Insurance online bill payment

On Oct 25, 7:14 am, mm <NOPSAMmm2...@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> My car insurance company won't take payments for more than six months
> and won't take payments in advance.

In advance of what?   Every insurance company AFAIK wants its premiums paid in advance of the policy becoming effective, or else they will cancel your policy for nonpayment.

Of course, that only applies to the current policy they are offering you.  You can't bind them to continue coverage beyond the period of time they have agreed to, by sending them more money.   Each 6-month period you're talking about is in actuality a separate contract.   Either you, or they, could decide at the end of each policy period, not to renew the relationship.  This is not the same thing as, e.g. your electric bill, which goes on indefinitely as long as your payments stay current. 

> If I were to send a check for more
> than what is billed, they say they will send the difference back. And
> they bill six months at a time, instead of once a year like they used
> to.

Right.   They used to offer 1-year-long auto policies, and no longer do.  That's their choice, for whatever their reasons were.

Other forms of insurance, such as homeowners'. do still offer 1-year terms.

>  I presume the reason is that they don't want to contract at the
> current rate for longer than 6 months, since the rate might go up.

Or they may decide not to renew, if you had too many crashes or tickets.  Or you may decide to take your insurance business elsewhere, for various reasons.

> They say my rate might change six months later, but it seems to me
> they could write the contract so that it says that "Payments made in
> excess of the billed amount will be applied pro-rata to subsequent
> billing periods based on the rate assessed and the amount billed at
> the start of every billing period."

They don't want to do that.   And you can't make them do it.  What does it really matter to you anyway?

> How hard would that be?  Is there some legal reason in some state this
> wouldn't be valid and do what is intended.

Of course not; if the company wanted to accept your payments that way they could.   But they don't want to, and you can't force them to.

>  The company writes car
> insurance in every or almost every US state. (although I'm sure they
> actually have different contracts for states that have different
> laws.)

Yes, typically the policy language does include specific riders to comply with the laws of particular states, although for most multi-state insurers, the basic policy language they use is pretty much the same everywhere.

> (I've pretty much gotten around this by using my bank bill pay to
> schedule a payment months from now, but I didn't want to do this
> because I've let my checking balance get very low in the past, and I
> won't be thinking about this 2 months from now.)

Huh?   What does that have to do with the topic under discussion?

> Related question.  Bank of America bill payer has a pre-established
> lists of billers including one called GEICO Direct, but I wanted to
> check on whether money paid to this would actually get to my account,
> and I asked at the GEICO phone number, and she had to go ask someone,
> and she said Geico Direct wasn't affiliated with Geico who insures my
> car.  What do you think is going on here?   Are they really different?

Now you've really got me confused.  Why don't you check GEICO's website, which IIRC has an option to sign up there for automatic direct monthly withdrawals from the bank of your choice to pay your premiums, and it may be able to answer your other questions.

As to your bank, if you want to use _their_ bill-payment system to pay your insurance bills, you should go to the bank's website and set that payee up yourself, with information you provide them, rather than using one of the names off the bank's pre-selected list of payees that sounds similar.

> So I enrolled in the online bill payer by using the mailing address
> she gave me, rather than the name Geico Direct from the list on the
> Bank's site

OK, now you're making sense.

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Mike Jacobs
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