Update II: It seems Matt Fisher’s blog post is having an actual effect on Progressive’s business — an eye-widening example of social media flexing it’s muscles.
After the Wall Street Journal got hip to the story, they tapped a social media tracker to rake through the online mentions regarding the family’s troubles and Progressive. From the paper’s story:
More than 1,000 people on Twitter claimed to have dropped Progressive as their insurer in a four-day span last week, an analysis by social-media tracking firm Crimson Hexagon shows. Another 1,600 or so expressed a desire to not do business with the company, according to the analysis, which was conducted at the request of Dow Jones Newswires.
Crimson Hexagon said 23% of the tweets were spreading the news about the incident. Another 22% were classified by the analysis as expressing some variation of “Progressive is an awful insurer.” The analysis said 19% expressed a desire to disengage with the brand, while 11% claimed the incident had already made them drop Progressive as their insurer.
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Update: Late this afternoon, Progressive’s Claims General Manager Chris Wolf released a statement challenging Fisher’s account, according to Gawker. Specifically, the insurance giant points out the driver who killed Katie Fisher was defended by Nationwide. The web site has confirmed this through court records, but:
Additionally, Wolf, the Progressive rep, doesn’t address the fact that Progressive’s in-house attorney, Jeffrey R. Moffet, reportedly assisted the defendant’s lawyer, or the fact that court documents clearly state that, on May 19th of last year, Progressive was granted an allowance by the Circuit Court for Baltimore “to intervene as a party Defendant.”
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There is a lot of bureaucratic muck you have to push aside in order to get even the simplest fender-bender through the insurance company process. But when the accident in question is a serious one involving a death, the hoops multiply, and the company you’ve paid for coverage might end up working against you.
That worst-case scenario is exactly what unfolded for the family of New York comic Matt Fisher. According to a post from his Tumblr that’s getting a lot of page views, Cleveland-based Progressive Insurance is the villain in the troubling tale.
Fisher’s sister Katie was killed in a car accident in 2009. Eyewitnesses said the crash wasn’t her fault. The offending driver responsible was underinsured, meaning his company didn’t have a lot to cough up once they settled — which they did immediately. But as part of Katie’s policy, it came to Progressive to pay out the difference between the driver’s insurance and her own.
But legally the family couldn’t get the company to pay. That meant the Fisher family had to take the driver to court. When the family got to the courtroom, they were in for a shocker.
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2012.
Hey, I have a solution! Do what the liberal left-leaning loonies do whenever an individual or commercial enterprise speaks out against their ideology – boycott the business and organize a belligerent in-your-face demonstration to disrupt the operation.
I’ve always heard that Progressive is a miserable place to work….I now see their policy holders are miserable too…Thankfully I don’t have them!!!!
Well now, this is not so good. Tsk tsk Flo, why do you have to be such a bitch to these people? Or hows this for a solution – if you don’t want to pay the difference after the cheap-o policy pays out its $50 in damages, then don’t charge (and collect) money to do so! These soulless insurance companies are more than happy to suck as much money as possible out of you and are all talk about responsibility and paying on time as long as its you doing the paying. But as soon as the insurance company needs to pay something out, oh, woah, hey, times have changed, we have to look into this first. Screw insurance companies, they’re a bunch of crooks. If they had their way we would all be forced to pay money to insurance companies every month, and once something bad happened, they wouldn’t have to pay us anything. We would have to pay a penalty though in order to continue coverage. And, of course, non-payment would result in being turned over to collections, at which point the insurance company would then seize your home, take away your family, and shoot your dog.
This is absolutely horrible. And just to save a couple pennies too (and that’s how much $100,000 is to Progressive, it’s worth what a couple pennies are worth to the rest of us)
Glad to see the story being updated, and even happier that Progressive is going to feel a sting from this. Hit them where it hurts the most – the pocketbook!
True, social media is really helpful in dissemination of information. Furtheremore, Progressive Insurance says a man, whose sibling was killed in an auto accident, tried to get out of paying the $75,000 it owed on the claim. However, following a social networking blitz, it probably has room for regret. Aside from that the Court of public opinion tries Progressive Insurance.