Co-operators Insurance Co-operators Insurance, www.cooperators.ca, The Co-operators Group, Co-operators Life Insurance Cancelled Insurance After 2 Claims Guelph, Ontario
After 2 water damage claims this company did the same thing out here as they did in New Brunswick and cancelled our insurance. It made it hard to get new insurance.
The Co-operators General Insurance Co. is cutting its losses and breaking ties with customers in parts of the province that aren't performing well. Ronald Godin, the consumer advocate for insurance, said his office has been getting calls since Jan. 1 from the company's customers in northern New Brunswick. "We've received since then, a certain number of calls from residents in the northern part of the province to the effect that they were notified that they would not be offered renewals for this year or if they were being renewed it was at substantially increased rates," Godin said. Godin said these service reductions may extend further than the northern part of the province. The province's consumer advocate said so far his office has been able to refer rejected customers to other companies. Co-operators have not returned a request to comment on the decision.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2010/01/19/nb-insurance-cuts-234.html#ixzz0j34XJyGm
Redwood
Edmonton,Canadian Capitalist Comments
#2Consumer Comment
Tue, March 30, 2010
Another Co-operators customer from our neck of the woods voiced his concerns about a claim and how it was handled on You Tube. He seemed a bit upset. Once you read his comments take a look at the next set of comments by a Co-operators client on Canadian Capitalist.
Had a break in to my vehicle and now my Insurance Broker is being a d**k. I have business and personal policies through them and they are trying to find any excuse not to pay out the claim. This is just the first few minutes of 25 minutes in his office and he was an jerk from the moment I walked in. All I wanted was copies of my policies and documentation of any changes but he was very reluctant to give me anything. It went downhill from here. I think there will be a claim against this guy's errors and omissions insurance. If you've ever had problems with Cooperators Insurance, please drop a comment as I have since heard of many horror stories about Cooperators Insurance in Canada and I'm interested to hear more.
Update September 22nd, 2009:
Turns out they did make changes to my policy in July 2008. If fact, they changed my policy to increase my protection as requested on my home policy to include Comprehensive contents coverage. In the meantime, while they denied I had coverage for business equipment in my vehicle (and were trying to classify most of my stuff as "business equipment"), it turns out as I thought, that I also had $10,000 of coverage for business equipment in my vehicle or "in transit" all along. So indeed, they were trying to shaft me. We're working it out now as a result of my investigation into my policies and forceful nature, and also due to this video, but it is pretty sad they had to lie to be about my coverage in an attempt to deny my claim. I uge you all to stand your ground and not get pushed around by the insurance idiots.
The guy from Canadian Capitalist was thorough.
Our cars and home ( in eastern Ontario) have been insured with Cooperators for the last 41 years . About a week ago we received our 6 month premium renewal in the mail and were shocked to learn that our home insurance would be increasing by a whopping 73% (136% since 2000) .
Over the last 36 years that the house has been insured with Coop, we have had a very small claim following the 1998 ice storm and a second claim for about $45K in 2005 when the house was hit by lightning .
In order to understand the increase and what could be done to decrease it ,we immediately called Coop and requested a meeting with the branch owner . On Monday we met with a sales associate who told as that the factors influencing the increase were:
* house is heated with oil
* potential for sewer backup and basement flooding ( sump pump)
* house is old ( built before 1930)
We were also told that the Coop and other insurance companies are not making sufficient money and will also be increasing premiums , perhaps not as aggressively as the Coop. Head office sets the base premium rate and the local agent just adds any supplementary options requested by the customer , applies the appropriate discounts and deductables and the customers credit score . Our rate fortunately was not affected by a poor credit score or insurance score as they prefer to call it.
Consequently , the only options we had to lower our cost were :
* eliminate the coverage for sewer backup and sump overflows
* increase our deductable
Obviously these had very little impact on the total premiums and were really not worth removing .
One final piece of information which we found very surprising was the fact that the Coop will no longer insure any houses built before 1930. This new rule seems rather peculiar to us since one would think that any house in good condition and having survived for 135 years ( as in our case) would be a reltively low risk.