What Features to Get With Car Insurance
- Basic automobile insurance can be bundled with a host of optional features..Luxury Car sportscar from my luxury car series image by alma_sacra from Fotolia.com
Automobile insurance policies offer a bewildering array of optional features these days, a lot more than a few years ago when all you had to worry about was the size of the deductible and whether to get collision or just liability insurance. Now when you buy auto insurance you face many choices, from uninsured motorist coverage to total vehicle replacement coverage to emergency road service to receiving a rental car during repairs. - There are more optional features for car insurance than ever nowadays because marketing has become the norm for the insurance agencies. Insurance used to be considered a basic necessity; you could just compare several policies and go with whoever offered the most coverage for the least money. But once insurance companies saw that insurance could be "marketed" as a "product" with all the infinite and salable variations thereof, the race for consumers' dollars was on, and the mad rush to redefine and market insurance as a "value-added product" resulted in the mind-boggling proliferation of insurance features we have today, almost all available to the consumer for an extra fee.
- Aside from the basic considerations of size of the deductible and whether you just need liability insurance or want to protect your vehicle with collision insurance, today you are also offered many optional features. The list below is a near-complete but not exhaustive list due to almost constant changes in the features and "bundles" being offered.
Uninsured motorist coverage
New vehicle replacement coverage
24 hour emergency road service
Receiving a rental car during repairs
Safe driver discounts
Accident forgiveness (rates don't go up after an accident)
Reductions in deductibles
Safety device discounts
Low-annual-mileage discounts
Good student discounts - While you may easily qualify for a few of these features (like safety device discounts and good driver and student discounts), you do have to prove that you qualify to get the benefit. All the rest of the optional features for automobile insurance require paying a fee for the (potential) benefit. Carefully evaluate each option before you add it to your policy. Is it really worth up to $12/month for emergency road service in a new car that is unlikely to break down (and you might already have emergency road service through another organization like AAA or AARP)? The idea that you could get a brand new vehicle after more than two years if yours is totaled in an accident sounds great, but is the remote chance of this happening worth an extra $20/month? The same logic applies to reducing your deductible. Is it really worth paying more up front to possibly reduce your expenses later (remember the time value of money)?
Each individual's situation is different. At the very least, make sure to take advantage of all the discounts that you qualify for (and make sure the insurance company knows about all of them). For some people a few of the optional features offered with automobile insurance today make economic sense, but for the most part the features are just another way for insurance companies to "add value" to their products and increase their bottom lines.
