Would you like fries and a new insurance policy with that burger?

Summary

Commercial opens with a young man sitting in a kitchen with a fast food meal (fries, burger and soda) in front of him.

Young Man: My Mercury moment happened when I was in the drive through.

Screen changes the same young man in his vehicle at the drive through of a restaurant where an employee is handing him a bag of food.

Young Man: Hey, can I get some……

Young man’s car is hit from behind by a red car. Young man’s car is pushed forward and into a stand with a giant fake burger on it. The burger falls off the stand and lands on the young man’s car.

Young Man: Just got my double, bacon cheeseburger, when this guy plows into me.

Screen switches back to young man in kitchen.

Young Man: Turns out he was insured by Mercury.

Screen back to drive through and man from red car is giving young man a card.

Young Man: Also turns out Mercury took better care of me than my own insurance company. So I switched; saved a few hundred bucks.

Screen back to kitchen and then back to drive through.

Young Man: (talking to employee in drive through) Uh, I have a giant burger on my car.

Screen back to kitchen.

Young Man: Next time I’m ordering at the counter.

Screen changes to the Mercury Logo, contact information, average savings for California drivers and also legal information on the bottom.

Announcer: Call 888-4-Mercury or visit Mercuryinsurance.com to get a fast, free quote and start saving today.

Point of the Commercial

This is a good one because I read this same exact type story time after time in our insurance company reviews. Where one of you have an accident and the other person’s insurance company treats you better than your own, so you make the switch.

Your stories and the point that Mercury is making are powerful. We buy insurance so that it is there to take care of us when we have an accident. Mercury is advertising that they will be there to take care of you during an accident, even if you are not insured with them (and their client is at fault).

What They Want you to Do

They want you to make the switch from your own insurance company or at least get a quote. As far as contact methods they prefer the telephone and then for you to visit them online. Their order of importance for contact says something about them as well. They would rather you call and talk to them so they can help you instead of you getting an impersonal quote online.

Of course, it could also mean they want you to be subjected to the influence of a sales person as well.

My Opinion

I like this commercial. There is a little bit of humor to make you remember it and also drives home the point of Mercury being the better insurance company. Overall, it stays on task of the point it is getting across.

Giving this Mercury Insurance commercial a thumbs up.

Don’t get caught trying to pass off fake proof of Kentucky car insurance; just buy the real thing.

United against people driving without insurance.

Kentucky car insurance does not have very high requirements, but for some that are pressed for money they may think that they are. They may also be pressed to not purchase the Kentucky car insurance and fake proof of insurance to get around the financial responsibility laws.

If this is you, Kentucky apparently already knows that trick and I wouldn’t recommend trying it.

Required Kentucky Car Insurance

Kentucky car insurance is another state that requires PIP (personal injury protection) coverage as part of its mandatory insurance coverage. The state requires that you carry no less than $10,000 in PIP coverage to be able to drive. Remember, PIP coverage is to cover your injuries and the injuries of those in your vehicle.

Kentucky car insurance requires ridiculously low liability coverage for property damage; it’s only $10,000. This is barely enough to have another person’s vehicle fix if you wreck it. Not to mention, that you will not have enough coverage if you total another person vehicle or if you damage multiple vehicles. What is not paid by your insurance company will come out of your pocket. Do you think the insurance premium for more coverage or the monthly restitution payments will be cheaper?

Liability coverage for bodily injury is a bit more reasonable under Kentucky car insurance law. The state requires the limits of 25/50 to be carried in order to drive. Bodily injury is the coverage that pays for the medical expenses of the party in the other vehicle.

With limits of 25/50, this means that the insurance company will pay up to $25,000 for one person’s medical bills and $50,000 total for all medical bills for two or more people.

Mandatory Kentucky Car Insurance Reporting Plan

Kentucky car insurance is tracked by the state through a data base. If you drop coverage or get dropped it is reported to the state by that insurance company that you have no insurance on a vehicle registered in the state. If you cannot prove that you do have insurance when requested, you will face stiff penalties.

Penalties for No Kentucky Car Insurance

Kentucky is not playing around with their insurance laws. If you try to pass off fake proof of insurance when you are asked for proof, you can be fined up to $1,000 and sent to jail for up to 1 year. That’s just for providing proof of fake insurance!

Not having insurance will get you a fine of up to $500 and no more than 90 days in jail. Looks like it is better to just fess up and admit you don’t have insurance, instead of trying to fake it. Since Kentucky keeps track of the insurance on registered vehicles in the state, they will eventually find out if you try to fake Kentucky car insurance coverage.

There are just some things that lead to getting dropped from car insurance that you can’t prevent, unless it’s your driving record.

Getting dropped from car insurance can sometime feel like your insurance company is pushing you off a cliff.

Getting dropped from car insurance is something that you really don’t want to have happen. In some cases it is not a negative reflection of you, but instead a circumstance that requires your insurance policy to be stopped. In other cases, yes, getting dropped from car insurance is your own fault and could have been prevented.

Teens Getting Dropped From Car Insurance

There is no doubt that teens drive up the cost of their parent’s insurance. What’s worse are the insurance rates once they move out and are one their own. To help their kids when they move out, parents get the bright idea to keep their teen and their teen’s car on their insurance policy to keep the rates down.

This is a big no-no.

Once the insurance company finds out that the teen is no longer living in the household they will find themselves getting dropped from car insurance. An insurance company wants to collect the premium amount that they deem is necessary to balance out the risk they are taking for insuring this older teen. Once the teen is out on their own they have to be removed from their parent’s policy and a new policy has to be started for them.

Getting Dropped From Car Insurance after Out-of-State Move

Insurance companies aren’t automatically able to write insurance anywhere in the country, like it may seem. To be able to sell insurance in a state, the insurance company has to become licensed to do so in that state. This also means that they have to abide by all of the state’s rules and insurance regulations; which are different from state to state.

If you move from one state to another you could be getting dropped from car insurance if the insurance company doesn’t write in the new state that you live in. Even if they do, you will still find yourself getting dropped from car insurance in your old state and a new policy having to be written for you in your new state. Again, this all goes back to the different rules and insurance regulations that exist from one state to another.

Bad Drivers Getting Dropped From Car Insurance

Getting dropped from car insurance is a very easy thing to do, especially if you are a bad driver. Insurance companies don’t like to take a gamble on a client that they consider a bad driver and won’t hesitate to drop them if the tickets and accidents start to stack up.

Preventing the Getting Dropped From Car Insurance Action

Out of all the ways that you can find yourself getting dropped from car insurance, what type of driver you are is really the only thing that you can control. By obeying driving laws and being a cautious driver, you can avoid the accidents and tickets that will get your car insurance dropped.

If there are times that you do get that occasional ticket or accident, a Saturday in traffic school may be able to help. When you get a ticket or accident points are added to your driving record. It’s these points that the insurance company add up to determine how much to raise your premium or to drop you. Traffic school can get these points erased in most cases.

However, the most important thing to do to prevent yourself from getting dropped from car insurance for being a bad driver though, is not to be one.

Taking a trip back in time to 1973 with a commercial from The Hartford that was made before most of our readers (and this writer) were born.

Summary

Black and white commercial opens in a junkyard with music faded in.

Announcer: Accidents cost more today and that’s The Hartford’s business.

The Harford buck is seen walking around the junkyard.

Announcer: Compared with 1966, the average property damage, liability claim is up 56%. Is your insurance updated for that? That’s The Hartford’s business.

Cars are being towed around the junkyard and the buck is looking into the cars through broken windshields.

Announcer: The average bodily injury claim is up 48%. Is your coverage updated for that? That’s The Hartford’s business. Insurance by The Hartford; you are our business.

Commercial goes to the shadow of a buck (it may just be the quality of the video) and the slogan, “You are our business”, on the screen.

Screen switches to the company mascot and “The Hartford” to close the commercial. On the bottom of the screen is the words “The Hartford Insurance Group, Hanford, Connecticut”.

Point of the Commercial

The Hartford is getting across that they will be there for you when you have an accident. Also that they will look out for you to make sure that you have enough insurance coverage for the increasing costs of accidents.

The points that they make in this commercial from 1973 are not much different than some of the points made in insurance commercials today. One thing that they don’t mention, that is so very common today, is the cost. They don’t even talk about their insurance rates, let alone try to convince the viewer that their rates are lower.

What They Want you to Do

There is no request for action in this commercial, like there is in today’s advertising. They obviously want you to purchase an insurance policy with them, but they don’t tell you how.

There is a reason for this. Back then, there were no insurance websites or call centers to contact the insurance companies through. Your local insurance agent was the only way you were going to get an insurance policy. So, when this commercial was made, they didn’t have to list all the different ways to contact them; there was only one.

My Opinion

I am going to refrain from giving my opinion on this one. This commercial was from a very different era from what I grew up in and definitely from what I studied advertising in. Mostly, I chose this one because I wanted to share what a vintage insurance commercial looked like. Hopefully, I will be able to find more from each of the different decades.

The state known as the birth place of Jazz plays by its own tune for its Louisiana car insurance requirements.

Don’t worry, enjoying too many beignets won’t change your Louisiana car insurance requirements.

Louisiana car insurance requirements take their residents over to a slightly different way of determining what insurance they need to be able to drive. Instead of a liability limits that are mandatory to be carried by all vehicles, Louisiana sets limits based on the weight of the vehicle. The state also gives the option of carrying combined single limits instead of split limits.

Louisiana Car Insurance by Weight

The amount of car insurance that you have to carry in the state of Louisiana is determined by how much your vehicle weighs. I was a little thrown back by this when I first saw it, but it makes complete sense. A heavier vehicle is likely to cause more damage to what it hits. It also takes a heavier vehicle longer to slow down, meaning that it will create a longer damage path than a lighter vehicle that can stop quicker.

By weight of vehicle (no, don’t include the people in it) here are the mandatory Louisiana car insurance requirements:

• 20,000 Pounds or Less- 15/30/25

• 20,001 to 50,000 Pounds – 25/50/25 or a single combined limit of $75,000

• 50,001 Pounds or Greater – 100/300/25 or a single combined limit of $300,000

All of these limits are for liability coverage. The first number in the xx/xx/xx is the liability coverage for bodily injury for a single person that you injure in an accident. The second number is the total amount that would be paid out in bodily injury claims for all of the people that you injure, that are not in your vehicle. The last number is the limit that your insurance company would pay up to for damages that you do to another person’s property.

Single Combined Limit for Louisiana Car Insurance

Single combined limits are available through your insurance company and are acceptable in most states. Having a single liability limit just is not something that is frequently done, so it is talked about very little. Louisiana is the first state that I have researched that outright approves of single combined limits as part of their listed mandatory insurance requirements.

A single combined limit for Louisiana car insurance is as simple as it sounds. Instead of breaking up the liability limits into different amounts for how much will cover what; the single limit covers everything up to the specified amount.

For example, say you caused an accident that caused $30,000 in damages to the other person’s vehicle and resulted in $10,000 in medical expenses. With the Louisiana car insurance minimum requirements of 15/30/25, the medical expenses would be paid, but you would have $5,000 not covered by your insurance company from the property damages. This $5,000 will come directly from you.

Now, if you had an insurance policy with a combined single limit of $50,000, all of it would be covered. Because the combined single limit policies don’t dictate how much it will pay for injuries as compared to property damage; all liability costs are under one limit.