawyer told me that he didn’t like any of the insurance companies, but every injury attorney he knew had State Farm.
Michelle says
Forgot to add — we’ve lost the contents of our chest freezer. Except it was an adult who unplugged it and didn’t plug it back in. Gallons of breast milk. I would probably never have used it, but tossing it out under those circumstances was not a happy thing. (In hindsight, all of the space it was taking up wasn’t filled with expensive food….maybe it was a blessing in disguise?)