A recent article by Consumer Affairs, Study Reveals Worst Insurers, reports that Allstate ranks as the worst insurer for consumers. The report is based on national interviews with attorneys who frequently handle insurance claims as well as a comprehensive investigation of thousands of legal documents and financial filings by the American Association for Justice.
The rankings are based on what the investigation found to be a distinct pattern of insurance greed; that is, insurance companies that avoid paying claims, use hardball tactics against their insured, reward executives with huge salaries, and raise premiums to increase profits. American Association for Justice CEO Jon Haber said that “While Allstate publicly touts its ‘good hand’ approach, it has instead privately instructed its agents to employ a ‘boxing gloves’ strategy against its policyholders. Allstate ducks, bobs and weaves to avoid paying claims to increase its profits.”
The report also points out that Allstate, State Farm, and Liberty Mutual all at one point hired the consulting giant McKinsey & Co. to help employ aggressive tactics designed to deny policyholder claims.
Based on our experience and dealings with Allstate and the hundreds of claims handled with them, we would have to agree with this study. I have found that although Allstate may have great agents in Utah, when someone is involved in an accident, they no longer work with agents, but instead are assigned an adjuster to handle their case, and Utah adjusters definetly employ boxing gloves instead of “good hands.”
We recently represented a woman who was insured with Allstate when she was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver. Since the driver was unable to be found, my client had to make an Uninsured Motorist claim under her policy with Allstate Insurance. However, Allstate offered her an amount that would require her to pay several thousand dollars out of pocket, even though she had “full coverage” with Allstate. They also required her to submit to a medical evalution by a doctor of their choice. Nearly two years later, we were able to take her claim to arbitration and were awarded more than twice what Allstate initally offered.