I have used Wagner Insurance as my auto insurance agent for over five years now and have had efficient and gracious service from them. I've talked with them several times over that period, and have always received full answers to my questions and timely callbacks.
I recently needed to buy home insurance in order to get a mortgage and made the mistake of going on-line and putting my name into an insurance-search website to get quotes, rather than going local. I got an immediate response - within 60 seconds - from a national carrier (Allstate.) A very friendly, persuasive, phone salesman got me a home insurance policy very quickly at a great price. However, I received an email from an out-of-town non-person a month later - the day of my mortgage closing in fact - informing me that Allstate was cancelling my insurance and was now informing my mortgage bank as well as me of that cancellation. There was a one sentence explanation, concerning a roof repair, which three roofers have told me is really not needed. The general agreement of several other people with whom I have discussed is that Allstate's cancellation was so arbitrary and unwarranted that there must have been some other factor in their proprietary algorithm involved.
Devastated, I called Mike Wagner, the owner of Wagner Insurance, who has four offices locally. He was at my house within fifteen minutes. He understood my situation immediately, evaluated the roof repair issue as minor and not warranting a cancellation, and explained my alternatives going forward. Once you get a cancellation like this, finding insurance is difficult, but Wagner did find a carrier that would take me on, at a higher premium, saving my mortgage disaster and giving me time to make the questionable roof repair and perhaps seek a lower-premium carrier in the future.
Two conclusions: (1) I'm better off going local with someone I know and trust personally rather than trying to talk to an impersonal, arbitrary corporation in cyberspace. (2). Wagner Insurance gave me such perfect service in a devastating, difficult situation that I feel lucky to have found them. And they have an office within two blocks from me where I can talk with them whenever I go for a walk. read more
