My strange and frustrating experience with State Farm

My Frustrating Experience with State Farm

I’ve had a perplexing and disappointing journey with State Farm. Our agent has been slow in processing our applications, kept vital policy information to herself, and overall, has been uncooperative. Because of this, we’ve decided to make the switch to Allstate, which offers us comparable coverage for a lower price. Their customer service has also been a breath of fresh air so far. However, now that we want to cancel our State Farm policies, we’re not receiving any confirmation, and it feels like we’re stuck in a loop of confusion.

Here’s how we ended up here:

My wife and I became first-time homebuyers this year, closing on our new home in January 2025 (exciting times!). As we were preparing for closing, we explored various home insurance options and thought we secured a solid deal with State Farm. Coupled with my wife’s existing auto coverage there, bundling our home and auto insurance seemed like the smart choice. Feeling that I was overpaying with Progressive, I switched my car insurance to State Farm, too.

Our agent guided us through the process, and after submitting our applications—despite being told to ignore some “Signature required” documents—it all seemed settled.

This brings me to the first red flag. About a month after I signed up and paid for my auto insurance, I still hadn’t received any documentation about my policy. The app showed “Pending,” and I hadn’t received any email forms aside from initial quotes. When I contacted our agent, she explained that transferring policies between agents can take time. I found this confusing but didn’t push back, assuming they might be processing things together.

She assured me that our coverage would be effective from the point we signed, which calmed my worries—at least for the moment.

During this wait, we occasionally spoke about discounts or coverage changes—so I assumed any important information would come to light.

Then, I received a letter from State Farm’s Underwriting department stating they hadn’t received a signed document for Uninsured Motor Vehicle Coverage Selection/Rejection, mandated in Georgia. Without it, my plan defaulted to the highest (and priciest) coverage. Those “Signature required” documents? Yep, those were the ones we were told to disregard.

While I acknowledge it’s my responsibility to read what I sign (or don’t sign), the agent’s advice to ignore essential paperwork was misleading. It certainly feels like they were using some questionable tactics.

This prompted me to investigate how much we were actually paying for Uninsured Motorist coverage. Our current limit of 250/500/250 (adding around $220 to our six-month premium) struck me as excessive. From my research, typical rates for Georgia hover around $20-$40 for more standard coverage like 50/100/50. Even when I freshened up the numbers to the latter limit, we’d still be paying about $180, which felt distinctly inflated when compared to the quotes from Allstate.

While reviewing our policies, I realized our home insurance details were mysteriously absent from the app—just a prompt to “Start a quote.” Curious, I called State Farm to check, only to discover our home insurance application hadn’t even been processed! Over two months pending, and no one had informed us.

Our agent gave excuses—first claiming they awaited follow-up from our mortgage company, which didn’t match up since we had visibility on all communications. Next, she suggested that such delays are common for insurance applications. While true, it still didn’t explain this particular delay. When pressed for clarity, she sidestepped my inquiries and instead stated I had the opportunity to point things out over the past two months! This was frustrating because it deflected from her lack of action as our agent.

By this point, I was already exploring other insurance options, but this exchange solidified my decision. Luckily, the Allstate representative I spoke with