Because they're not paying out much in claims right now. Not many people are driving. Claim volume and claim severity has plummeted in the past month.

I'd be happy if they just stopped with the our prospective customers must be stupid commercials.

You mean "You can save $xxx more with us?"

Also, effective today, we're doing the following for 1st responders and health care workers:

- deferring payment of deductibles
- free pickup of damaged vehicles at whatever location is convenient for the customer, free delivery of repaired vehicles to their preferred location
- free rental vehicles for those policyholders who do not have rental coverage

The IT guys generally hate remote office technology. Some of it is a legit, if outdated, concern about network security. Some of it is a lack of basic support skills. Easier to go up a couple flights of stairs, sit down at the machine and fix the printer connection that walk a user through it. Too often it's just plain arrogant ego because it wasn't their idea. In the same way that the true function of the HR department is to defend the company against it's employees, the true function of the IT department is to defend the corporate network from the users. Neither of them exist to be helpful to the average employee. I used to work for a call center hardware OEM. As our management tools shifted toward network based solutions I had to work with a lot of IT departments at a lot companies in a lot of industries. My experience with them was pretty consistent but some were worse than others and none of them were user friendly.

Another fairly common push back is the productivity argument - making sure the worker bees are in the hive when they're supposed to be AND actually making honey. It's also nothing that can't be addressed by management doing their job. I've been out of it for at least 10 years and when I left the technology to record everything happening in your cubicle existed and I installed some of it and took note of how little of it actually got used. I've busted more slackers getting over while being bored enough to play with the systems for a couple hours when baby sitting new installs than the entire supervisor staff did all day.

Telecommuting can be great for the company, the employee, the customers and the environment. I'd like to hope that those lessons can be learned during this plague and that it leads to a new normal. I have serious doubts about it happening.

The dirty little secret? Your average-to-excellent performers tend to work more when they work from home, not less. Employers will never acknowledge that, but it's true. The slackers will do less, which is to be expected. That's why effective leaders root out slackers and performance manage them. They either improve and stay, or they don't and go.

When we are all permitted to go back to our normal lives, they will claim that there has been a spike in auto accidents, and jack everyone's rates up 50%.

We absolutely expect a short term spike in accidents. The roads are going to be jammed with impatient people who have been cooped up for a month or more. It won't be a trend, and any carrier smart enough to recognize this for what it is...a chance to earn new customers...is going to rate accordingly, meaning they aren't going to raise rates because of this. Also, if you're a good customer, the last thing they want to do is jack your rate after something like this and risk losing you. Customer retention is king.

Then again, what would I know, right?

I wish we could find an insurer that wasn't so dang expensive. Have 7 vehicles insured and costs are around 1100 a month with State Farm. Unfortunately they were the lowest of all that were checked.

Just got an e-mail from Nationwide stating a one time refund of 50.00 per vehicle policy with them. We have 4 vehicles insured with them plus our house.That doesn't even cover the monthly premium...

$50/vehicle would leave me with a $22/month premium. I'm good with that, even if it is just one month.