superswiss

I was wondering if others are seeing what I'm seeing. Over the last 3 years or so, I've seen my insurance premium for the RS5 increase steadily. I'm in California. From experience with past cars and my wife's car, I've seen premiums go down over the years as the value of the cars go down, but the RS5 is the opposite. I just got my renewal notice from Geico for the next 6 months, and the premium for the RS5 jumped by a whopping 52%. Everything went up. Bodily insurance premium, which can be attributed to rising healthcare costs, Property damage, which after talking to Geico seems to be due to an increase in distracted driving and resulting accidents, a phenomena that I think many of us have been observing with the growth of smartphone ownership, but a bit perplexing is that the premium for comprehensive and collision coverage jumped significantly, despite the value of the car going down. I've never had an at fault claim with the RS5, so the increase is due to other factors. I just re-quoted the premium for my upcoming '19 C63S Coupe and my premium will drop by about $800/year once I replace the RS5 with the C63S. About $200 will come from the new car discount, but the other $600 come from a significantly lower collision premium, despite being a brand new car with a much higher value. It's not about the money per se, but I think nobody likes to pay more and more for the same or less in return.

SCarGuy

I recently sold a car to someone who does underwriting for a pretty major carrier (not Geico). She told me that net value isn't the be all end all anymore for a lot of companies - it's the number of claims for that vehicle. I am sure this varies carrier by carrier, but it was an interesting conversation.

Granted, they didn't sell many RS5's to begin with, but, with I'd imagine a decent % going to their second owners now, it doesn't sound too weird that claims on those cars might be going up. The MB meanwhile is brand new, so claims will be extremely low. This happened on a few of my most recent purchases too.

superswiss

Thanks for the insight. I did some shopping today and got a quote from State Farm and Progressive. The State Farm quote was higher than what Geico quoted, but Progressive is almost 40% lower. Would save me almost $1200/year. That's a crazy difference. I did some research and I read things like the longer you stay with an insurance company and the longer you go without an accident, the higher the rates become. Supposedly your risk of having an accident goes up the longer you are w/o one and insurance companies think you are not going anywhere if you've been with them for a long time. It might be time to switch. I've been with them for over 10 years now. I've never had issues with Geico otherwise, so it's a known quantity whereas Progressive and other companies are an unknown to me in terms of customer service etc. but a 40% savings is hard to ignore. I might just wait until the new car is here and then reevaluate.

SCarGuy

superswiss

That's good feedback. Yes, I know about Liberty Mutual. I looked at them a while back and they were higher than Geico and I won't have an Audi for much longer. I just modified my Progressive quote for the new car and while still a bit cheaper it's not the huge difference I'm seeing with the RS5. The savings would be only about $400/year with Progressive over Geico. So something seems to be up with the RS5 rates at Geico. One thing I noticed is that Progressive has different usage categories. We don't commute with any of our cars, so Progessive has a "Pleasure" category in addition to "Personal use", which might account for the lower rates.

BlackOptic

BlackOptic

Ugh.

On the phone with my fav insurance company (not)... Nationwide.

They don't have the RS5 Sportback in their system! Yes on RS5 coupe, but it is seeming impossible to add this Sportback (4-door) car.

Nuts.

Ape Factory

I had Safeco for a long time after Allstate upped my rates for no reason. Had Safeco for a good 10 years and the rates started to go up despite no accidents and no tickets. I did move to a larger metropolitan area and expected an increase but it came once I had them here for two years. So I switched to MetLife as I received a discount through work. As soon as the rate starts increasing, I go shopping.

I also think that modern safety features help reduce claims and claim amounts. So the newer cars, sometimes, get more of a break.

JBDinTX

Ape Factory

^^^^ Unicorn! All kidding aside, that's a pretty good premium. I "think" I'm paying $1200/yr and I'm slightly older, and a married homeowner. The SUV is more expensive to insure than the RS5.