Do you know who I’m talking about now? Good!

I received my biannual billing statement from State Farm and the cost of my insurance jumped about $150 per year. As you might imagine, I was shocked by the jump considering that I don’t get into any accidents, I don’t get any tickets, I’m a good driver, I haven’t purchased a new car in a couple of years, etc. The only thought that came to my mind after reading that bill was, “What gives?!”

After reviewing the bill to make sure that there weren’t any weird or one-time charges included, I called my local State Farm agent. This is the agent that I’ve been using since I first received my driver’s license back in the late 1990s, so we have a generally good history together. I’ve never had a claim or any other problem with my insurance during the entire time that I’ve used State Farm. When the woman answered the phone at the agent’s office, I explained my concern and asked why my rate was increased such a large amount. She responded that she had to check with one of the senior folks, but that I should wait on hold – so I did. To their credit, I was only on hold for a few seconds before they transferred me to one of the more senior associates (who I’ve sat down with and discussed insurance with one-on-one in the past).

The senior associate told me that State Farm just changed their rates and my rate went up. I responded that I was aware of this change, but I wanted to know why my rate would go up after I’ve done nothing but pay my bill every 6 months like a good, faithful customer. They said that there was nothing they could do about it – the rates just went up and that was the cause of the increase. I said that if my rate didn’t return to what it used to be, then instead of gaining my original rate plus this nearly 20% increase, they were going to lose 100% of my payment because I was going to cancel.

Now, I’m not a big believer in the customer always being right. However, I think I made a decent case. Here I was paying nearly $1,000 per year to this insurance company and I wasn’t even using their services. They wanted even more money from me and I said no… and they opted to lose all of my business instead of saving my already exorbitant annual payments.

In a remarkable display of poor customer service, the folks at my State Farm office stood their ground and I canceled my coverage. How a company can happily accept losing all of my business – after 15+ years of being a good, paying customer – and not even try to fight to keep my business is beyond me. This was one of the poorest examples of customer service that I’ve ever seen.

But hey, I saved more than 15% in less than 15 minutes by switching to Geico!

Palisades Car Insurance is starting their search for the nicest drives in New Jersey. We are asking New Jersey-ians to submit their nicest drives in text, photo, or video so that everyone can enjoy the best NJ has to offer. The best part is that everyone submitting a nice drive will be entered to win one of twenty-five $50 gas cards!

Submissions will last until June 22. At the end of June, Palisades will share its top 10 drives (as selected by an expert panel of Palisades Crashbusters ® – people who drive over 300,000 miles a year) on its website.

For submissions please visit Palisades.com/nicedrives and fill out the form.

Why the nicest drives? Well, Palisades is the nice New Jersey car insurance company. So nice, that its service is ranked as one of the highest in the state — better than Allstate, GEICO, State Farm, Progressive, and others. (Source: Palisades was ranked far superior to many national insurance brands – including Progressive, GEICO and State Farm – on how well its policies and practices supported quality and speed of repairs, as well as the overall customer experience according to a recent independent survey of NJ body shops conducted by USA/Direct, Inc.)

There you have it – looks like some of you could have the opportunity to win a free gas card. Not a bad deal for entering some information on a website.