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Stupid Progressive commercial

News ·Sunday December 3, 2006 @ 01:04 EST (link)

Just a wee rant about one of Progessive (insurance)'s commercials I've been hearing a lot on the radio lately. They end it with something like "If they're this helpful before you're a customer, imagine how helpful they'll be afterwards"; an attempted a fortiori construct. Clearly, as advertisers, they know they're lying (and not just because their lips are moving); if not they're stupider than even I could imagine. It's not that that annoys me; it's the pure brazen barefacedness of it all. Like a politician, all insurance companies care about after they have your (vote, money) is (re-election, renewal)—i.e. getting more money—and minimizing the amount of money they have to shell out, i.e. keeping the money they've already got. The statement is backwards: they work hard until they get you as a customer—not after. I also don't mind the fact of it; of course they want to make money, they're a business, that's their job. And unfortunately the claim is too airy to sic the gutted remains of any truth-in-advertising laws on them.

Oh, and a few remarks about Toyota of Kirkland. As you may have read here, we recently purchased a 2007 Toyota Corolla from them, trading in Honey's 2000 VW Golf for it, a beast we were happy to get rid of; we were also very ready to walk away, so perhaps they really did give us more for it than they wanted to (but I doubt it). However, the Golf was titled in West Virginia, and (a) Honey's grandfather's name was on the title, since he helped her get the loan and (b) there was a lienholder (United Bank), although a few weeks before purchasing the Toyota we'd paid off the loan in full. We first had trouble getting the title from United Bank; they claim they sent it but it never arrived (we paid off my car at the same time; different bank, title arrived just fine, although it was for Massachusetts; that'll probably be trouble down the line), but eventually we were able to get a signed release of interest from them which was acceptable in stead. Next, we needed to get Honey's grandfather to sign over the title to them; this was more trouble—not at all because of him, but because of how badly Toyota of Kirkland handled the whole deal.

First, a discourtesy; they sent the title paperwork, but no stamped envelope; rude, but not a huge deal. He signed it and sent it back, but they didn't receive it—or at least they claim they didn't. They called my wife several times and harassed her; I suspected they were trying to welch on the trade-in (we had to sign two sets of loan papers, one without the trade-in, in case it didn't go through, and unfortunately I don't think there's much we could have done if they'd've tried to renege, even with the Microsoft's legal program). It was a bad time for them to be making threatening phone calls, too, given Honey's dad's pending heart surgery. Anyway, either because we persisted (we were getting bounced around their finance department trying to get them to send new paperwork) or because mail was slow because of the snowstorm (also, the old finance manager quit during the whole deal, which didn't help much), eventually the title from Honey's grandfather "arrived" and all is well. Just be careful to read the fine print when you deal with Toyota of Kirkland.

This sordid tale reminds me of something my dad and I saw in Waterloo when I was there for school: a jeep, driving around the city, with a sign strapped to the back:

We Will Never Buy Another Vehicle from Bustard Chrysler

I'll bet thousands of people saw that sign. I wonder how much it affected Bustard Chrysler's business? Takeaway: don't annoy your customers—even if you do get the sale, you may lose more than you gain. Sometimes it's best just to back off. Until Toyota of Kirkland called us to say the trade-in paperwork was finalized, I was not very far from making my own sign.