Insurance for the Irresponsible

 

What's going on in the Marketing Department at the headquarters of Liberty Mutual insurance? Their commercials feature young people whining about having to pay a deductible or bellyaching that they're not cut any slack for a good driving record. Liberty Mutual might as well admit that they are targeting irresponsible drivers. One commercial has a black couple telling their story with the Statue of Liberty in the distance. The woman scolds the man for ruining his perfect driving record by side swiping a food truck. She adds,

"You would think your insurance company would cut you some slack, right?"

No, I wouldn't. I would think they would invoke my policy to the letter, trying to figure out any way to get out of paying. The man adds,

"Your perfect record doesn't get you anything."

Well, it does, just not anymore. Your perfect record got you lower rates before you smashed into the Mister Softee truck. When you crash your car, you become in insurance lingo, a "liability." Too many claims, and you become a "high risk." I know young people expect something for participation, but I think it will be easier for them to understand that insurance companies are for profit businesses, not extensions of their parents. The way that guy carried on about the injustice of his rates going up for crashing his car into a vending truck, I wouldn't be surprised if he expected the food guy to run some chow by his house for the next week to help him through the trauma of the accident. There is another commercial with a smartly dressed Asian woman, holding a cup of joe with the Statue of Liberty in the distance. She expresses her dissatisfaction with the insurance deductible by saying,

"You pay your premiums like clock work...then one night, you hydroplane into a ditch. Yeah. Surprise, your insurance company tells you to pay up again. Why pay for insurance if you have to pay even more for using it?"

She rolls her eyes then storms off screen leaving Lady Liberty stoically scanning the harbor for huddled masses. Maybe if you weren't driving excessively fast while trying to surf the internet for the address to the next bar your friends are meeting up at on your bald tires your dad keeps offering to replace, you wouldn't have ended up in that ditch. Surprise!

The insurance industry requires a deductible in order to limit your use of their services. Unlike your parents who hemorrhaged big for that useless college degree you insisted on getting, Liberty Mutual expects something in return for their coverage. It's the same for copays used by the medical insurance industry which dissuade you from going to the doctor for that boil on your ass. You see, the insurance companies don't actually produce anything although the industry refers to their policies as "products." They don't purchase raw materials, they don't have a manufacturing facility, they have no need for research and development. The insurance industry makes their money by selling you a policy, then dissuading you from using it. That's their business model.

I often wonder what meetings are like in insurance companies. They can't brainstorm about innovations that would make their products superior to their competitors because they don't have any products. I figure they all trickle into the conference room ten minutes late for a 3 o'clock, holding their fourth cup of coffee for the day, which they spill on the carpet, as well as a stale donut Ted brought in to celebrate his twentieth year. As they go around the table tossing out ideas about their next big business move, a common theme emerges.

Make the customer pay more for less coverage, and oh yeah, jack up the deductible again.

They all nod in agreement. Just another day in the exciting world of insurance sales. Another Liberty Mutual commercial has a young women telling a story in the second person of "Brad" your car that was with you through three crummy jobs and two douchebag boyfriends, none of which, I'm sure, your parents approved of. You totaled Brad in a less descriptive part of the story. I surmise that it probably involved too many distractions from drunk millennials all texting each other while sitting in Brad. She sounds very upset until Liberty Mutual calls, which causes you to "break into your happy dance." My generation never had a happy dance, nor did we name our cars. My guess is when the next years premiums are cut by Liberty Mutual, and they finish factoring in the demise of Brad, there isn't going to be any happy dances for a while.

Another commercial features an African American woman lamenting that after she wrecked her brand new ride, she discovered her crappy ass discount insurance only covers three quarters of her car. She asks,

"Do they expect me to drive three quarters of a car?"

No, they expected you to read more than three quarters of your policy. The wrong time to be questioning the extent of your coverage is when you need it.

Yet another commercial has a sheepish looking kid standing next to his helicopter mom as she explains that her son got a flat in the middle of the night. His mother states that Liberty Mutual's 24 hour roadside assistance helped her clueless son change the tire "so he can get home safely." The commercial cuts to a scene in which two other equally oblivious teens struggle to change a flat tire unassisted by Liberty Mutual's roving bozo brigade. The wimpier kid on the phone with his father exclaims with some measure of irritation,

"I know what a lug wrench is!"

He then turns to his friend, Chad, who probably picked a college based on the cafeteria food, and whispers,

"Is this a lug wrench?"

Chad, doped up on Ritalin and his last weed pen answers,

"Maybe."

The commercials ends with a narrator indicating that you can leave worry behind when Liberty stands with you. What you should worry about is raising a kid so stupid that he can't follow the three pictorial steps in a car's manual illustrating how to change a flat tire. Someday, life is going to throw your kid something tough like a cruise ship taking on water in rough seas, and he's going to have to make some quick decisions to save himself. There won't be any time for phone calls to dad for advice. He can be like one of those ass hats in the Liberty Mutual commercials, or a guy like me, that is, a survivor explaining to Katie Couric on Good Morning America how he used Chad's bloated corpse as a floatation device for three days.

"On day four, I fed Chad to the sharks."

Insurance is a necessary evil that you get just in case you experience an inordinate amount of bad luck. You can hedge your bets and go commando on insurance if you feel lucky, just don't complain afterwards. That's not how insurance works.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Brad ran like shit.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on December 29, 2016.