My mom has been driving for thirty-seven years. In all that time, she’d never switched insurance companies. Not once. State Farm had been handling our family’s cars since before I was born, and honestly, none of us ever questioned it. That’s just what you did in our house – you stayed loyal to what worked.
But last spring, everything changed when my younger brother Jake totaled his Honda Civic.
The Accident That Changed Everything
It was a Tuesday morning in March. Jake was driving to his part-time job at the local grocery store when someone ran a red light and slammed into his driver’s side door. Thank God he walked away with just some bruises and a sore neck, but his car was completely destroyed.
That’s when we learned something pretty shocking about our “reliable” insurance company. The claim process took forever. And I mean forever. We’re talking six weeks of phone calls, paperwork, and my mom getting increasingly frustrated with different representatives who seemed to have no idea what the previous person had told her.
The final straw came when they offered Jake $3,200 for his car. The same car we’d bought for $8,500 just eighteen months earlier. My mom literally laughed when the adjuster told her that number over the phone.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “My son could barely buy a bicycle for that amount.”
Enter Progressive (And My Skeptical Family)
My dad’s coworker had been raving about Progressive for months. “Their Snapshot thing saved me like $600 last year,” he kept saying. “Plus, when my daughter got rear-ended, they had everything sorted out in three days.”
Three days. We were on week six with State Farm and still getting the runaround.
So my mom decided to get a quote. Just to see, she said. She wasn’t actually planning to switch – she just wanted to know what we were missing.
The quote came back at $127 less per month than what we were paying. For better coverage. With a $500 lower deductible.
My dad stared at the computer screen for a solid minute. “This has to be a mistake,” he said.
It wasn’t.
The Real Test: Our First Progressive Claim
Here’s the thing about insurance – you never really know how good it is until something goes wrong. We’d learned that lesson the hard way with State Farm. So when my mom backed into a concrete pole in a parking garage six months after switching to Progressive, we were all holding our breath.
The damage wasn’t terrible – a dented bumper and some scraped paint – but it was going to cost money to fix. Money we didn’t really have sitting around.
My mom called Progressive’s claim number at 2:47 PM on a Thursday. I know the exact time because she wrote it down, expecting another weeks-long battle like we’d had before.
By 3:15 PM, she had a claim number, photos uploaded through their app, and three approved repair shops within five miles of our house to choose from.
The car was fixed and back in our driveway by the following Tuesday.
“This is how insurance is supposed to work,” my dad said when he picked up the car. The total out-of-pocket cost? Zero dollars. Not even a deductible because Progressive covered everything under their “minor damage” policy.
What Actually Makes Progressive Different (From Someone Who’s Used Both)
After a year with Progressive, here’s what I’ve noticed that actually matters:
The app doesn’t suck. I know that sounds weird to say about insurance, but their mobile app is genuinely useful. You can file claims, take photos, track everything, and even pay your bill without wanting to throw your phone across the room. State Farm’s app felt like it was designed in 2003 and never updated.
They actually answer the phone. When you call Progressive, you talk to a real person within a couple of minutes. Not an automated system that keeps you in phone tree hell for twenty minutes before maybe connecting you to someone who might be able to help.
The Snapshot program is real money. My mom was skeptical about letting them monitor her driving, but the discount was too good to pass up. After six months, our rate dropped by another $34 per month. All she had to do was plug a little device into the car and drive normally. She’s not the world’s most careful driver, but apparently she’s careful enough.
The Money Talk (Because Let’s Be Honest, That’s What Matters)
Look, I’m not going to pretend that insurance is exciting. Nobody wakes up thinking “I can’t wait to pay my car insurance premium today!” But when you’re saving real money – money you can spend on literally anything else – it matters.
Our family went from paying $312 per month for three cars to paying $198 per month. That’s $114 in savings every single month. Over a year, that’s $1,368 back in our pockets.
What did we do with that money? My parents finally took their anniversary trip to Colorado that they’d been talking about for years. Jake saved up for a better used car to replace his totaled Civic. I put some away for college textbooks.
None of that would have happened if we’d stayed with State Farm out of habit.
The Stuff They Don’t Tell You in the Commercials
Progressive isn’t perfect. No insurance company is. Here are the real pros and cons after using them for over a year:
What’s actually good:
- Claims get handled fast (like, genuinely fast)
- The discounts are real and they add up
- Their customer service people seem to actually want to help you
- You can bundle everything – home, auto, motorcycle, whatever
- The rates have stayed stable (no surprise increases after six months)
What’s annoying:
- The Snapshot program requires you to remember to plug the device in every time you drive (though they have an app version now)
- Some of their online account features are buried in weird menu locations
- They send you a lot of promotional emails (but you can unsubscribe)
Would We Switch Again?
My mom gets asked this question a lot by her friends who are thinking about changing insurance companies. Her answer is always the same: “Why would I switch away from something that actually works?”
When Jake bought his newer car last month, adding it to our Progressive policy took exactly one phone call and cost $23 more per month. When we had State Farm, adding a car was like applying for a mortgage – paperwork, waiting, more paperwork, phone calls to clarify the paperwork.
The difference is night and day.
If You’re Thinking About Making the Switch
Here’s my advice, based on watching my family go through this whole process:
Get a quote, even if you’re happy with your current company. It takes five minutes online and costs you nothing. You might be surprised by how much you could save.
Ask about all the discounts. Progressive has discounts for everything – good drivers, multiple cars, homeowners, students, military, you name it. They don’t always mention all of them upfront, so ask.
Read the actual policy details. I know, nobody wants to read insurance paperwork. But spend fifteen minutes understanding what you’re buying. The coverage limits, deductibles, and exclusions matter when something actually happens.
Try the Snapshot program if they offer it. The worst case scenario is you don’t save any extra money. The best case is you save a few hundred dollars a year for driving the way you already drive.
The Bottom Line
A year ago, my family thought all insurance companies were basically the same. We figured you paid your premium, hoped nothing bad happened, and dealt with whatever hassle came up when something did go wrong.
Progressive changed that assumption completely. Good insurance doesn’t have to be expensive, and it definitely doesn’t have to be a nightmare when you actually need it.
Will Progressive be the right choice for everyone? Probably not. But for our family – two working parents, three cars, and a college-aged kid who occasionally drives like he’s in a video game – they’ve been exactly what we needed.
And honestly, after watching my mom go from dreading insurance conversations to actually recommending Progressive to her book club friends, I think that says everything you need to know about the difference good customer service can make.
Sarah Chen is a college junior studying business administration. When she’s not writing about her family’s adventures with adulting, she can be found trying to convince her parents that yes, she really does need another coffee maker for her dorm room.
