Posted On: March 7, 2006, 10:46 pm CST

Posted By: Al

I have been reading the posts concerning JD Power ranking of Farmers. Some of those posts, obviously posted by Farmers' Reps, tout Farmers as receiving the JD Power stamp of approval. One even claimed that JD Power ranked Farmers as 1st??? So giving those comments the benefit of doubt, I went to JD Power web site to see the rankings for myself. No where does it rank Farmers as #1 and in reality, the new rankings that I viewed gave Farmers a less than average rating. But that I guess is good news for Farmers employees.

If any person wants to take the time, they can do a state by state search of the insurance complaints filed for a given year. Some have that info right on the web while other states ask you to file a FOIL application. You will find the amount of complaints filed against any given insurance company and of those complaints, which were viable. Viable meaning that they were presented to that state DOI in a way that would promote their investigations. In other words, if you did not articulate in your complaint the DOI could only investigate on what you documented. If what you wrote couldn't be substantiated you lose. This didn't mean that you weren't wronged by your insurance company, just that you couldn't prove it. And unfortunately, most people can not communicate in written form that well.

So having said that, when you look at the complaints state by state, look at the total amount of complaints filed against any given company and not just the ones that the states acted on. You're going to find a lot of complaints, but unfortunately most of those customer complaints belong to Farmers. I know, I researched them to present in court. Kansas, Texas (regardless of what Faremers Agents state on this website)and California are among the worst rankings for Farmers. And please, be aware that Farmers operates under several different names in different states. It is important to note this when trying to accumulate this figure.

Perhaps it is as some say that Farmers are trying to change their deceitful ways.

I think not . . . no I am sure they are not.

I just had a recent run in with Farmers again. This time when one of their insured backed into my car, left the scene of the accident after I told them that the law officials were on the way. It took the police two days to find them and when they did, it was noted that this lady had tried to cover the damage to her car. She was given a ticket and had to appear in court. Still Farmers refused to pay for the damages to my car. When I talked to the Help Point Claims rep that was handling the claim she went from being a rep to a litigation specialist! That was because after telling me they weren't going to cover the claim I told them I had the local police re-open the investigation, put together an accident reconstruction team to testify in court where I would sue them if necessary. The next day Farmers and their claims rep/litigation specialist called from Virginia to state that they were going to pay. That they had realized their insured was lying to them. This took around two months! And yes this was recent.

If farmers is trying to improve their immage this is a very bad way to do so.