President's Choice Financial Insurance

A MARKET THEY AREN'T READY FOR: President's Choice started out as the grocery brand name for Loblaws & maybe they should have stuck to what they did best. Several years ago President's choice branched out into banking services calling themselves President's Choice Financial (using CIBC as the bank). Then they got into making beer. More recently they have branched out again into another area that was unknown to them (Insurance), calling themselves President's Choice Financial Insurance (PC Insurance). PC Insurance has started to use London & St. Thomas Ontario as a test market for their new car insurance that they operate as an "agent" for. The actual insurance underwriter is Scottish & York (another company well known for jerking customers around). Scottish & York is a division of Aviva. After thoroughly checking PC Insurance out using their self service on-line "get an auto quote" & talking to several PC Insurance agents on the phone, I have come to the conclusion that they aren't nearly ready for prime time.

ON-LINE QUOTE SOFTWARE NEEDS A LOT OF WORK: The "get an auto quote" on-line self service software needs a lot of work & does not have sufficient questions to cover some people's insurance needs (i.e. no spot asking when a driver got their license back after a suspension, which can dramatically affect premiums & no spot asking when driver got G1 license). The self help auto quote frequently gave me a different quote 4 days in a row using exactly the same info. The wording beside many questions was not clear. Some questions like "How long has driver had continuous coverage" don't allow you to enter the correct amount. There is no credit given for a Drivers Training Certificate beyond 3 years. The idea is for the customer to plug in various scenarios to see how they affect your car insurance quote, but if you choose not to have some options such as Collision, Comprehensive, Family Protection or Loss of Use Extension coverage, you can't get those choices back to try a new scenario & therefore have to start the quote all over again. Even when I went over the on-line quotes extensively on the phone with 3 different PC Insurance agents to make sure I had plugged in the correct information using exactly the same data, each agent came up with a dramatically different rating & price for my son. At one point there was $1185. difference between the 3 quotes using the same input data.

INCOMPETENT PHONE AGENTS: Frequently the PC Insurance agents gave out incorrect facts like telling me that the insurance follows the person not the car (only half true regarding personal injury). I learned from the Financial Services Commission Of Ontario that insurance is assigned to the CAR not the PERSON. If you let somebody drive your car & they get in an accident, it is YOUR insurance that covers the vehicle & third party liability & YOUR insurance that would go up in cost. Agents also incorrectly insisted that I must tell them my car insurance policy & company when checking for car insurance for my son, even though one had absolutely nothing to do with the other because they were separate ownership's, separate insurance companies & separate people. PC Insurance agents incorrectly implied that if my wife or I got in an accident with my son's car, that it would be partially covered by our own insurance policy. There were numerous other areas of misinformation by these PC Insurance agents. It was pretty clear to me & my son that these PC Insurance agents weren't the professionals they claimed to be (probably just phone order takers), or they would have known the rules of car insurance in Ontario. If that's not bad enough, I've heard several rumors that PC Insurance has plans to transfer it's "call center" to India. Can you image the confusion of getting a quote from somebody on the other side of the world who can't speak English very well & doesn't understand our insurance regulations in Ontario? It was bad enough when I spoke to a PC Insurance agent in Ontario.

POSSIBLE FALSE ADVERTISING CLAIMS FOR LOW PRICES: With the dramatic increase in car insurance rates in Ontario in the last two years, the public is very open (susceptible) to companies advertising lower rates. PC Insurance advertises "low rates", "great prices" & "find out how much you can save", yet when I compared to my current policy, PC Insurance was more expensive. Likewise for my son, PC Insurance had no better rates than anybody else & he found another company that was about $200. less expensive & without all the hassle. A larger sampling would be required to determine just how competitive PC Insurance is, but so far they look to me like they're feeding on the public's gullibility with the perception of low rates. You could probably do better on price with a lot less hassle by shopping insurance agents from the Yellow Pages.

CONCLUSION: Until PC Insurance gets their act together (assuming they ever do) I would suggest that consumers steer clear of this company. The on-line "get an auto quote" simply isn't working well enough to give you any more than a "teaser quote" which in my son's case was dramatically less than the actual final quote (almost like a "bait & switch" tactic). You can pay 5% more to talk to a "professional" PC Insurance agent (there was nothing professional about the agents), but they also often misquote. If you like high anxiety levels, wasting your time/money then try PC Insurance, but if you want an accurate quote the first time & simplicity, then go to some other insurance agent that you trust & who has some real world experience & hasn't just gotten in this game. My son & I were both so extremely frustrated with PC Insurance, the large amount of wasted time & the huge delays in processing his application, that we refused to do business with PC Insurance & took my son's business to another agency who had it all processed in 20 minutes & for $200. less. Our feeling was that if it was this much of a hassle to purchase insurance, then imagine what it might be like if we ever had to make a claim. PC Insurance advertises that they are "the start of a refreshing new insurance experience" & "insurance that's a breath of fresh air" & "it's the way insurance should be", what a joke. The people at PC Insurance clearly seemed to me & my son like they don't yet have their act together, which might explain why they haven't yet branched out to serve other cities & provinces in Canada. Best to stay clear of PC Insurance for now.

By Doug Hembruff.
Article first written December 9/2003.