You May Not be In Good Hands

Nicholas has always had Allstate for car insurance and renters insurance. He has had wonderful service when he needed to file a claim, and they have accident forgiveness so your rates don't go up. He needed to find a new agent when he moved to Rhode Island 3 years ago, so he looked up the closest agent to his apartment, walked into his office, and signed up.
His first winter in Rhode Island, there was a fire in his apartment. We were actually both there at the time, and it was before 7AM. Luckily, everyone got out safely, and there was no fire damage to any of his stuff, but there was smoke damage. We were pretty shaken up. After the fire was put out, and we were cleared by the firefighters, we went to grab some breakfast (on the coldest day so far in RI). Afterwards, we went to the Allstate agent's office because he was just down the street, and so we could start the claim process. Did I mention that there was a slight language barrier with this agent? We walked in, and explained to him the situation. He told us that we needed to contact the claims office using a 1-800 number. I recall that he gave us the number, but did not offer to even let us use his phone. It was honestly 20 degrees outside, we were wearing the clothes we threw on in an effort to escape the smoke filled apartment, and this agent was less than helpful.
However, the actual people that Nicholas had to deal with to get his apartment in order after the fire were wonderful. After we got married, we talked about trying to find a new insurance. We found out that since the insurance agents are independent agents, they have "rights" to their clients when they live within a certain radius. Unless our insurance agent agreed to relinquish us as clients (but why would he), then we would have to cancel our policy and stay away from Allstate for more than 6 months before we could again choose whomever we wanted. Needless to say, we never did that, and tried to avoid ever having to talk to our agent on the phone or in person.
Then we bought a house in Austin. We decided to stay with Allstate for our homeowners insurance. Nicholas called his old agent in Austin for a quote on our homeowners and Texas car insurance. We had a really hard time getting the information in a timely manner, which automatically sent off red flags to me. I did not want to knowinly get ourselves into the same situation. Said agent is located in Round Rock, TX, which is about 25 miles from where we bought our house. We decided to look for a different agent that was closer to us. We found one right up the street, and they seemed to be pretty helpful. In fact, they quoted us lower prices on both the homeowners and auto policies.
We told the South Austin agent to go ahead with creating our policies. When we flew down to Austin for our house closing in July, we went into the South Austin office to sign the paperwork in person. Ironically, the same day we told the South Austin office to go forth with our policies, the Round Rock office called to see if we were still interested. I told them that we had decided to go with someone that was closer to our residence. That night, I received an email stating that the Round Rock office had created two new policies for us.
We talked to our South Austin office about this conundrum, but we all just assumed it was a clerical error in the corporate office, and all the paperwork we signed was with the South Austin office. Our title company got information from the South Austin office.
It was not a clerical error. The Round Rock office had created policies for us against our consent, and there was even a note in their computer stating that we had decided to got with a different agent. They even had our address wrong. Our South Austin office was able to resolve the issue with our homeowners insurance, but our auto policy has been quite a different animal. Nicholas had to talk to a conflict resolution person, and we thought we had everything resolved.
Until we got our new paperwork in the mail. It still shows the Round Rock office as our insurance agent. I am so frustrated and ready to just cancel it altogether. I respect independent insurance agents and understand the "rights" they have on their clients are suppose to keep other agents from stealing clients, or whatever, BUT where is the protection for the customer? How can you be in good hands with Allstate if you get dragged down a black hole of despair with no way out? How can someone act in such bad faith, and STILL be considered our agent. Is it really worth it for a company to lose a loyal client because of a few bad agents?