Economical Insurance Auto Insurance Reviews

This company is not as cost-saving as they claim. The service is not customer friendly and the response to get back to you is terrible. Be careful when you get in an accident and try to dispute your claim. I would never recommend an Economical Insurance company.

DO NOT pick this insurance company. They totally left me stranded and demanded all kinds of personal information after a small hit and run in a parking lot. Absolutely horrid customer service to ultimately have them not cover! I was treated like a criminal and they didn't even believe that it was a hit and run - even after me going to the Auto Collision Centre and all of the proper channels.

I have been covered under insurance for my car for 2 years I received an email in January which I didn't see. Normally papers are sent in the mail for renewal so I was waiting for that. It got closer to the time when my insurance renews and I contacted my broker who then sent the email I failed to see. In the email, it states they will not renew my insurance and the reason being is done to my driving abstract which they went on to explain what is on my abstract. But the funny thing is for the past 2 years the amount of time I have been with this company I have obtained the same driving record that now 2 years later is a problem. But was not an issue when they first took my own as a client. To me, this makes absolutely no sense this is my last year with these infractions on my record and now it's a problem and there not willing to help.

I prefer to pay instalments by VISA and Economical’s phone instructions seem straightforward - until they lose your payment! Having received their letter threatening policy cancellation, I paid by VISA again and contacted our broker, since it’s impossible to reach anyone at Economical. Thankfully, according to our broker, Economical ‘found’ our nearly $700 instalment and credited back to our VISA before the next statement was due. That was in October. In mid-January GM Financial sent us a letter notifying us that Economical had informed them that the insurance on our leased vehicle (my daily car) was CANCELLED as of Jan. 10th! Economical had not informed us or our broker of this important news! If Economical had cancelled insurance on the leased vehicle, logic dictated that it must be cancelled on the 4 other vehicles on the same policy, right?! It took several days to get written assurance from our broker that our vehicles were all covered and even longer for GM Financial to receive confirmation about the leased vehicle. I don’t know whether Economical’s error has impacted our credit rating. Our broker rightly assumes we will want to switch coverage to a different company this year.

I switched over to Economical because my wife's company got a discount. Apparently, it only lasts a year because when I got my renewal (Home and Auto), it increased by almost $1000 annually! We have perfect records and absolutely nothing changed. Potentially an issue is where I live (Brampton/Mississauga) but I've never in 20+ years of driving had an increase like this without a reason. I was told by other insurers that Economical took on A LOT of high-risk drivers and guess who's paying for it... EVERY ONE of their policyholders. My broker was also useless saying it was happening all over Ontario but I was able to get another policy elsewhere for the same premium!

I moved out of the province and cancelled my policy. They continued to withdraw monthly fees. When I inquired, they said they would return my funds in two weeks and that the amount will be less than half of the amount that was withdrawn, as I was subject to a cancellation fee. They would not explain how the amount was determined. Good thing there is other insurers.

I was in an accident in August where the other driver was at fault. Admittedly I was scammed by the tow truck driver and had my car towed to what I later learned was their own auto body shop by a different name and not a preferred shop. Lesson learned on that matter. However, the insurance company had deemed my car a write off and then changed their mind because I was tricked into signing a work order from the tow driver while at the scene of the accident (yes lesson learned again, read what you're signing even if you are still in shock from the accident). After the insurance company changed their mind they approved over 17,000.00 in repairs of my car (4-month-old car) and when I finally got my car back over 2 months later the driver window wasn't repaired properly and it was noted and agreed that they needed to order parts... 2 trips back for me to check up on the parts and for the second time I'm told they have no clue who I am or what I need and the guy I dealt with (owner) is away. I asked my rep at Economical to please authorize the repairs to be completed elsewhere and to not pay the auto body shop for the deficiencies but they refuse to do it even though they have been following this disaster from the beginning and says the auto body shop didn't charge for deficiencies. Can you imagine an auto body shop keeping a car on their lot for an extra month and not charging the insurance company? No chance! So now I'm stuck with a car that the window isn't working, the car is less than 6 months old and I will have to take it elsewhere to have the repairs done and to pay for it myself. Needless to say, I will be cancelling my insurance as soon as this is over and will never have Economical in my life again.

I was a customer with Economical for 4 years. Never made a claim, only had minor infractions, and never paid less than $200/month for bare-bones liability only. It's worth noting I never missed or was late on payment either. At the time of renewal, I cancelled my policy for a better rate elsewhere. Cancellation in itself was a mess as Economical was difficult about releasing my information to my new provider. Also, if you've ever been on hold with Economical, you know it's a long, physically painful process. The waiting music (that you'll listen to for an average of 30 minutes per call) sounds like someone recorded elevator music over a car radio. I wasn't notified of any outstanding balance on my account when I cancelled the policy but was sent a letter with the remaining amount on my premium. No big deal, Economical has been taking money automatically from my bank account every month for 4 years now. Surely they'd do the same this time around? Except no -- I was expected to manually pay, which would have been great information to provide when I called to cancel my policy. I paid it online once Economical jumped the gun and threatened me with debt collectors less than a month after my policy expired. Confusingly, Economical promptly returned this final payment to me. According to their letter, I actually didn't owe any money. This was annoying since I was threatened with debt collection just the week before, but I got my money back so no harm is done. Just kidding. Economical forwarded my information to debt collectors for failing to pay my bill. The debt collectors were just as confused as me when I explained that I did pay my bill and the money was returned. I had to forward the debt collectors 7 different documents to prove that I did not, in fact, owe any money. Also, while I don't know this for sure, I think those debt collectors sold my phone number to telemarketers because I've been getting phone calls from mysterious numbers non-stop since this all started. Really great, Economical, I appreciate that. Essentially what happened is that Economical's automated system didn't detect I was making a payment on my 2018-2019 premium and instead attributed it to the 2019-2020 renewal that I cancelled. Let's be clear here: Economical doesn't have a real, living human review your account before sending your information to debt collectors. Even a cursory glance at my account history could have prevented this issue. By this point, I've been dealing with the ramifications of cancelling my policy for three months. Three months. All I wanted was assurance that changes would be made to their system to prevent this from happening to others. That's all I wanted and I would have been satisfied. However, Economical couldn't even lie to me about promising that. At the end of my experience, I spoke with three different Economical representatives about getting this resolved so it wouldn't happen again. Instead, all three representatives echoed the same sentiment: "We're sorry! Have you considered speaking to our billing department to pay the balance (again)?" There was no assurance anything would change to prevent others from having debt collectors called on them for system errors. The apologies did not seem genuine and all Economical was concerned with was getting their money - again. In fact, to re-make this payment I had to call and make the payment manually because even Economical couldn't trust their online system to not mess up again. If you have the option, do not associate with Economical. They don't care about their customers, they only care about their customers' money. They're the embodiment of opportunistic bottom-feeders. If their system messes up, you'll spend three months navigating yourself through a resolution to the problem or face the call of debt collectors - probably both.

Make sure to get your cancellation penalty amount in writing! When I enquired about cancellation they told me someone would call shortly to discuss; the employee calculation my cancellation fee and then I ended up being charged more than double of what I was told! They didn’t even give me a breakdown of why I was being charged so much. I fought to get money back, but they just said I was misinformed about the cancellation fee and too bad for me.

I had sent several emails in the past to correct my information on my policy as it was incorrectly written on my Letter of Experience. I had provided an updated letter of experience proving that I was in fact not at fault for an accident and had been told by a representative of the company that the information was updated on my file, only to find out two years later that the letter of experience was NEVER updated on my file! Resulting in this insurance company overcharging me for the past two years for an accident I did not commit. Since finding out about this, the company is hardly responsive to my emails and they seem to avoid me mentioning that I've been overcharged for this amount of time. The negligence and lack of customer service from this company are truly upsetting and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Save your money and choose a different company that will actually do their due diligence rather than scam you for your money...