Who Writes This Stuff?

One of the necessary evils of our modern world is insurance. While insurance for medical and dental purposes is often worth the premium, it is insurance for large items like your home, and sometimes your car, that are like a 24 year old child living in his parents basement. It is that thing that is paid for month after month, knowing in all likelihood we will never get anything back from it. Don’t get me wrong, there is a definite comfort in knowing that major catastrophes will be covered, but the truth of the matter is that many people will go their whole lives paying untold amounts of money, and never make a single claim.

When I came home today to my apartment, I found a glossy piece of paper flapping in the wind with one corner affixed to my stairway railing with a piece of masking tape. I stripped the paper free, and carried it upstairs inside. The paper was an advertisement for renter’s insurance, which I currently do not have, but had been considering, as I had heard it was relatively inexpensive. The advertisement, which featured the small photo of a very decrepit local insurance agent (whose family was probably finally going to cash in on her life insurance policy ironically enough), opened by talking up that sense of comfort and security that I mentioned earlier. Excerpts from the beginning section read “You’ve rented a great place. We’ll make sure you don’t rent trouble” and “Chances are you have thousands of dollars worth of belongings in your apartment. That’s where your insurance provider comes in.” OK, I will admit it, they had me on the hook. I may not have very expensive items, but I have grown very attached to my “put it together yourself” $20 end tables, coffee table and bookshelves purchased from a local discount store, that are deserved of the protection this company was offering. Although this company had gotten me to take the initial bait, they failed miserably at reeling in their prize as I read further into the advertisement.

The bottom half of the advertisement was titled “Top 3 Reasons to Buy insurance from Blah, Blah, Blah Company”. This section contained a three pronged attack that I can only assume was purposefully written to turn away business, or was written by the independent insurance agent who had evidently gone into insurance because she had failed miserably at her former career of marketing, and was too miserly to pay somebody to develop the ad for her.

Reason #1: Combined with another policy, it could pay for itself.

This is actually a solid reason, and they started out strong enough. They faltered at the end of the paragraph by trying to turn away customers by using the tried and true method of insulting the intelligence of the customer. The paragraph described that renter’s insurance was so reasonably priced that if you had another policy with the same company, say auto insurance, that the multi-policy discount you would receive on your car may save you enough to pay for the renter’s insurance policy. Great selling point! Good job! Kudos! So why did you have to go and ruin it by bolding the final portion of the last sentence “cover the entire cost of your renter’s policy”? Am I of such limited intellectual functioning that you have to draw arrows, put flashing neon and line up dancing girls in oversized headdresses all around the important part of the paragraph because without your assistance my infinitesimal brain would not be able to pick up on the main benefit of obtaining the policy.

Reason #2: Protection Beyond Your Dwelling

In the event that insinuating that your target audience is two sandwiches short of a picnic did not completely turn them away from your product, this section of the advertisement then went on to cite two unconvincing points that made me question the quality of the product. The first stated “Any property inside your car is most likely covered in the event of theft.” Most likely? What is that all about? For me, vague statements about the policy’s coverage which imply that conditions must be met to make a claim quickly relegate this company to status of shady enterprise. Why don’t they just go ahead and say what they mean, “Any property inside your car is covered in the event of theft provided the crime is committed by an albino dwarf eating a tuna fish sandwich who smashes in the vehicle’s window with a brick from the foundation of a 1920’s era Wyoming schoolhouse. All claims must be accompanied by a photo of the offender, sample of the sandwich to prove it was indeed tuna and not a chicken salad sandwich, and the name of the school that the brick came from along with an affidavit from the school’s first principal certifying the authenticity of the brick.” I am sure I am just being silly and overdramatic, and that it is much less complex than that. It is likely that what actually occurs is that your claim is submitted to a claims adjuster, who is an old-school Dungeons and Dragons aficionado, and simply rolls his twenty-side die on his desk. A 1, 2 or 12, and your claim is paid. Any other number, your claim is summarily denied. All appeals of denied claims are decided by a battle to the death with the Claims Manager (AKA The Dungeon Master) using only first level mage spells.

The second brilliant paragraph is warmly and accurately quoted as follows: “Liability coverage is included, so you may be protected from a lawsuit if, for example, a guest injures someone in an accident after being served drinks in your home.” So they decided to go with a repeat of the “you might be covered or you might not be covered but please, oh please, buy our crappy policy” approach. I began to wonder if this person worked for a casino in the past. “Oh yes, sir, you may win $25,000 in this game of chance, but the more likely scenario is that you will slowly, but surely, fritter away your child’s college tuition attempting to do so.” What irked me even more than the company’s evidently quivering stance on claim payments was the fact that a law even exists to hold a person responsible for the reckless behavior of another individual, and that because of this asinine law the insurance companies are in a position to try and scare you into buying this marginal policy. Why don’t they go ahead and enact another law that holds you personally responsible if, during a pleasant dinner party at your home, one guest gouges another guests eyes out with a steak knife, thereby allowing the insurance company to offer a Ginsu Guarantee policy rider for only an additional $4.99 a month.

Reason #3: We Take Out The Guesswork

Pardon my language, but triple WTF?!!!! I literally had to do a double take and read this title again. All your last section did was create guesswork about what your policy may or may not cover, and now we should rest assure that you have our best interest in the forefront of your two-sizes too big heart? Is this some kind of demented insurance adjuster’s Jedi mind trick? The final supposedly convincing statement was splashed on the page like it had been doused with an overflowing bucket of complete BS, “…to make sure you have all the coverage you need, and none of the coverage you don’t.” Like what coverage, the Ginsu Guarantee?