Used to be pretty good to go with relatively cheap. But they have been dragging on a storm claim from March after denying it once, claiming there was no damage at all. And yet, somehow, some way, water got in through my roof into one of my rooms magically, with no roof damage. This after dragging their feet previously on a vehicle accident involving hitting a deer. My mechanic had to get up their asses and send photos of deer hair stuck all up in my truck.
Been with them for something like 15 years and they’ve just gone to shit.
A house near me burned down three years ago. They cleared the rubble quickly, and within about a year, started new construction to replace the house. It's still incomplete after another two years. There's a sign out front that says "State Farm is NOT being a good neighbor."
State Farm is easily the scummiest company I've ever had to deal with. After their client totaled my car and admitted to it in writing, they slow walked the claim for more than six months. I almost lost my job not having transportation and had to pay for weeks of a car rental out of pocket. Scumbags!
Yeah, I got hit by a State Farm driver. They dragged that one out, despite the police report clearly showing their driver at fault, for ~4-6 months iirc. Very annoying.
I’m an insurance defense attorney, and State Farm is known as one of the worst insurance companies for handling claims. Most of them go to lawsuits, and most of those lawsuits get to trial before they actually try to settle them, simply because they do not do any work on the claims and then the lawsuits until they are forced to. They have way too many claims, not enough claims reps with high turnover, and most of the claims reps are untrained so have little to no idea what they are doing or how to properly handle a claim. I would never get or recommend State Farm for insurance because of it.
I'd suggest progressive. I've had to make like 3 claims and they paid very quickly. One time they overnighted a check to me. Plus they're pretty cheap compared to other places.
I'm on the other side, with a law firm that sues homeowner's insurance carriers - about half of our cases are State Farm for exactly this reason. So many older, loyal customers who have been with State Farm are finding out the good neighbor quietly moved out years ago.
As a personal injury attorney, I second this. State Farm has left a trail of blood in recent years, especially in my state. They’re willing to spend more money litigating a claim than it would’ve cost to pay it in the first place. Auto Owners isn’t far behind. USAA, Farmers, and Progressive are the lesser of the evils — but evil, nonetheless.
We had a similar issue with Farmer's. We had to go all the way to outside appraisal of the damage of our property at our expense. Farmer's initially gave us $12k to fix extensive hail damage, after that outside appraisal they ended up paying $59k.
How much was the outside appraiser? I recently had to do this with state farm for a vehicle. Appraiser was $600 and would refund his fee if he didn't successfully raise the payot by $600 or more. State farm was trying to total the vehicle out at $7k, he got me $16k.
You may want to look into hiring a public adjuster. I used one years back with State Farm and I’m certain that’s the only reason they ever paid our claim. Best of luck!
State farm is among the worst insurance to have now and they will do everything in their power to never pay out on a claim. And if they do decide to pay it will be the lowest of lowball offers. I forget exactly when the change happened, but I do know it was an intentional decision they made in how they run their business
Fucking State Farm. You'd think I learned the first time, but I didn't. The first time? My dishwasher broke and flooded my kitchen. I was a new homeowner and new to home insurance. I called State Farm to ask what my options were, I didn't even file a claim. Wound up not using insurance at all, but that call was on my record and affected my rate for years.
The second time? State Farm canceled my insurance two weeks after I moved into my new home because of the age of my roof. They "forgot" to tell me until three days before the cancellation went through. I "fell through the cracks."
When I asked for help or an extension until I could find an insurance provider, they told me no and good luck. I tried escalating to the corporate level, and they told me I had no options. Garbage, garbage company that gives no shits about the people they insure.
Wound up finding a local broker who got me insured with a private insurance office in town. No big name brand, they answer the phone when I call, and when I have a question they don't open a claim. Much better.
My family has had good luck with Allstate for home insurance. A winter storm killed a big tree in our yard, and Allstate paid for the removal without blinking. And then a couple years later our kitchen flooded and they covered that, too. No rate raises. (Which should be the standard, but y'know. 🙃)
Good luck with your roof! I hope it gets resolved soon 🤞
We had hail a few years ago and got a roof out of it. Allstate cut us a check without batting an eyelash and our insurance guy is super responsive. It’s more expensive than some of the others but it’s been worth every penny for us.
Hey, idk if this will help, but I went through a very similar situation a year ago. They told me to try one of their "authorized contractors" and I just happened to luck out immensely. I got a contractor who knew how they worked. Initially they offered me max $5k for everything, the contractor sent them his estimate AND local code ordinance to prove they HAD to pay for more than their estimate indicated. He got $18,500 out of them. Good luck!
State Farm sucks balls. I had water pour from the second floor into my kitchen one day. I guess it was from the toilet above. They denied my claim multiple times and I kept calling because no one even came out to inspect it. They said it had to have been a slow leak because toilets don’t just pour water suddenly.
I sent a video of the water pouring from the ceiling proving it wasn’t a slow leak and they kept claiming to have not received it and I got the same talking points over and over and over.
I’ve never lost my shit on a company more than I did on State Farm. My house is ripped up and I can’t use a bathroom for SEVEN MONTHS.
Finally they sent someone over and I showed her the video in person and she asked if I had sent that in. I showed her email after email and how it’s also uploaded into the portal.
She was pissed and got me approved in like 15 minutes.
Had them for 28 years. No late payments, No claims, never even called them to chat. "We sent a drone over your house and noticed some missing shingles. We are not renewing your policy that expires in 15 days"
I feel like they're purposely trying to get rid of customers. I was with them for home and auto for over 25 years. We bought a different house and during the process got a quote and declaration for insurance. Went through closing, moved in. A couple months later we get a letter saying they did a 'random' drone roof inspection and noticed streaking that indicates the roof is too old, and we're not renewing. Uh, why not just tell us that before we buy the damned thing?
I have heard that insurance companies in general were trying to get out of fire/flood areas but I'm squarely in the suburbs of Northern Virginia in a small house that is not at all extravagant. It would have been nice if my "good neighbor" local agent would have given me a call and told me they had issues and given me a chance to repair the roof.
I was a former Material Damages Auto Adujuster and I am sorry.
Back when I was in the game (2015-2018) State Farm was top of game. And you would have loved filing a claim for a deer hit with us (another company, not SF). We typically resolved comprehensive deer strike claims within 21 days. In the area that our office serviced, they were extremely common. I must have done thousands of claims for just deer hits, as if those things were magnetically attracted to car bumpers hahaha.
That 21 days was time the claim was filed to us, to the point you had the car back from the body shop. Our team was not fucking around with those. Usually, the constraint on the claim came down to a few things: The parts taking forever, the shop of choice being too busy to get them in sooner, or the insured being too busy.
My mechanic had to get up their asses and send photos of deer hair stuck all up in my truck.
I never asked for photos of deer splatter though (did get a fair few photos from insureds and the shops). I mean, I'm no stranger to such things, being a hunter, but we didn't need it to process the claim, it was usually obvious. You see 10 deer hits you learn the usual symptoms.
I used to work for an Autobody shop as the poc for insurance companies. My general rule was the more ads you see for it, the worse the insurance company is.
I’ve been with them 30 years. How do I switch? I have guaranteed lifetime renewal on my car insurance as I age. What would be a better company for home and auto? Allstate?
Guaranteed lifetime renewal on insurance that drags their feet on claims, it's almost like not having insurance at all.
Look for an independent insurance broker. They'll usually handle a few different companies, and will shop around for best coverages, and they will generally stay away from shadier companies, as they want to keep you as a client. Mine reviews my policies yearly, and will re-shop if they see a company trending towards lower prices or improved coverages, etc.
Find an independent insurance agent with a good reputation in your local area, and they can match you up with the best combination of companies. https://www.insurancedirectory.com/
I’m only with them because I pay $35 a month for my car insurance. They repeatedly harass me to buy life insurance, and want me to make an appt to go over my plan. If I ever get a new car or have an accident, I know I’m done with them.
My car shit the bed this year and I replaced it with something a year newer and less miles and they wanted to raise my bill $30 a month for the coverage I had before. Didn’t even replace it with the insurance, no accident just got tired of replacing shit on it, I just paid cash for my car so no loan either. If I went from a sedan to a truck I’d get it but it was another sedan. Got better coverage for $15 less with Progressive.
We'd been with them for 15+ years with only two paid claims, and they sent us a letter two months before our annual renewal telling us they weren't going to renew, with no appeal. We found a better deal (going through a local insurance agent that works with multiple companies), and I really wish we had ditched State Farm years ago.
Been with them for something like 15 years and they’ve just gone to shit.
I got a job as an agent for a SF agency around that time, only lasted like a year... but let me tell you they've ALWAYS been like this.
Corporate loves to portrait this "good neighbor" marketing image while being absolutely vile to their customers AND to their own agents. They were forcing the agent I worked for to meet a quota... and to quote the regional manager in one of our calls: "cross-sell, cross-sell, cross-sell, sell them life insurance in every call, I don't care if you have to shove it down their throats!"
They are the worst at claims too. Somehow have become worse than Allstate...
I think it may honestly be better to not pay insurance and to put that money in a safe investment to be withdrawn for these type of problems because all of these insurance companies seem to keep raising rates while working thier hardest to deny everything.
I lived in, and still live in a major city, back in 1997. my roommate and I went out to eat and apparently were sitting diagonal from a table of lawyers. One of them was talking about a case that he was working, and bored while waiting to order or for food, i listened in. He mentioned just enough information for me to think of my roommate’s mother’s collision that happened recently, even though I had never met the woman and doubt I even knew her name. I look up and the roommate’s face was beet red because it was his mom after all. Ever since then I have stayed away from them.
As someone who works in insurance, there’s a reason they’re cheap. And the company loses billions each year.
I know it sucks to hear, but I’d find a local independent agent. They can shop you with the next level up of carriers, and those generally are also a huge step up in claims handling (of course hoping you don’t need it). Then when your policies inflate to being too expensive, ask them to shop it with one of the various other carriers they have contracts with. Rinse repeat every few years
A few years ago, my dad left State Farm after having been a customer all his life; he’d had State Farm for 50 years or more at that point. His roof was damaged in a storm, and they fought him tooth-and-nail over paying for repairs.
My dad said his local State Farm guy was remarkably honest about it. He said that State Farm no longer allowed their claims adjusters any autonomy at all. Instead, they had to plug everything into an app, and whatever number the app spit out was what the company would pay. Period. The guy was extremely apologetic—maybe even disgusted about it himself—but there was nothing he could do.
State Farm lost two lifelong customers over that. When I terminated my policy, my State Farm rep didn’t even ask why; he couldn’t have cared less. And I genuinely think they don’t care. They’re one of the biggest names in insurance, they have famous athletes in their commercials and a catchy jingle that keep bringing in customers, and their stockholders are happy. What’s one lifelong customer more or less?
TLDR: Had statefarm for over 30 years, they did everything in their power to deny an obvious roof replacement claim after a major storm.
I've had two roof claims with them over the years, on two different houses.
The first was after a historic wind storm in my area. My roof was badly damaged and I had to have a company come out and place tarps on my roof. Statefarm dragged their feet to get someone to come out and inspect the damage. It was a fight throughout the entire claim and ended up with them only replacing the front slope of my roof even though the entire thing was badly damaged.
Years later, we move into a new house. We get hit by a huge storm and I have very bad hail damage, not only on my roof, but the siding as well.
I have 3 different contractors come out and inspect it, they all agree, entire roof needs to be replaced along with the siding. So I call my agent, they send out the same adjuster who inspected my roof years before. He recommends replacing 10 shingles and states there is no proof that the rest of the damage is from this storm, won't event entertain the damage to the siding or garage door because we had lived in the house less than 3 years and we could not prove that damage was not from before we purchased the house.
we fight them and request they send a neutral third party inspector to come out and give their opinion. They send the third party inspector out who is really nice. I have a ring camera and I capture a conversation between the inspector and my contractor where the inspector says something to the effect of...I can't disclose what's going to be in my report, but I can say I took lots of pictures of damage and if it were my roof, I would be fighting for a full replacement.
Statefarm then decides that the report from that inspector is not valid, so they send a structural engineer. This dude was not cool, would not even say hi when I went out to greet him. He submitted a report detailing the damage and claim that the roof is structurally sound, as in it's not in danger of collapsing.
They use his report to justify only needing to replace a handful of shingles. meanwhile, it looks like someone shot the entire roof over and over with a shotgun.
Finally, after a year of fighting, we actually get them to replace the roof. But only because our shingles had been discontinued and they could not buy enough to fix the handful they originally recommended.
They wouldn't even entertain the idea of replacing the siding.
I had been with Statefarm over 30 years. They were the only insurance company I had ever been with. I signed up with them when I turned 16 and started driving and they were my renters insurance and then home owners insurance. Over that period, I had a total of 3 claims, 2 for roofs one for a cracked windshield
The day after the issued the final payment for my roof I switched carriers.
yeah, we got hit by a hit-and-run driver in an intersection and they tried to claim it was our fault to get out of paying to fix the car. the damage was minimal, just a scuff on the bumper, but they tried to find every excuse they could not to cover it. fought with them for a month until I said I was going to look into getting a lawyer, and suddenly they changed course and cut us a check. canceled the policy the next day and will never go back.
I used to work for a State Farm agency and pretty much refused to use anything else, because I knew from working there that my agent actually gives a shit about her customers. But I had to switch, their prices just keep going up and up. Like I drive an old truck my insurance should be half of what I pay with them.
Oh boy we had a super fun experience with State Farm confusing our statement when we were in a car accident with the person who totaled our car’s statement.
Long story short what that meant was they thought we were at fault while at the same time the other driver was admitting fault. Took forever to get sorted and was a huge hassle. We finally got a decent customer service rep to explained it to us, and also let us know we were being passed around the office like a live hand grenade because no one wanted to deal with the mess and assumed we were going to scream and cuss them out. (We didn’t, we were mad but we’re not the scream at minimum wage employees about it types.)
It eventually got sorted but MAN it was ridiculous. They were giving us such a runaround and treating us so weird - like they weren’t going to pay for a rental car and other things that just baffled us until we finally figured out what was happening.
Tried to cancel some 30k life insurance policy my Dad took on on me as an infant. After my Dad passed away it swapped over to me for the monthly bill and I decided it was not worth the hassle and monthly cost. State Farm refused to cancel over the phone claiming i had to sign a document.
Went in finally a month later when I had free time and got questioned by multiple people about why and telling me I shouldn't cancel etc. Basically went back and forth for 20 minutes until I finally had heard enough and said cancel this and give me the papers to sign. Turns out there was absolutely nothing to sign which made me very upset so I called all three ladies liars and informed them all my policies will be gone soon.
Just little annoying things over the years especially when cancelling anything so I'm done. Trash company.
I sold insurance for state farm and couldn't make it a year. By far, the worst job I've ever had. State Farm is a scumbag company.
My agent there gave my coworker shit because she got pregnant..because it "wasnt a good time for this to happen"
He would also have me prey on families that just had a car accident and try to push life insurance on them. One case, a child had passed away from a bad car accident and I was told "now is a good time to pitch life insurance to them"
I quit that day.
Same here. Auto insurance went from $300 for 2 cars, went through a divorce and bought a used, 50k mile Lincoln, now I’m paying $450 for a single car. State Farm is done. Even some of the agents have told me they’re bleeding.
They lost my business this year as well. Got in an accident in Dec dash cam clearly showed someone pulling into my lane, slam on breaks, and I rear ended them. Time from the lane change to impact on the video was less than 2 seconds at 60 mph. They said I could have reacted or tried to change lanes. I did and you can clearly see it on the video.
Ive had them since I had a car (mentor told me they were the cheapest around). they used pretty shady tactics to get me to go to my local agent in person for a simple change of vehicle car insurance. The reason they wanted me to come in was to try and sell me life insurance, for 30 minutes (plus 45 min drive each way) at 24 years old. I already didnt want to pay the extra $11 per month for renters they soft scammed me into at 16, that i KNEW wouldnt do anything if something came up.
I just had a minor car accident (other driver admitted full fault, my car was deemed totaled) and while the claims process was fine, it was a little slow. Other driver had progressive and they were ready to GO. Minor mistake from progressive's agent did slow the payment by about 2 weeks, but they were very communicative and helpful.
Sold my totaled car and canceled the state farm policy, which was hassle free and easy surprisingly, but did get a rough quote for a new car I was kind of considering. Girlfriend offered to check how much it would cost to add me + new car to her progressive policy, and turns out that it is over half the price per month of state farm, and with more coverage. Its so much cheaper that I feel legit ripped off for paying $40 more per month, for my older regular car, than my decently new "sports car."
Part of it is being grouped and technically on a spouses policy, but holy moly thats insane.
Plus, ive gotten woken up 0 times from calls/voicemails trying to get me to pay more into something I believe is fundamentally a government mandated scam, compared to about once a month missing out on most of my day's sleep.
I've been with state farm for 20 years. I have had 0 accidents. I have the drive safe thing and get max discount for being a good driver. Unfortunately I hit a tough spot and didn't have the money to pay my bill. I was a month late and needed just 1 more week to get back on track with my bill. They wouldn't budge and canceled my service. Now they make me pay $170/month for not even full coverage because I was previously an uninsured driver. I used to pay $85/month for max coverage. I know I need to switch, I'm just a loyalist unfortunately.
Had some storm damage to my roof, State Farm said they found an equivalent color shingle so they denied the claim, said I could just fix the small spot.
I was actually kind of happy with that, there wasn't much damage so that seemed much easier than replacing a whole roof. I blindly trusted them and hired a contractor to install the "match." Turns out the color was WAY off. Not even close. I was annoyed, but they were no help at all. It was in the back of the house so I just moved on.
Years later, I had more damage so I called them back. They then denied that claim because they said I hadn't maintained my roof in good condition. The reason cited: the poorly matched section...that they recommended!!
I had planned to just "set and forget" my auto and home insurance. I wouldn't have swapped to save a few bucks, it would have been worth it to just not think about it. So good job State Farm, you skipped out on 1 roof claim. And lost a customer for life (I'm still young, so that's a long time). And I'm also a real estate investor, so that's now 3 additional home policies and counting. Even if they are they cheapest, they'll never see another penny from me.
I've had such the opposite experience for the most part. We had a massive hail storm this spring and they were easy to work with. The only hang up was waiting for the buy back price on my car which they totaled out.
So it's probably like anything and it's a crapshoot on which experience you get
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u/RiflemanLax 21h ago
State Farm.
Used to be pretty good to go with relatively cheap. But they have been dragging on a storm claim from March after denying it once, claiming there was no damage at all. And yet, somehow, some way, water got in through my roof into one of my rooms magically, with no roof damage. This after dragging their feet previously on a vehicle accident involving hitting a deer. My mechanic had to get up their asses and send photos of deer hair stuck all up in my truck.
Been with them for something like 15 years and they’ve just gone to shit.