We're (hopefully) in the final stretch for purchasing a new house, and part of the paperwork for this was setting up homeowner's insurance for the new house.
We called the same company that sold us our current house's homeowner's policy, as well as our current auto insurance policy. The agent was able to get us quite a good deal on the homeowner's policy, and almost as an afterthought, she offered to check around for us on our auto insurance policy.
For several years we didn't have the best driving record. Right before I was married (2001), I had a speeding ticket and a fairly serious at-fault accident on my record. I called my (then) auto insurance carrier about a week before my policy was set to expire and asked why I hadn't received the renewal notice. Well, they weren't going to renew my policy. (Gee, thanks for letting me know, turds!) So I scrambled with only a week left before my insurance lapsed, and found a (higher-risk) carrier to sell me a policy.
I haven't had any more driving mishaps. In the meantime, though, my wife has had a couple of (not nearly as serious) accidents. One of them was a 2 MPH collision with a parked car. But my marks, and her marks, kept points on our policy until last year.
Back to this past week … The insurance agent looked at our current policy and made the comment that “we've probably done our time with X” and can get into a better auto insurance policy. (I'm not saying who “X” is because we were otherwise quite happy with them, and I don't want to appear ungrateful. I may have said who “X” is before in another post, so if you want to look, you're welcome to.) She ended up finding us an insurance policy that gave us the same coverage for about 15% less than the other carrier.
So if you've gotten yourself into second-tier (or lower) auto insurance because of your driving record, and have since gotten better, make it a point to shop around a bit. My wife and I were so happy to see that all of the points were off of our policy, we just saw the relative decrease in our premiums, and didn't look any further. We didn't think of looking outside of our current policy. But just like I had a good policy before I screwed up, I can get a good one again, and so can my wife. The good policies are likely better deals than the second-tier ones, even with a clean driving record.
I saved 100% on my auto insurance in 5 minutes by getting rid of my truck! Muahahaha….
That’s like… $600/year! Seriously though, I was just glad that my parking lot fender bender was ruled no-fault (or her fault, but I doubt that, because if anybody’s fault, it was my fault).