Car insurance savings

I saved 57.7 percent by switching from my insurance agent to my insurance agent.

Data broker activity has been on full display for me this week. First, all the competitor mailers came about the same time this month, right when my six-month premium was coming due. Then, it became clear insurance companies can see anyone's complete auto insurance history once you're applying for insurance.

Once I started getting prices, not a single one was less than my current carrier. One was slightly lower, another was less than half, and another had a six-month premium that looked like a monthly price.

The problem with the monthly price carrier was it was all online and had no agent. I prefer to have someone local I can call.

I tweaked a few things and locked in what I wanted with the half-price carrier. Then I called my current agent back. They had told me they would try to get me a price as if I were a new customer, and came back with a price that was close to the one that had been slightly lower. No thank you. I asked them to cancel.

Then they asked if I'd be willing to let them get a price with the upstart carrier! Apparently they have a contract and can do business with them so that when people can't get insurance with the longtime carrier, they can get it through the upstart at a lower price. (??) They ran the application, did a little tweaking, and that price was now lower than the half-price carrier.

It took a little calculating on my end to compare apples-to-apples since different carriers like to give different preference to different premium terms. In this case, the six-month price is the just-right, not-too-long, not-too-short term for the lowest-price premium. I decided to go with it.

Hopefully this does not end up like new wine in an old wineskin.