UNFAIR DEBIT!!!

On 04/16/07 Farmers Insurance drafted my account with no notice for $687.00, therefore causing my account to become overdrawn for over $800. This has caused emotional and severe mental distress. I could not get my agent or anyone else in the company to consider working something out with me to help elviate some of my hardship. I did not want to cancel the policy, i just wanted to work things out some other way in order to have at least half of the money refunded.

I know there are rules and policies but there are also life situations that can cause exceptions to the rules. All I was asking Farmers for is to extend some customer courtesy.

Farmers did the samething to me in the begining of the month the charge wasn't as high but they did try to take almost $80.00 more then they were supposed to so I went to the bank and disputed the draft my reasons being that you can take my premium for both auto and home divide them by 12 and get my monthly premium and it comes to $150.53/month since I started my premiums have been 140,160,219,and now 384.00 F*#K Farmers

Here is my story about Farmers Insurance from the beginning. This started in January of 2007, We had been with a local insurance agency for years and never had any issues with them, but Farmer’s had just moved into town and solicited our business. I had just bought a new truck so I figured I would let them give me a quote to see if I could save some money. Sure enough the agent told me that my rates would be about $250.00 a year cheaper then what I was currently paying. Money is tight so I figured if I could save some, great. We signed the policy and I gave him a check for $360.00 to set up the policy. Within two weeks I received a cancelation notice, when I contacted the local agent, he said that the reason we received the cancellation notice was because of his mistake in the paperwork and he had resubmitted our policy and we should have nothing to worry about. I had signed up for an automatic draft from my account to have $157.99 taken out monthly for our premium payment, this was the agreed rate. I even called and verified the amount to ensure my bookkeeping was correct. When I received my bank statement for April, they took out $214.89 instead of the agreed upon rate. My next payment was due to be withdrawn that day so I went down to the bank to find out how much they took out for May’s Payment, they took out $264.17. I was now over drafted in my account because when you live on a budget and extra money is withdrawn without your knowledge, it screws up the entire checkbook. I immediately called Farmers, they didn’t know what happened, and they had to call the main office to find out. I waited no call, and waited no call; I ended up calling them back 3 more times before someone would talk to me, Apparently my rate increased, I asked about why we weren’t notified and how could they just take out any amount that they wanted? Well you should have received a letter, Not only did I not receive a letter; I would have never continued service with them if I had known my rate would increase by over $100.00 a month. I immediately cancelled my policy and switched back to our prior insurance company, which we only pay $136.00 a month, a huge difference then the $264 they were taking out of my account. To top it all off, today I received a collection notice, for $360.00 the amount due to start the policy, which they had directly been paid and promptly cashed when I signed the policy. I have a copy of the cleared check, and a mouthful to say to this company. When you move your company to a town of 2000 people, and you screw the residents within the first six months of business, You screw yourself. Word of mouth is everything in this town, I can’t see them lasting here more than a couple months, and if I had my way the entire corporation needs to go out of business. I know I am only one person that has been screwed by this company but I will not sit idly by and watch them do this to other members of my community, I plan to take action.

My local Farmers Insurance sent out an email to all clients, asking to donate for a cause. In this email, they listed all clients emails for everyone's eyes. This is a privacy issue...not only did they publish my home email, but also my work email. This is just the icing on the cake. I think I'll shop around for a company that knows what they are doing.

whow! I have been going through the same hell for over a year, and nobody does anything! I switched thinking I was saving and going to a better place, not only it has been a nightmare from the beginning but I am stuck because my old insurance wont take me back with the same great rates I had with them so I am waiting for a miracle, my account has been overdraft over and over again, and they always have an excuse I am on a tight budget and single I am the breadwinner of my home and this has put a lot of stress on my financial life.
is there anyone we can contact that will help in these matters?

While I am satisfied to see that others have been screwed by Farmers and that I'm not alone out there, I am disgusted that such a disreputable company is allowed to exist...Like all insurers, Farmers declared me instantly guilty when, 19 months ago from a dead stop at a red light, the driver ahead of me began egress into a right turn, then braked. I bumped her fender at a speed of about 2 mph and a distance of 2 yards. She agreed there was no damage and no injury...I was told by my agent that I'd get a freebie, with my perfect 25-year record with Farmers.

Three days later, "Olga" decided the had back spasms.

Farmers DENIED HER INJURY CLAIM. AND raised my rates $1000 a year on a car I owned and wasn't even driving at the time!

If anybody reading this can help me, I'd love to hear from you.

Just had Farmers do the exact same thing to me. Normal monthly payment went from 240/month to suddenly 680/month without notification. i received a letter stating they were not renenwing my policy. i contacted my agent to say WTF?, and didn't hear back until I called to investigate the unexpectded debit from my account. they had switched me to a new policy in a higher risk category and never notified me or gave me information on what rates they were offering me. It was very much like the "slamming" tactics in long distance that the phone companies were sued for a while back. The biggest complaint I have is that they have no real arbitration for disputing assignment of fault, and so their moving me to a higher risk category will follow me no matter what insurance I switch to. But I am most certainly switching. After 10 years. And I will be directing everyone I know to this site. thank you for doing this so that I don't have to. I was already speccing out ScrewedByFarmers.com when a friend pointed me to your site.

we cancelled the policy 4 months ago and just now received collection notice stating that we owe them still. Apparently , they made a mistake on their end and I got the collection notice . I received no bill for the last 4 months stating the amount and they just sent it stright to collection . BUT this is not the only time they have made a mistake . I tried to turn in a claim on my car winshield and my agent told me to tell the help point that my car had been vadalized but the truth was a car had kick up a rock and broke it. Of course , I told them the truth but WTF......and I ended up paying it at the end because of my agent's mistake.

PS : Any legal advice ???

Hello everybody.. Farmers suck they did the same thing to me they made my checking acct. neg for the 2nd time and then they don't want to fix the problem that they made.. I cancaled my acct with them in dec 2007 and they still took the money out of my acct after christmas. so that put me in the neg. I dont understand if i cancaled the policy they still took money out... Now i'm having a hell of a time for them to fix this problem... All i know is that they suck big time. I would even let my dog get insur from them....

My very first electronic payment to Farmers for a new policy (after the initial sign up with them) was taken illegally from my account one week prior to the date they had agreed to take it out. This action caused over $200 in overdraft fees to my account in a week's time. It has taken several calls to their district management offices, Prematic ("Service Point", my bank and a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and nothing is being done about the overdrafts caused by their action. It took over a week to receive (some of) the funds they took from my account since I cancelled it immediately upon finding out they billed me a week before they assured me they would. Businesses cannot just take money from people's accounts electronically whenever the heck they FEEL LIKE IT! And especially after I never agreed to have it debited on any other date EXCEPT the second Friday of the month and they assured me it would be debited THEN and at NO OTHER TIME.

I just signed onto farmers 2 months ago giving them the money requested which would be 2 months worth of insurance in advance. Then yesterday I get a freaking cancellation notice in the mail!!!!! I call them and all they say is it was " Per Company" for the reason. FARMERS SUCKS AND NOW I HAVE TO GO THRU HELL TO GET OTHER INSURANCE . STAY AWAY! IM SO NOT HAPPY! THEY COULDNT EVEN GIVE ME A REASON!

Same Exact Thing just happened to me... policy was cancelled, but account still auto-drafted... pissed? you can imagine...

Contact the Farmers Insurance Internal Auditing Department - They might be able to look into it.

I applied to Farmers...went through their testing process...passed...then got a call from them saying that they filled the position. THE SAME DAY AS MY INTERVIEW...what integrity! Grow up MATT OLTMANN (503) 372-2151 AND YOUR COMPANY OR YOUR GOING TO BE READING THIS MESSAGE BOARD WONDERING, WHAT WENT WRONG?

So yeah I applied for a position, passed the tests, and had an interview with Matt Oltmann. The interview was strong plus I am super qualified meaning I meet and mostly exceed the requirements and experience necessary for the job. I may have mentioned something about ethics being of the utmost importance to me in a work environment and that may have disqualified me from moving further. Who knows. I got a tacky form email from Farmers saying "At this time we have decided to continue our search for candidates whose skills and experience more closely match the position." Seriously are they stupid? I have over 10 years of experience doing work as described in their job listing and I have successfully used all of the skills Farmers Insurance claimed to be necessary for the job. What kind of shitty people are they hiring I wonder? I sent a professional email to Matt Oltmann asking him how they could have come to the above decision but he had neither the balls nor the courtesy to reply.....and this guy is supposed to do HR??? What an ass.

matt.oltmann@farmersinsurance.com
503-372-2151

Same thing happened to me. I canceled my policy with Foremost because they wanted to raise my premium a substantial amount even though I had had no claims or tickets or anything. I had gone with a different insurance company. Then without warning, they took $250 out of my account and sent me a notice as if I was being charged for a new insurance contract that I had never signed for!

If after reading all these testimonials you decide to keep your insurance with Farmers, wait till you have a claim. You will then know why the above remarks are virtually about how dismal this company is.
In 2008 At a stop light, I was rearended. Bought the car 5 days earlier (Brand new) $5k in diminished value. Nope, fixed right no loss has occurred. At this point we have been involved in the suit for 3 years entering our 4th. My advice? Back them into a corner and they will capitulate. Stay tough, hang in there. There is a reason all these people have posted on this site. But don't take my word for it, experience it for yourself and save yourself from reading all this copious reading! Go get in a wreck and put in a claim with Farmers. See your post on here soon!!! lol!!!!!! Suckers.................!!!!!! ha ha ha ha ha

i am so mad thay take your money as fast as thay can .to put it back in your acount it takes them seven days to send a check and know its going yo take another three days

Well it looks like we have all had the same issue with Farmers. So we were shopping around for new car insurance online and everyone knows you get calls from all different insurace companies once you start shopping around. So Patrick gives us a quote which was good enough for our budget and we give our account information for our payment and sign the paper work (big mistake). A few days pass and Patrick gives us a call back saying our quote was going to increase because there were some tickets on my boyfriends license (any other insurance company runs your information before they give you a quote and make you sign the paper work at least thats what i have experienced with Geico). Well the quote went up by $100+ which i would never be able to afford. So I told Patrick we would need to cancel the insurance an he says ok. So it is now July and I have received letters from collection agencies for over $900. From January until now I have not received 1 bill in the mail. Thank god i was smart enough to place a stop payment on farmers but now we dont know how to get them off our credit report because of course when you call nobody can help you!!

After Farmers decided to drop the entire state of Louisiana. We had to find another company. It seems that Farmers did not suck enough out of the state. They now decided we owe additional money and they are sending us to collections. We had auto draft. you think if we owed any premiums that they would have taken any moneys owed out of the account... Now that we were force to find another carrier they are now saying after the policy expired we owe money because they didnt take out enough...... wait what???? sounds like an agent might be dipping into farmers pocket to me

I had almost the same problem, my husband's family has been with them forever so we stayed with them when we rented a house, everything went great until we bought our first house last november. We told them that we were cancelling the renters insurance, getting homeowners insurance with a company better suited with our mortgage. For 6 months they kept taking renters insurance out, even when we told them multiple times a month to stop. In may we canceled our account with them all together, with total disgust of course, we demanded the money they took from our bank account and where told we would be reimburst. That was a total lie, this morning my husband called and told me they took over 300 dollars from our account, they told us it was our quarterly insurance charge and membership fee... sinice we no longer have an account with the company they used our bank account number without permission, the bank was notified today, the corporate office is Iowa. I will be calling them about the matter again and will be turning the insurance agent in to the state commission for basic fraudulent practices. It's not entirely about the amount stolen, it's the fact that they used previous private account information and are stealing. I will end up getting my lawyer involved, who isn't cheep, with money I don't have because this agency stole from me. It's not right what they have done and if they can do this to the few people we've seen here online... how many others are they doing the same to? Thank you for sharing your story, now I know that I have become part of a group of people who were also wronged by this company. I hope in the end they will get what they deserve, I know I will do everything to get back what they took. Thank you again, Lynn

it sounds like you rearended the other party. 99.99% of the time when you rear end someone it is your fault by all insurance companies. even tho they denied her injury claim as likely no injury, it was still an accident and every company out there will charge for it not just farmers

That is so bizarre!! The EXACT same thing just happened to me, and I mean literally EXACT! Policy increased without notice claiming there was letter I should've got, but never did, I asked y in the world would u notify me with something like that through the mail?? Why not just email, message me through online account (like everything else when ur paperless billing) or any other method to avoid there bring a problem, like being lost in the mail. They cancelled me cause underwriter had to clear up problem with paperwork and assured me it would b no problem, but she took to long and had to cancel then resubmit when paperwork got figured out. Apparently within this short window my rate went up over$100 per policy period. But yet they auto drafted same payment I originally signed for, now they want the difference of the $25 a month that was accruing during 3 months I had service with them (I think they got butt hurt I was cancelling). But they were the ones taking auto payment, so weren't they doing it to themselves. I've been on phone for hours getting the run around, now I'm even more motivated to get to the bottom of this

They did same thing to me,I was not on auto pay.I canceled my policy and they went took 800 dollars out then charged me 100 to return money.mafia style buissnis.