I'm sure that everyone has missed me terribly.

I'm semi-nauseated to the point where I don't really feel like writing. Since I've already broken my streak of daily posts by not writing anything during Playa del Fuego, the only pressing reason to sit here and type at all is to share my hate with all of you. Fortunately, I have plenty to give.

Today I got about 20 sheets of paper in the mail from my insurance company, which basically works out to three letters and a bill.

The first letter was a contract endorsement modifying the terms of my insurance. It's fairly lengthy and would be interesting on any other day, but more than likely I'm going to ignore it today, file it away and never read it, and get screwed by it in six months. That's how these things go.

The second letter was an upwards rate adjustment. They probably would have hidden it in some obscure corner of my latest invoice but Maryland law requires that I be made aware of a premium increase higher than 15% in a fairly detailed document. In my case, the premium increase is actually 29% for a property damage pay-out of $1411.13.

So lets go into hate specifics here. The law says that accidents can only carry an additional premium for 36 months. I'm paying $36 per month, likely for the full length of the next 3 years. Likely total? $1296.00. Difference between that and just giving a dude some cash? $115.13.

Now this particular property damage claim occurred on July 11, 2004. I'm not going to go into any details about what it was, but I called my agent when there was a prospect that a claim would be made against me, and told him to please get in touch with me for more information if it did happen.

I never got a call. Quite frankly, I don't even know if the claimed repairs correspond to any damage done. Nobody ever consulted me about it.

Then, earlier this year I got my Home Equity Line from the bank and called my agent up to make sure that my insurance would cover the full value of the home plus possessions to the new assessed value of the home. He assured me that everything was in order, so I asked if there were any claims on my car insurance that I should be looking forward to, specifically this one claim that I had called them about and never heard anything about. No, he assured me, your record with us looks clean.

Apparently that was bullshit. I guess now I know.

The third letter told me that in addition to being considered a driving risk by my insurance company, I'm also apparently a credit risk. "Dear Policyholder," they write, "We appreciate your choice of . . . insurance provider . . . In order to charge each policyholder with the risk they present . . . Certain elements of your financial history are used to develop an insurance score."

Now they wouldn't have to send me that letter if there weren't some factors that kept me from getting the best rate from them with my credit. And those factors are so dumb, I almost can't retype them. In essence, I've been told that I have too few ("INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION") department store accounts and too high of a percentage of revolving accounts to open total accounts.

So this evening's peace was broken by having to navigate ChoicePoint's amazingly combative and counterintuitive phone system until finally logging in to their web site and being forced to create an online account and password in order to receive an insurance report through the mail.

I have had nothing but good things to say about my insurance until today, but you'll notice I have yet to refer to them by name. I have my report on the way and a phone message in with my agent to give me a call back tomorrow. After I have a discussion and review my insurance report in more detail over the next week, I may replace pronouns with names as I search for a new insurer.

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