Review: Touchstone Insurance

[bjstare]

Well, there's probably threads elsewhere on beyond, but this one came up when I did the search.

I've been with Touchstone for a number of years. Spoke with Bill this morning to add another car on my policy, and do some updates to the home policy. As always, fantastic service, and he took a great deal of time to answer the excessive questions I was asking him.

[TomcoPDR]

Originally posted by cjblair
Well, there's probably threads elsewhere on beyond, but this one came up when I did the search.

I've been with Touchstone for a number of years. Spoke with Bill this morning to add another car on my policy, and do some updates to the home policy. As always, fantastic service, and he took a great deal of time to answer the excessive questions I was asking him.

Bill's got such a sexy radio voice, just makes you wanna come up with random questions just to keep him on the line.

[bjstare]

Originally posted by TomcoPDR


Bill's got such a sexy radio voice, just makes you wanna come up with random questions just to keep him on the line.

Glad I'm not the only one.

[gretz]

Originally posted by TomcoPDR


Bill's got such a sexy radio voice, just makes you wanna come up with random questions just to keep him on the line.

lol...

Bill and Deanna have helped me on numerous occasions, even when bombarded with multiple changes and additions... Sorry Deanna lol

[Masked Bandit]

Originally posted by TomcoPDR


Bill's got such a sexy radio voice, just makes you wanna come up with random questions just to keep him on the line.

I'm flattered my friend, but Imma need a lot of liquor to make that jump!

[cyra1ax]

Originally posted by cjblair
As always, fantastic service, and he took a great deal of time to answer the excessive questions I was asking him.

+1
Called him when I literally had a temporary car(was in my possession for all of two weeks) to learn stick on. He took the time to give me some options and some advice on what to do for insurance even though I wasn't a client of his at the time.

When I got my new car, didn't hesitate to go to Touchstone and while I didn't get the chance to deal with Bill, they took care of me and got me the best rate that I could find. Even automatically did a query on renewal to make sure I was still getting the best rate possible.

[btimbit]

Originally posted by Masked Bandit
I should also mention that we've got a new broker in the office. His name is Darren and he's super keen. He's spent 18 years working in the car business so some of you may have already done business with him at one point or another.

I know I'm quoting an old post here, but Darren is the man. Dealt with him for about a year and a half now and not only has he gone over and above taking care of my insurance needs, he's also drawn on all that other experience in the car business and helped me a lot when I was buying a new car through a dealer a few months ago. It was my first time going through a dealer rather than kijiji and Darren's advice saved me thousands.

I'd reccomend Touchstone to anyone

[GTS Jeff]

Bill does both my home and auto insurance and has saved me thousands per year.

[Kobe]

Originally posted by TomcoPDR


Bill's got such a sexy radio voice, just makes you wanna come up with random questions just to keep him on the line.

[Alterac]

Just got a letter saying your no longer insuring through Aviva and moving us to Intact.

Intact has been horrible for me in the past, agents argumentative and basically lacking communication skills, or the full command of the English language.

Yuck.

[schocker]

^^Yeah, my car switched over already. Coverage is within a few dollars per year but have no experience with intact. Aviva was great to deal with though when I had my hail damage. Let me get quotes and do whatever I wanted and choose whatever rental I wanted.

[carson blocks]

Originally posted by schocker
Aviva was great to deal with though when I had my hail damage. Let me get quotes and do whatever I wanted and choose whatever rental I wanted.

Aviva was shit with my home hail claim. I waited a bit to get better contractors and still got mostly crackheads, the work was completed in the wrong order (eavestrough guys drilled holes to my brand new f'ing roof to secure their scaffold with lag bolts), trim doesn't match, parts were missed, I didn't sign off on any repairs, and eventually just gave up chasing the pricks as it wasn't worth the brain damage.

[dj_rice]

Originally posted by Alterac
Just got a letter saying your no longer insuring through Aviva and moving us to Intact.

Intact has been horrible for me in the past, agents argumentative and basically lacking communication skills, or the full command of the English language.

Yuck.

Can Bill chime in on why this is?

[schocker]

Originally posted by carson blocks
Aviva was shit with my home hail claim. I waited a bit to get better contractors and still got mostly crackheads, the work was completed in the wrong order (eavestrough guys drilled holes to my brand new f'ing roof to secure their scaffold with lag bolts), trim doesn't match, parts were missed, I didn't sign off on any repairs, and eventually just gave up chasing the pricks as it wasn't worth the brain damage.

Ah, mine was car damage, sounds like it is good I don't have them for my house

[Bladeh]

Gave them a call this afternoon as I'm shopping around for Home/Auto and spoke with Shelley, great customer service and about $100 a month better than my current monthly insurance bill.

[Toms-SC]

Originally posted by GTS Jeff
Bill does both my home and auto insurance and has saved me thousands per year.

Same here. Saved $1,300 a year by switching off of The Personal's.

[Sonic]

Curious to know about Aviva as well... Cheaper isn't always better. Often times it's not. I'm currently with TDMM... So I don't want to go to worse company just to save a few bucks...

[Masked Bandit]

Originally posted by dj_rice



Can Bill chime in on why this is?

Hello Beyond,

I've already spoken directly to a few of you but this isn't a bad place to reach a lot of our clients all at once.

Back at the end of September, I made the decision to cut ties with Aviva. I've been dealing with them for a bit over a decade and in the end it was their claims service that I couldn't handle any longer. I was to the point where I wouldn't place friends or family with Aviva for home or auto insurance so really, why would I place ANYONE there?

The truth of the matter is that it's pretty rare that a claim goes so far sideways that I as the brokerage owner need to get involved to advocate on behalf of the client. Now, did Aviva mess up all claims? Of course not, the bulk of them were processed reasonably well. But it had gotten to the point where I was being dragged in on about 10 in every 100. Maybe that doesn't seem like a lot but for the rest of our companies, it would be about 1 or 2 per 100 claims. That's a hell of a big difference on something as simple as home & auto insurance.

The final straw came this summer when I had (am still having) a hail claim on my own personal residence. It was going to be a good test because I have my neighbour insured through a different company (with our office) so I could compare the real world differences as the claims progressed. Well, my house has not been touched yet and I'll be lucky to have work completed within a year. My neighbour on the other hand has had a much, MUCH better experience. The silly thing is that the people handling my file knew full well that I owned the office that controlled several million dollars of their business...lol...and they have still mishandled my file to a great extent. If I didn't do this for a living I would have strangled someone by now!

So faced with a "divorce" with Aviva, I approached the other companies we deal with as well as a couple we would consider bringing on board. In the end, Intact was by far the best fit. They have the broadest appetite and on the whole, the best claims service in the industry. Does that mean they're perfect and never make mistakes? Of course not. But going back to the number of claims problems we see I have a lot more faith in them compared with Aviva.

Pricing was going to be a concern for some right away and I wasn't blind to that, so we took care of that before anything else. We negotiated that if Intact's natural price for a client was going to be lower than the expiring Aviva policy, the client simply gets the lower price. However if the natural Intact price is going to be higher, it's capped at no more than a 5% increase over the year previous. There are a few small exceptions to that rule but for all intents & purposes, that's the deal. What's even better for some clients is that Aviva has implemented some pretty wild price increases for certain home insurance clients, primarily the people living on the North end of Calgary all the way up to about Leduc. One particular Beyonder I'm thinking of that renewed on January 1st had a premium last year of about $1300 on his home and his Aviva renewal was going to be $2100. Under the terms of the new agreement he got $1300 + 5%. Do you think he's happy?

So in the end, we're essentially able to negate any concerns on pricing while providing our clients with a more reliable claims department overall. Sure there are anecdotal stories about claims where Aviva was great and Intact sucked, but I can tell you that over the last decade, and over thousands of clients and thousands of claims, we have more happy people with Intact than we do with Aviva.

Moving forward through the year, if you have an Aviva policy we still represent them for the balance of this term. When your renewal comes around it will simply show up as Intact.

I'm happy to field any questions you may have either here, via PM or shoot us an email.

[revelations]

Thanks Bill, when I saw that letter I knew it had to be a corporate/business decision for you guys.

Having dealt with SGI for what was supposed to be a simple glass/comprehensive claim about 7 years ago, I had to meet Bill at his old office (Diamond) and have him witness some documents for SGI.

It was a joke and it was no wonder you guys stopped working with them as well - or at least I think you did!

[dj_rice]

Thanks for the reply. At least now I'll be aware of the change from Aviva to Intact.

Unlike MBNA Bank who converted my World M/C to a Visa Infinite with no prior notice, dropped them after this happened.