Nationwide is not on my side!!!!

Unless you live in California, this may not be relevant to you. Currently, insurance companies are pulling out of the state, cancelling or not renewing home-owners insurance. I understand this is happening in Florida as well. Between the fires in California and the hurricanes in Florida, they are losing money.

If this were not bad enough, many are not renewing automobile policies unless the customer is willing to sign a new agreement at about double the cost. In fairness, part of this is due to the restrictions placed on companies during Covid when they could not raise rates.

At any rate, some companies have been upfront about leaving the state, like State Farm and Allstate, but some like Nationwide are deceptive and borderline deliberately misleading. Funny how the mottos have changed! State Farm was “like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”, has become “like a bad neighbor, State Farm, will borrow your tools and not return them, then move away.” Allstate was “you’re in good hands”, now it’s “oops, we dropped you.” And as my title states, Nationwide is not on my side.

We received a letter saying our agent through whom we had home and auto insurance was no longer under contract with Nationwide and as a result our home policy would not be renewed. When we pursued this with our agent, they said the only reason they were no longer under contract was because Nationwide is no longer writing home insurance in the state and is pulling out, which Nationwide failed to mention in their letter.

In inquiring about what to do, we were told by the agent that no company would just write home coverage and our policy needed to be bundled with an auto policy. They said they could get us signed with Mercury insurance when our current policies ran out.

A call to Nationwide resulted in confirmation of the home policy not being renewed but they would also be dropping the auto policy, which was not mentioned in the letter. Had I not inquired we would have been surprised with another letter of cancellation.

A call back to the agent resulted in Mercury offering a home policy but not auto unless we paid double. Our agent advised sticking with Nationwide for auto. What happened to having to be bundled? And they did not know our auto was about to be cancelled also.

We then called AAA, after all we have been members for 38 years. They would be glad to write an auto policy (again double the rate) but could not write a home policy. The reason being Nationwide’s letter did not say we were being dropped, it said our agent was no longer under contract, implying the issue was with our agent.

Fortunately, our neighbor suggested I with USAA since I am a veteran. Lo and behold, we now have both home and auto through USAA at reasonable rates.

The process of dealing with all of this took three days, many lengthy phone calls, and hours of online research. Our situation has been resolved, but I can only imagine how many others are going to have to deal with it.

So, if you are in California or Florida, I wish you well, and if you are from another state, I hope you are not faced with this crisis.