Are Your Georgia Auto Insurance Rates Rising?
Reader question:
What’s the point of a stupid renewal discount if my Georgia auto insurance rate stays the same or is higher every time I renew?!
Beth
Great question, Beth.
It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I’ve been getting my auto insurance coverage with the same company here in Georgia for a couple of years, and while I have been tracking what effect other discounts have on my auto insurance premium, the so called renewal discount has been pretty elusive. My auto insurance rate goes up every time, never down unless I apply a new discount to it or get a safer car; all things staying the same, my insurance quote will rise.
There are several reasons for this that neither we nor the car insurance company can control, such as:
- Cost of vehicles. As each year passes, it costs more to buy a car. A more expensive car will have a higher auto insurance rates.
- Cost of repairs. As vehicles become more expensive, so do their parts. The higher the cost to repair a car is, the higher the quote will be.
- Cost of health care. I went to the emergency room once and was given some aspirin and told to go home. A month later, I got a bill in the mail for five hundred dollars. I think you can see for yourself how that would affect your rate.
- Lawsuits. The number of lawsuits has stayed the same even as crashes with injuries have decreased, and the amount of money awarded is phenomenal.
On the bright side, while your auto insurance rate has a good chance of increasing each time you renew it, premiums as a whole are increasing less and less every year. The last year that the estimates were on record for, 2004, nationwide premiums only went up 3.4%, part of a trend of lower and lower increases that should be even better this year and in 2008, if the trend follows through.
People aren’t filing as many claims as they used to, and this is part of the factors that temper the rise of your insurance rate. Another thing that helps out is that cars are made more safely with features that both prevent accidents and make them less damaging when they do happen.
However, since even with the lower number of claims, car insurance companies are spending more on each individual claim, you will likely only see your rate rise for years to come, although we could have an actual decrease in our future.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
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