Like this:

For 15 years I was a State Farm customer.  Ever since I was 16.  My family has been with them 30+ years.  In my hometown of Frederick, MD we had an amazing agent – Jay Forney.  I will still sing his praises today, so if anyone is in the Frederick area you can’t go wrong with Jay.  But sadly, when I moved out of state for college and then eventually to California, I had to change agents.  Bye-bye Jay.  Hello hell.

It’s was tolerable for awhile.  Until I was in a minor fender bender with another vehicle also insured by State Farm.  The accident was found to be the other drivers fault (he backed into me) and should have in theory been an easy claim.

Or worse experience of my life.

First, I was told to hold off filing my claim, to wait for the other party to file a claim so I could file under theirs and not worry about being reimbursed for my deductible and rental car.  So I waited.  And waited.  Finally I was able to file a claim and take my car in to a claim inspector and body shop.  I was told I could take it to L Lafrano and Sons and inspector Joe would take care of me.  Joe was incredibly difficult to work with, refused to do the body work until the mechanical work was done elsewhere and then chastised me for not bring my car in sooner, even though I had been instructed by a claim worker otherwise.  When I called to complain he tried to cover his ass saying the car was undriveable and he was afraid they would damage it more.  Funny, he never said any of that to me.  And if the car was undriveable how did I get it to my mechanic?  If I had been told that I would have had it towed from the body shop!  Then I find out that since I left the body shop I am going to be mailed a check for the estimate and that’s all I get.  So if it costs more, well I’m outta luck and stuck footing the rest of the bill.  I called and spoke to 6 different claims adjusters throughout the day and 3 supervisors and none could 1) fix my claim 2) apologize for all the misinformation I had been told over the months waiting to get my car fixed (except one – Jack)  and 3) try and satisfy a 15 year customer.  I was furious not so much that human error occurred, but that no one in the company could find a way to try to right the wrong and satisfy me.  In this day and age not many businesses have customers that stick around that long.  No matter who I called, no one could do anything.  I find that hard to believe.  It was they simply didn’t feel like it.  But luckily in this day and age I have choices.  So I chose to leave.

After some research I decided to go with USAA.  Now, it might still be the honeymoon phase but I’ve never done anything as easy as getting a policy with them.  It’s been a breeze and I have better coverage (I’m paranoid, I over insure so this feat seemed impossible at first) for a fraction of the price as well.  I plan on switching to my banking with them as well.

I hope the CEO of State Farm sees this.  I doubt he will, but he needs to learn that just because State Farm is a big company it doesn’t excuse shoddy treatment of paying customers.  And if you piss off enough customers you’ll see a hit.  It’s happened to plenty of big companies.  If someone had taken 5 minuets to placate me you would have saved yourself a customer.  But I wasn’t important enough to be bothered with.  It’s clearly my gain in the end, USAA has a great reputation and the money I’m saving will best be served elsewhere.

So thanks USAA for recognizing a valuable potential customer.  You were such a dream to work with you are getting even more business from me.  So take note State Farm, THAT is how you run a business.