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Sunday, February 16th
Based on their name, it's no surprise that one of Progressive's main goals is progress. They boast that their unparalleled coverage and unwavering care help their customers make progress whether it be on the road, in the home, or in business. Progressive was founded in 1937 and has grown to have 27.4 million policies in force. Also, we're not here to judge who makes the best insurance commercials, but if we had to vote, then Progressive would take the cake. If you have some down time, do a quick search to watch all their Dr. Rick commercials and they'll have you rolling with laughter.
All you need from the website
Progressive offers protection for your home and personal property in addition to liability coverage in the event that you're responsible for another person's injury or damage to their property. The standard coverages include dwelling, loss of use, liability, and personal property. If you want to go beyond the basics, you can consider adding water backup and sump discharge or overflow coverage, and personal injury. Progressive has a list of "perils” you're protected against like fire or lightning, smoke, theft, volcanic eruption, vandalism, damage from falling trees, and more. What they don't cover is floods, earthquakes, landslides, or sinkholes and we don't see any options for adding this coverage on.
Fast online quote
If you want a good overview of what Progressive offers and an explanation of some of the terms involved, their website does a good job of simplifying it all for you to breeze through. From Progressive's website you can also make payments, report claims, and get a free quote. As soon as you add your address, Progressive will pull up the details it found that already exist online about your home. This really speeds up the process. Next you'll provide updated details about the interior and exterior to make sure Progressive has a good idea of what matters when it comes to covering your home in a disaster.
Buy online or through an agent
Our quote was a lot lower than what we've received from some other companies. However, the coverage wasn't as great. For example, we only were going to get about ⅓ of what it would actually cost to rebuild our home. To be fair, at the end of the quote questionnaire we did indicate that a lower price was more important to us than extensive coverage. We could either buy this policy right from Progressive's website, or call one of their representatives and do it over the phone. In our case, we'd prefer to work with an agent at this point to see what the cost would be to adjust our policy to include more coverage. Most likely some tweaks could be made for most people to make sure they are happy with their price and they aren't under-insured.
Ways to lower your premium
If you decide to get auto insurance on top of your homeowners insurance with Progressive, they say you'll save an average of 7% on auto. Other ways you might get a lower premium are if you have safety and alarm systems installed on your property, if you're purchasing a home or switching over from renters insurance, receiving home insurance documents by email instead of paper, having a brand new home, paying the 12-month policy upfront, and more. These things will likely be calculated into your online quote as you go.
Rampant disappointment
Despite their "A” rating from the Better Business Bureau, comprehensive website, fast and easy quotes, and competitive pricing, it seems that Progressive is not as great as they appear. Based on nearly 1,000 reviews, Progressive scores extremely low among their customers. Many people agree that their coverage isn't actually enough to take care of repairing or rebuilding their home in the case of an emergency. Some people feel like customer service leaves them in the dust when they need them the most, so if you're able to get a local agent that you could easily get in contact with either by phone or in-person, that would be your safest bet.
Leery of Progressive
Overall, we could hardly find anyone with really good things to say about Progressive. For now we are really leery about going with them for home insurance. Sometimes low prices don't actually pay off in the end.
No one wants to imagine their home getting overrun with water damage, enduring a natural disaster, having a fire destroy their property, or having to deal with theft, but it happens. Everyone should have homeowner's insurance for peace of mind and to be taken care of in case of an emergency or unfortunate occurrence. In fact, it's so important that you can't take out a mortgage anymore unless you can prove you have homeowner's insurance in place.
It makes sense that banks don't want to hand over a loan with the risk that something will happen to the property and render the owner unable to continue paying their mortgage. Since your home is such an important asset, you don't want to risk being responsible for thousands of dollars in costs if unexpected damage or destruction were to occur. Being uninsured in a time of crisis could result in total financial ruin.
Most people don't have enough cash in the bank to cover a major portion of or even the entire cost of their home. It's probably the last thing you want to spend your money on when you're already paying a monthly mortgage. Having good home insurance is the best way to stay financially protected and ensure that you always have what it takes to repair and maintain your house if something goes wrong.
If you're a new homeowner, it may seem a little overwhelming to find an insurance policy. Luckily there are lots of companies available these days for you to choose from. Companies have gotten better at using layman's terms and really spelling out all their policies for you, so that you know what you'll be paying monthly, what the policy covers, and how to make a claim if you need to. Usually a company will offer a few different price ranges you can choose from, depending on how much coverage you think you need, and you can easily compare them to decide what works best with your budget and covers the risks that most threaten your property and surrounding area.
We've done some of the heavy lifting for you here by going over the process different companies require for you to get quotes and reviewing what people have to say about their customer service and follow-through with claims. When it comes to a situation regarding insurance, you don't want to mess around. We can't overstate the importance of being able to rely on a company that's affordable and will hold your hand while you navigate stressful situations.
Since there are quite a few insurance companies to choose from that have different types of policies, keep the following things in mind when choosing who to go with:
Top Consumer Reviews has researched the most important things you'd need to know about choosing a home insurance plan. We hope this information helps you find peace of mind knowing that one of your most valuable assets is protected. We've tried to make things as easy as possible for you to feel confident in your decision about which home insurance company to go with.
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