WE CAN COUNT ON STEVE
“Mercury has a deserved reputation for abusing its customers and intentionally violating the law with arrogance and indifference,” the state department wrote in a Feb. 20, 2009, legal filing related to its administrative case.
Abusing customers? Intentionally violating the law? No way.
If we didn’t know better we’d say this sounds like a gubernatorial candidate who is currently the state insurance commissioner jockeying the press to extort funds from the corrupt industry he allegedly ‘regulates.’
But that’s the kind of stuff average news readers shrugg off with a laugh and say, “Ha ha! This is the government and the insurance companies we’re talking about. We can trust them. They would never be involved in that sort of thing. That’s for criminals.”
Here’s some more from a state report:
- Flagging some consumers for higher rates if they had been in an accident, even if it was not their fault. – Not immediately granting coverage to applicants including military personnel on active duty, “artists,” those employed “in the entertainment industry as actors, dancers, etc.,” and emergency vehicle drivers.
– Raising insurance premiums after its sales agents quoted prices for discounts for which the consumer was not eligible. The department said this was the single largest category of complaints it received about the firm.
– Collecting higher premiums than allowed by law by requiring its brokers to return part of their fees to the company.
– Requesting information about customers’ “national origin,” a practice that the department said “could raise questions about the legality of Mercury’s personal automobile policy cancellation and non-renewal decisions” under state law. Mercury agreed to block such data after the state investigators raised concerns.
Boy, these are the type of accusations that one would think could lead to some changes for the better with regard to insurance victims, aka customers and policy holders.
Except for the small fact that the state works with the insurers to insure continued maximum fleecing of these victims, within or without the guidelines of grayest and murky law.
And the press? Nothing more than a crack slut begging for the next rock.
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