The world is full of scammers who are waiting to steal your money in the most inventive ways possible. Each day these scammers are getting smarter so you need to stay informed, alert, and vigilant. One of the areas where there has been a lot of increase in scams is auto insurance.
Since the market for auto insurance is huge, and people spend thousands of dollars every day on buying and renewing policies, scammers have found multiple ways to scam people and get their money. But a little bit of precaution can help you save thousands of dollars.
This article will discuss everything you need to know about cheap auto insurance scams along with experts’ advice on the best ways to detect them and avoid them. Let’s get started.
The Personal Information Scam
One of the most common types of auto insurance scams is the one where scammers try and get your personal information for nefarious purposes. These people will pretend that they are calling from your auto insurance company and might even tell you the model of the car that you drive.
But avoid all these calls at all costs. Once they get access to your personal information, they can get access to other important and confidential information. These scammers are so smart at squeezing out information from unsuspecting people that they might even get their bank account details as well.
Expert’s Advice: Look out for the tell-tale signs of a scammer’s call. The first thing to know is the caller’s desperate attempts to get information out of you. Every statement would be a question, trying to find out more about you. This is something that should get your guards up and running.
Then comes the asking for information phase. Even if they can tell which car you drive or some other arbitrary information, the moment they want to know your number, address, or any other sensitive information, just tell them to find out for themselves from the database.
If you genuinely think there is some issue with your insurance policy, then either contact your insurance company through their official number or app or visit their offices yourself.
Fake Agent
The “Fake Agent” scam has dwindled in recent years because the dependency of people on insurance agents has reduced and now people just use the internet to find the best car insurance companies with great coverage options at affordable prices. Find out how if you are looking for affordable auto insurance policies.
In the fake agent scam, you’ll get a call from someone pretending to be the insurance agent of one of the auto insurance companies. This fake agent would try to sell you some policy at a very low price, so low that it would be unbelievable.
That’s when your “too good to be true” detector must activate because many people fall for these rock-bottom prices. The agent then asks them to make the payment on a website or send cash, whatever the method.
Not only can you lose the money spent hoping to get cheap car insurance policies, but if this fake agent asks you to make the payment through some website, he/she can get access to your bank account details and siphon off money easily.
Expert’s Advice: While countless helpful insurance agents do charge you a little more for auto insurance policies, if you need someone to answer all your car insurance queries and issues, then going with an insurance agent is worth the extra money.
You need to be a little careful while choosing the agent. Firstly, do not fall for any insurance agent claiming to get your liability coverage and collision coverage all for just $500. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is never true. So look out for excessively cheap plans and avoid them.
Secondly, ask the insurance agent for identification. Insurance agents have multiple ways of validating their authenticity and if the agent in question fails to do that, then stop all contacts with the agent. Always have a rough idea about the price of auto insurance policies so that you can know how much the insurance agent is charging you.
Watch Where You Pay
The internet is truly a wonderful thing that has enabled us to sit in our homes and do almost everything. You can sit on your sofa and buy a car insurance policy without ever needing to go to the insurance company’s office.
But this has also led to many people visiting shady websites and making payments in the wrong place, losing a lot of money and their security. It is very important for you to be well-versed with the basics of internet transactions to safely make payments.
Expert’s Advice: Whenever you are about to make an insurance premium payment or buy a policy, the most important thing is to make sure the website you are on should be the official website of the car insurance company.
It is also very important to see that the site is SSL secured. Look for a small “lock” sign near the address bar where you can see the website name. While this isn’t complete protection against scams, this does provide a great layer of security that prevents hackers from accessing your personal information.
With the coming of applications, it is even better to pay through these apps as they are even more secure than websites. But if you are someone who has no idea about how internet transactions work, instead of trying to figure it out, you should get to the insurance company’s offices and make the payment there.
Conclusion
Follow these steps and you’ll be able to avoid almost all the relevant auto insurance scams around you. While the risk is real, there is nothing to fear about when you are armed with knowledge and protected with caution.
