Q: I couldn’t afford to pay my car insurance and I thought when I stopped paying my premium that the insurance company would cancel my policy, but they kept it active for 3 months after I stopped paying. When the next renewal came around they billed me the amount not paid from my last term with my renewal amount. I have since placed my insurance with another company because I never asked my old company to keep my policy active after I stopped paying, do I still owe them the money?

A: Thanks for the question, this is a difficult one so I will try and break down.

First, you live in California and the last thing that you want is a lapse in coverage. This also goes for your insurance premiums, because insurance companies will charge you more for your insurance if you have a lapse between companies. So, the insurance company extending your coverage without you wanting them to may actually be a good thing.

Second, you only owe for your insurance coverage with your old company up until the day that you got coverage with your new company. To get them to remove the charges for the time that you had coverage with another company, you will need to provide them with proof of insurance coverage with your new company.

For the remaining balance that you may owe to the old company, talk to your new insurance agent about what you need to do.

Q: Can a car insurance claim be denied if it is determined if the person has impaired vision or develops blindness after he or she had passed the eye test at renewal?

A: I would have to say no, an insurance company can’t deny a car insurance claim if a driver develops a vision impairment during the course of a policy term. Insurance companies still pay claims for those that are ticketed for a DUI or DWI, and they even pay claims for those that have had strokes and can’t feel parts of their body. So I do not believe that a developed vision impairment would be treated any different.

If this is the case though, you can almost be assured of a policy cancellation after the claim is paid.

However, I am not a claims adjuster and cannot legally advise of what is and what is not covered. To be sure you need to check the legal part of your insurance policy or talk to your insurance agent for the specific policy of your insurance company.

The specific driving privilege that a teen has determines if they have to be on your car insurance policy.

Teen drivers with driving permits DO NOT have to be listed on your insurance policy. They are not officially licensed drivers yet, and they cannot drive without an experienced licensed driver in the vehicle, so insurance companies don’t look at them the same way as they do teens with their official license.

However, talk to your insurance agent or company about their specific policy on teen permit drivers. This would also be a great time to talk to your insurance company or agent as to what you and your teen driver can do to decrease the impending jump in your car insurance premium once they are added as drivers to your policy.

Q: I have recently switched insurance companies and they want verification of a not-at-fault accident from a year ago. I no longer have that info. How do I get one to send to the company so that my payments don’t go up?

A: Contact the insurance company that you were with at the time of the accident and have them write you a letter that the accident was not-at-fault. If your insurance company at the time had nothing to do with the accident you were in, contact the insurance company of the person that was at fault for the accident and paid for your damages to have them write the letter for your new insurance company.

Question: I noticed insurance customers can post reviews on their insurance company, but there aren’t any responses from insurance companies. Are they not allowed to respond? Or do they just choose not to respond?

Great question about our insurance company customer reviews! Until this question was asked I never really thought about the insurance companies responding to what people were saying about them.

So to answer your first question, no, we don’t prevent insurance companies from responding to their reviews. The only time we have ever had an insurance company respond to something on our site is when we did an analysis on a PEMCO commercial. (Click here to view that article and response from PEMCO).

It may not be so much that they choose not to respond, it just may be that their company media person has never come across our site before to make an “official” comment.