John Hernandez and his clueless employees cost me hundreds of extra dollars and made my life a living nightmare for almost 6 months.
I am a rideshare driver and I need insurance coverage so that in the event of an accident while driving for rideshare my coverage is based on my personal insurance deductible and not the outrageous deductibles that the rideshare companies want. So in mid June of 2018 when I called and spoke to Danny (an employee in John's office) he assured me that it would be no problem to add this coverage to my policy.
A few weeks later I still never received my policy in the mail and a month later in July when my first automatic withdrawal came out I noticed that the amount was less than it was supposed to be. I immediately called John's office and left a message asking him to clarify why the amount was not correct. No one in his office ever got back to me.
1 month later in August this same thing happened again. I was not charged the full amount I was expecting to be charged. This time I called and emailed several times to make sure that Danny in John's office got the message that I needed to hear back from him regarding the discrepancy. But it took them over a week to get back to me.
When Danny did finally get back to me he explained that the reason the amount was not correct was because the rideshare endorsement had NOT been added to my insurance! In addition to this, I would now have to pay $50 extra per month to make up for what I was not billed for. This means I would be paying for coverage that I did not have for almost 3 months. Of course neither Danny or John saw it this way. They saw it as I now owe them money and I was in the wrong. Therefore I wasn't paying extra, I was just paying what was owed to them!
What was even more insulting was that neither Danny nor John could seem to understand why I was so upset. You see they both assured me that had something happened during that three months when I didn't have the rideshare endorsement I still would've been covered. However what they didn't understand is that in the eyes of the rideshare companies if the endorsement wasn't there from the beginning, and something happened, that meant I was driving without proper insurance and would have been suspended as a driver therefore eliminating my primary source of income all due to their incompetence.
So I gave John an ultimatum both over the phone and in writing. That if he or anyone in his office made one more mistake that he would be fired as my insurance agent and that I would be going with someone else. It was also at this point that I asked him to cancel the automatic payments that would be coming out of my bank account since the amount was going to be $50 more that I was expecting to pay every month.
As a precaution I looked at my account a few weeks later to double check and the automatic payment for September was STILL scheduled! This time instead of dealing with John and his agency, I called into customer service at State Farm directly. They were able to remove the automatic payment for that month but explained that my insurance agent would have to permanently remove the payment plan from my account and that they would send him a message to do so. Unfortunately, this cycle went on for two more months where the automatic payment would be added back and I would call in and have it removed.
The final straw came last week when (after the payments were suspended once again) I started receiving repeated phone calls from someone named Cynthia in John's office. She was calling because my insurance payment was past due and wanted to know when I was going to be making a payment! I felt like I was now dealing with a collection agency!
Once again I reached out to State Farm customer service and they informed me that I could change my agent to another agent at State Farm online and that the process would be the best way I could disentangle myself from John without going through the hassle of canceling my policy. I initiated the change online and was prepared to put John Hernandez's office out of my mind.
But that's not where this story ends...
Three hours after I initiated the change of agent request I got a call from an unknown blocked number. Surprise, surprise it was John Hernandez himself calling me about the change of agent request. He seemed to have no idea why I had put in a change of agent request. I reminded him of my earlier warning and the continued billing problems and told him he was fired.
One hour later I received another call, this time from John's main office line. But this time it was someone named Juan. He too had seen the change of agent request and was wondering what was going on and why I was changing! I have to admit I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. The lack of communication wasn't just with customers, it was with John's own employees. read more