{"id":3906,"date":"2016-12-22T09:29:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T14:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/?p=3906"},"modified":"2019-03-27T07:24:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T13:24:47","slug":"beware-of-teaser-maine-homeowners-insurance-quotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/beware-of-teaser-maine-homeowners-insurance-quotes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware of &#8220;Teaser&#8221; Maine Homeowners Insurance Quotes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One of our employees received this solicitation from a competitor. It quotes a homeowners premium of $409 per year.&nbsp;That&#8217;s hundreds less than they pay now. How can that be? Is this &#8220;bait and switch&#8221;? Like most of these offers, <strong>if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. <\/strong>The answers are in the fine print.<\/p>\n<h2>Example: 6 Cheap Homeowners Insurance Quote Tricks<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3908\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3908\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/home-quote-fail2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3908\" src=\"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/home-quote-fail2-800x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Beware of &quot;teaser&quot; homeowners insurance quotes!\" width=\"400\" height=\"512\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3908\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Beware of &#8220;teaser&#8221; homeowners insurance quotes! (click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>1. Using the &#8220;Perfect Profile&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>Every insurance company uses personal information to provide an accurate quote and policy for you. This may involve your insurance history, your insurance score (similar to a consumer credit score), your occupation and more. If you get a quote out of the blue without giving any of your information to anyone, you&#8217;re getting a generic quote, probably containing the absolute best rate, reserved for the theoretical human who fits the perfect profile. No one gets that rate.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Quoting On the Tax Assessor&#8217;s Value of Your Home<\/h2>\n<p>Tax assessments have nothing to do with insurance. Towns and cities revalue&nbsp;every several years to create a &#8220;just baseline&#8221; to compare properties for tax purposes. If it&#8217;s been years since the last revaluation, the figure is probably low.&nbsp;<strong>Assessed value<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>has nothing to do with the cost to rebuild your home.<\/strong>&nbsp;Assessments are roughly based on market value, which is affected by location, condition, and acreage.<\/p>\n<p>After a disaster, you want to have enough insurance&nbsp;to rebuild your home. Insurance companies want that, too. That&#8217;s why they require you to insure 100% of replacement cost. Usually, assessed value is far below your home&#8217;s replacement cost.&nbsp;For example, this home&#8217;s replacement cost is 20% more than the quoted amount. If they called for&nbsp;quote, the insurer would take information about their home, calculates its replacement cost, and bump the amount by 20%. That would increase the price.<\/p>\n<p>This insurance company knows all of that, but chooses to ignore it. The lower amount means a cheaper quote. It&#8217;s&nbsp;appealing &#8211; until you think about it.<\/p>\n<h2>3. Inflating Your Insurance Score&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3913 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/superior-credit-quote-150x150.png\" alt=\"superior-credit-quote\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"><\/h2>\n<p>As explained above, insurance companies use scoring to price your insurance. The higher your credit score, the lower your insurance price. This quote assumes that you&#8217;re in the top tier of insurance scores. Even people with excellent credit scores may not make the &#8220;superior credit&#8221; status. So, when you respond to the solicitation, your price probably goes up.<\/p>\n<h2>4. Presuming Your Home Was Just Built<\/h2>\n<p>This home was built in 1972. The tax assessor&#8217;s document clearly says that. Why would the insurance company quote it as if it was new? Because there&#8217;s a &#8220;new home discount&#8221;. That makes the rate lower, until you call in. Oops, no discount for you.<\/p>\n<h2>5. Assuming You Move All Your Insurance<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3914 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/multipolicy-quote-150x150.png\" alt=\"multipolicy-quote\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"><\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s no secret that you can get a lower price with most companies by bundling auto and property insurance. You should absolutely talk to your agent about bundling to see if it makes sense for you. It doesn&#8217;t always. What if this company&#8217;s car insurance rates are terrible? What if you don&#8217;t meet their underwriting requirements? What if&#8230;?<\/p>\n<p>Without a package discount, this quote could be 20% higher &#8211; or more. And, think about it: if this insurance company uses shady quoting tactics on your home insurance, do you really want to trust them will ALL of your insurance?<\/p>\n<h2>6. Have You Really Had&nbsp;No Claims in 5 Years?<\/h2>\n<p>Maybe that&#8217;s true, maybe&nbsp;not. Five years is a long time. Many people forget that they&#8217;ve had claims. You could think it&#8217;s true, until the insurance company runs their reports. That plumbing leak? The water backup in the basement? Oh yeah. Those count. And, they can change this quote considerably.<\/p>\n<h2>Looking for a Real Maine Homeowners Insurance Quote?<\/h2>\n<p>If you are looking for homeowners, condo or renters insurance in Maine, and want a thorough review and a realistic proposal for your coverage, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/policy-services\/contact-my-agent\/\">contact a Noyes Hall &amp; Allen Insurance agent<\/a>. We&#8217;re independent, so we offer a choice of preferred insurers in Maine. Prefer&nbsp;to start online? &nbsp;Get up to <a href=\"https:\/\/secure.consumerratequotes.com\/consumer\/QuoteStart.aspx?id=41202&amp;StartPage=Default\">6 Maine homeowners insurance quotes in 10 minutes<\/a> on our web site. If that&#8217;s as far as you want to go, we won&#8217;t hound you later. But, we&#8217;re happy to answer your Maine home insurance questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; One of our employees received this solicitation from a competitor. It quotes a homeowners premium of $409 per year.&nbsp;That&#8217;s hundreds less than they pay now. How can that be? Is this &#8220;bait and switch&#8221;? Like most of these offers, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. The answers are in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,31,13,15],"tags":[44,65,36],"class_list":["post-3906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-condo-insurance","category-finance","category-general","category-homeowners-insurance","category-renters-insurance","tag-home-buying","tag-portland-maine-insurance-agent","tag-saving-money"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5471,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}