Hi - I'm hoping someone else might have similar experiences as this, and could offer some suggestions, please.
The last time I owned a car was in 2014. I moved to downtown Chicago in 2014, so I got rid of my car, and hence, haven't had auto insurance since then either.
Well, I finally now want to move out of the city, so I figure I need a vehicle in order to make it more convenient to shop for houses. So I bought a cheap used vehicle.
I tried to get it insured with Allstate. (I've had Allstate ever since 2005 when I bought my first condo, and since then, have had a combination of owner condo policies, rental condo policies, and auto policies.) I'd never made any claims on any policy with any home/auto insurer in my entire life. I've also reached that "magic" 40 year age plateau.
Well, despite all this, the Allstate underwriters' math seems to think I'm a particularly high risk, merely because I haven't had any auto insurance recently. So much so, that they don't even want to cover me at any price, apparently.
I know that some people usually shop for insurance rates on a regular basis. For me, personally, it didn't seem worth the effort to shop around, to save a few bucks each year -- so I kind of just stayed with Allstate. In the past, Allstate made it quick and easy to deal with paying bills, changing policies, etc. Well, now that has changed. If they're going to make me do leg-work, then I'm going to be "breaking up" with them finally.
I guess this is a long-winded way of describing my situation, and asking what insurance options I should be seeking out? Would it be a waste of time to try to get a policy with another "top tier" insurance company (such as State Farm, Nationwide, Farmers, Progressive, etc.)? Will I need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel (at least for the next 6 months) with lesser known companies? If that's the case, are a lot of those "auto-only" insurance companies, in which case would I also need to shop around for a separate company to cover my condo too?
Any advice would be appreciated!