It’s bad enough the amount of money we pay for real insurance let alone finding out we’ve paid for a fake car insurance policy.

Be wary of agents that sell fake car insurance.

Nobody likes to be scammed, especially when it comes to fake car insurance. Paying for fake car insurance not only steals money from your pocket, it also leaves you with gaps in your insurance coverage that can leave you subject to fines and penalties from the state. Not to mention that these gaps in coverage also can increase your insurance premium when you do end up with real insurance coverage.

Protect Yourself from Fake Insurance Agents

There are a number of things you can do to protect yourself from being scammed by a fake insurance agent. First, never buy from someone that calls you on the phone selling insurance. Second, never purchase insurance from anyone selling insurance door to door. Finally, never purchase insurance from someone that refuses to show you their agent license when you request to see it, because it is not hanging on their wall.

What to Look For with Fake Car Insurance

Recently a fraudulent insurance agent was caught in Michigan because there were spelling errors in the insurance documentation they provided to their victims (insurancejournal.com). Because real insurance companies hire professionals to proofread their documents you won’t find spelling errors in them.

Other ways you can tell you have fake car insurance:

• The phone number for the insurance company on your insurance cards is disconnected.
• The address for your insurance company is not in the United States.
• Your original insurance cards look like duplicates when you get them in the mail.
• You are not given temporary or permanent proof of insurance cards when you purchase your insurance.
• The address on your insurance papers is not yours.
• You are not given a receipt for the insurance premium you paid for the policy.

Reporting Fake Car Insurance

If you find out that you have been the victim of insurance fraud, you need to report the situation to the correct entities. First, report it to the Insurance Commissioner or Department of Insurance in your state. They can verify if the person that sold you insurance has a license to do so, or even if there is already an ongoing investigation.

You will also want to report the scam to the police and keep a copy of the policy report; you will need this report later down the road.

Recovering from Fake Car Insurance

Once you find out you have been a victim of a fake car insurance scam, you need to talk to your bank about any payments you made to the fake agent or any automatic withdrawals you set up with them. You don’t want them to get any more money than they already have from you.

Keep verification of all bank account changes or cancelled payments that you had to conduct through your bank because of this incident. If you can, get letters from the bank stating why you requested the actions. Also keep every report you make to the police and the insurance authorities in your state in regards to the incident, as well as the fake car insurance documents you have from the fake agent.

Be proactive and talk to the DMV about the incident in order to prevent being fined and having your vehicle registration and driver’s license suspended.

Immediately get new insurance coverage with a legitimate insurance agent. Unfortunately, you are going to need to plead your case with the new insurance company as to why there is a gap in your legitimate insurance coverage. If you provide the verification that you have reported the scam to the insurance authorities and the police, most insurance companies will understand and won’t penalize you for being a victim of a fake car insurance scam.

Consider these pieces of insurance information when you are shopping around for a new car.

Don’t forget about the price of your insurance coverage when you are shopping around for a new car.

When people start looking at buying a new car, the insurance premium for the new vehicle is one of the last things they consider. They look at the car they want, the cost of that car, the gas mileage, the maintenance costs, and the financing rates all before they remember that they are also going to have to be able to afford the insurance rates also.

So before you get your heart set on a new car, consider some of these insurance premium affecting issues as you are shopping.

Insurance Information Number One: Safety Ratings

How safe a vehicle is will ultimately affect a vehicle’s insurance premium. You can find results of safety testing through the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The coverages affected the most by a vehicle’s safety ratings are the coverages that pay for the medical bills of people inside your vehicle. These coverages are known as medical payments and personal injury protection. Ultimately, the higher the safety rating is for a vehicle the lower the premium on these coverages

Insurance Information Number Two: Price

How much a vehicle is will have a direct effect on how much your comprehensive and collision coverage will be. The higher the price tag on the vehicle, the higher the insurance premium for these two coverages will be.

The price of the vehicle affects these coverages because it determines how much an insurance company will have to pay out if you were to get into an accident. For example, the collision coverage for a 1989 Buick Skylark is going to be cheaper than a 2012 Mercedes Benz because the cost of the parts to fix the Mercedes is going to be considerably higher than the Skylark. Insurance companies don’t like losing money, so they are going to charge more for the Mercedes than the Buick to make up for the cost difference.

Insurance Information Number Three: Image

Most of us have seen the Charlie Sheen commercials for FIAT. Using this type of a spokesperson further amplifies the “bad boy” image that FIAT wants. However, it also helps to increase the insurance premium for this car.

The more bad boys drive this vehicle and get into high-speed or DUI/DWI car accidents, the worse the statistics become for this vehicle. When an insurance company sets insurance rates, they are going to set the rates higher for this type of vehicle because it has a higher chance of being in a car accident according to statistics.

On the other hand, when they look at vehicles like a minivan or a station wagon, the rates will be lower because the vehicle has a reputation of being a family type vehicle. These family vehicles don’t typically have drivers that take a lot of risks while driving because they have families to think about, so the statistics for these types of vehicles show that they have a lower chance of being in an accident.

Don’t Depend on This Insurance Information Alone

Because insurance varies from one person to the next don’t assume because your friend’s insurance premium went up or down when they purchased the same vehicle you are looking at that yours will do the same. The only true way to know what your insurance will do when you add this new vehicle is to contact your insurance agent and get a quote.

That way all of your personal information and discounts will be applied to the potential premium of the vehicle you are looking at purchasing, and it will give you a better idea of what insurance premium you can expect. The above insurance information is more of a guideline for you to consider when you start shopping around for a new car.

Switching your old car insurance for inexpensive car insurance is a great way to start the New Year.

Ring in the New Year with inexpensive car insurance.

Do you have an inexpensive car insurance policy? If you can’t answer that question, it’s time to start taking a look at your coverage. Since we are all so busy with New Year’s resolutions and making our lives better for the next year, now is the perfect time to start working towards a better insurance policy as well.

Clean House to get Inexpensive Car Insurance

To start your New Year’s path to inexpensive car insurance, you need to review your old insurance policy, first. Go through each coverage carefully and decide if you have enough insurance coverage, too much coverage or don’t have enough insurance coverage on your current policy.

For example, if you have a vehicle that is in storage and not being driven during the winter months you don’t need coverages like liability, collision or rental car coverage on it. If you have multiple vehicles in your household, you probably don’t need to have rental car coverage.

Go through your policy, and then talk to your insurance agent about what coverages you actually need or don’t need. Make sure to let them know that you are going to shop around to different companies as well, so they actually work towards giving you a fair assessment to be comparative with the other insurance quotes. Otherwise, they may try to talk you into keeping or purchasing coverages that you don’t actually need.

Shop Around for Inexpensive Car Insurance

It is always a good thing to shop around for new car insurance every now and then. Insurance premiums and discounts are different from one company to another and you never know what insurance company is going to have the better rates.

Insurance companies are also granted permission for rate increases at different times. This means that your insurance company may have been granted permission to raise your premium recently, while another company may not have requested an increase lately. This leaves the possibility that the other company may be able to offer a better rate for the same coverage.

Get Inexpensive Car Insurance by Checking Your Records

Insurance companies are not always right, so don’t assume yours is. They make mistakes on little things like not spelling names correctly, and they make mistakes on big things like increasing your premium for a ticket or car accident that isn’t yours.

Every ticket or accident you are being charged for should be listed on the declarations page of your insurance policy. Make sure that anything you are being charged with is your and that you are being charge correctly.

If you find accidents or tickets that are not yours, or you find not-at-fault accidents listed as at-fault accidents contact your insurance company to make the correction. This is one of the fastest ways to decrease your insurance premium. By making corrections to your policy and making sure that the corrections go back to when you were first charged with them, you may find your inexpensive car insurance with the company you are already with.

Being a suspect in the car theft of their own vehicle is not what most victims expect.

Being blamed for the car theft of you own vehicle is an unfortunate reality.

The sinking feeling you feel in your stomach when you discover that you have been a victim of car theft is horrible. But it is nothing compared to the feeling you get when your own car insurance company accuses you of possibly being the one who stole your car.

If you find yourself a suspect, there is nothing to panic about if you are innocent. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be on your guard and submit every personal piece of information your insurance company asks for either.

Why You Could Be a Suspect in Your Own Car Theft

Insurance companies are don’t like paying out claims as we all know, but they are also very sensitive to people trying to scam them out of more money than they are entitled to. Many people don’t think about it, but insurance companies are also victims of being scammed out of claim money for incidents that never happened or were staged; which is why they suspect everyone of trying to cheat them now.

Unfortunately for you, this means that as soon as you report a car theft you will be the first person they suspect. The primary reason they will suspect you is because of the money you will be paid if your car is never recovered.

What the Insurance Company May Ask from You

When you file a car theft claim, some of the items your insurance company may ask for may make you feel like you are dealing with the police, instead of your insurance company. Per NASDAQ.com, they may ask for “Phone records, banking information, loan agreements, divorce decrees and other items of this nature may be requested by your auto insurance provider as it searches to see if you had motive or would benefit from your car being stolen.”

How to Protect Yourself from Your Insurance Company

The primary way to protect yourself from being suspected in your own car theft is to file a police report as soon as you have discovered the theft. At least if the police are involved in investigating the theft, the insurance company won’t be able to think that you are avoiding involving law enforcement because you did in fact set up your own car theft.

If your insurance company is asking for documents that you feel they have no business asking you for, you need to first tell them no. Usually if you tell them no, that the documents they are asking for have no bearing on your car theft claim they won’t press the matter if they know they have no legal right to them.

However, if they persist you need to tell them that you will be contacting the Insurance Commissioner or Department of Insurance in your state to verify that they have a right to those documents.

You can also advise them that you will be consulting an attorney. But as soon as you say attorney many claims adjusters will tell you that they can no longer speak with you about the claim and that your attorney will need to send them a Letter of Representation before the claim can go any further. So use the attorney threat only as a last resort, or if you actually plan on consulting an attorney for your car theft claim.

Teen drivers follow the example they think their parents set when it comes to distracted driving.

What distracted driving does your teen see you doing?

The adage of “Do as I say and not as I do” needs to be changed to “Do as I actually do and not as you think I do” when it comes to teens views of their parent’s distracted driving habits. Per research results teens think that parents have worse distracted driving habits than they actually do, and they use this misconception to justify their own bad distracted driving habits.

What Qualifies as Distracted Driving

Distracted driving is anything that takes your focus off the road. It can include:

• Texting
• Eating
• Changing music
• Talking on a cellphone
• Looking for something
• Dealing with passengers
• Putting on makeup

The Distracted Driving Teens Think They See

A research study done by the University of Michigan and Toyota found “Overall, teens think that their parents engage in distracted driving behaviors more often than may be the case, which may allow them to justify certain high-risk behaviors behind the wheel.” (Ray Bingham, a research professor on this study).

When teens were asked the rates at which they see their parents engage in distracted driving, they all reported percentages higher than what their parents reported doing. They believed that their parents used music devices 32% of the time they were driving, dealt with directions 71% and dealt with passenger issues 85%.

How a Teens Perception Affects Their Distracted Driving Habits

Even though parents disputed the percentages that teens reported seeing their parents engage in distracted driving, teens still felt justified in engaging in distracted driving themselves. They believe that if it is okay for their parents to do it (regardless if they do or not) that it is okay for them to do it.

The study found that teens that think their parents engage in distracted driving, like eating or drinking are 3.4 times more likely to do so than those that don’t think that their parents do. This justification may have something to do with the mentality of a teen that wants to engage in this behavior anyways and are looking for an excuse to be able to do so. Because teens who had parents that actually engage in eating or drinking were only 2.2 times more likely to engage in that behavior.

What Parents Need to Do About Distracted Driving

Parents need to be aware that their older children and teens are always watching them. They take their cues on how to get through life from their parents and if their parents do it, then it must be okay for them to do it. So parents need to be very conscious of the distracted driving they engage in.

One incentive that parents need to consider is the financial ramifications of distracted driving. If their teen gets into an accident or gets a ticket for distracted driving, their insurance premium is going to skyrocket higher than it already is.