Maybe you read here that I recently bought a new Chevy Sonic to replace my twenty year old truck. Of course that also meant getting insurance for it. It turns out that since it has such a high safety rating that the insurance is actually cheaper than our four-year old HHR. I was certainly pleasantly surprised by that!
But getting insurance got me to thinking about all those commercials we see about them on TV. It seems that every company claims that if you buy their insurance you will save $xxx a year in premiums. How can they all make that claim? The one thing that started all the spiraling CEO pay was a thing that raced across corporate boards that said “We have an exceptional CEO so we will pay him 20% more than the average CEO pay”. Statistically it is impossible for every CEO to receive 20% more than the average. That very fact caused a race for the top in CEO pay.
You might think I got off track here but really I didn’t. Like the CEO pay every insurance company statistically can’t give a $500 savings if you switch to them. Somebody has to charge more. I am not much of a conspiracy theorist but I can see this possibility only if all the insurance companies got together and set up a bogus company that charges outrageous rates. Then when some fool was stupid enough to actually buy from them they notified the next company in line to offer to insure him at $xxx savings per year. I know this gets kind of complicated but most conspiracies are like that. Is there some ABC Insurance company out there that charges much higher rates than anyone else? That is the only way all the claims can be true…
I imagine the highest paying jobs, besides CEO and corporate boards that is, is probably the spinners or whatever their official name is. These are the guys to take any situation and spin it into something complete untrue but factually not entirely wrong. Of course the epitome of this is in the political realm but these guys exist in almost every business now days. Many of them are now called lobbyists. Their purpose is to make an outrageous claim that can’t be entirely disproven.
Ok, silly Thursday is done now….
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 
Here’s the way it really works . . . every auto insurance company has it’s pricing niche, and it creates a driver profile that matches it’s particular sweet spot. So, yes, actually – it is entirely possible for every single company to have “lower rates” . . . but only for the particular profile being shown. If you read the small print, you’ll be able to see the exact details for the driver profile being used for the rate comparison by any given company.
(Possibly more than you cared to know, but I had 16 years in this industry prior to my retirement. :-)
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Hi Tamara. Thanks for the input but like you said it is probably more than I really care to know and you did blow a hole in my conspiracy story :) So every insurance company has a different exact profile where they will give significant discounts. I wonder what would happen if two companies had the same profile? I think about this totally weird stuff every once in a while.
BTW… I really enjoy your blog. It is as if I can enjoy a few more road trips by seeing where you have been. It sounds like you are having a ball. Keep it up…
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If two companies have the same profile, or sweet spot, you can beat they’ll leave their competition out of the rating chart altogether! Sometimes the companies you don’t see listed, aren’t being listed because they are actually cheaper!
And yes, my hubby and I are indeed RV fanatics . . . thank goodness it’s a relatively inexpensive way to travel once, ahem, you’ve invested in the RV!
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Unfortunately no, I just can’t get my wife away from home that long or often. But I would love to have one and have the corresponding freedom. Thanks for sharing your experiences in that regard.
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