Progressive Insurance SNAPSHOT

The OBD port is below the steering wheel, right side.

 

I had started a thread about this a few months ago. I called the company and apparently they only monitor how fast you break. I guess if they monitored your speed, the would be monitoring you breaking the law and they would have to tell the cops and that would be a mess.

Most people here thought it gave them too much information about where you travel to at any given time and how fast you travel, but I would do it for 6 months which is what progressive evaluates your driving habits for.

I didn't because they ran a report on my history and there was a second not at fault accident on the record (one which never happened) and their rate was very high as a result. Calling the reporting company wouldn't help, because Progressive had run the report and they only run new reports every six months.

Anyway, I may go for it this September.

 

I had Progressive for many years.
I found out why they call them Progressive.
Progressive is how your rates escalate every 6 months.
For several years, I didn't notice, but then I started questioning them and it was not about my driving habits, it was about NY state, and it was the fault of the politicians, and the lawyers, and incidence rates etc...........
finally I got rate quotes from elsewhere............

My insurance went down 40% per year by going with Liberty Mutual!
And that was with a 1 year policy, not a 6 month policy like Progressive would only write. I was guessing the 6 month policy was so they could raise the rates more often.

So, would I trust progressive to "help me out" with a snapshot?
I don't think so!

 

I went to Progressive when I bought my Prius in April, They gave me the lowest quote out of 4 other insurance companys. After being a Geico customer for 10 years , I pay the same amount for 3 vehicles with Progressive as I did for 2 with Geico!
The little plug in device comes in the mail in about a week, It plugs into the port right under the steering wheel. Well I am a little leary of what it records and sends out. According to them it only records miles traveled, and hard braking, over 7mph per second slowdown.
The operator told me you COULD get, up to 15% off your premium, But most likely 5-10%. I could not get a straight answer out of her, just a maybe.
We will see , Had them for a month or so, and drive very resonably, and watch the braking. Driving for gas mileage with the Prius really helps in that respect.
Getting high 50s to low 60s MPG. in my 18 mile trips to work, and Lovin it!..........Wojo

 

good luck. it will be interesting hearing your experience when your 6 months are up.

 

Did you go through your agent or through the Progressive website for your Snapshot device? When I had Progressive back in December (before switching to 21st Century & saving about a thousand bucks/year), I ordered Snapshot through the Progressive website. It arrived within 2 days. 3 weeks later, after seeing some unusual results in the Snapshot portal and not receiving any answers from Progressive via webmail sent via their "contact me" buttons, I called my insurance agent. She called her contact at Progressive, and they got snotty with her when they found out I was using a Snapshot in a Prius. "Snapshots are not compatible with hybrid vehicles because it counts a trip every time the engine shuts off. There is no way to adjust it. Why is your client wasting our time using a Snapshot?"

My agent had exactly the same response as I did, except she wouldn't admit to using colorful language cause she's a pro. So I unplugged that device and had it in the mail within minutes. It felt like I was cutting an unbilical. It felt great.

The number of trips you take in a day count against you.

Snapshot was counting 4, 8, 9+ "trips" on a single 1-way 5 mile commute from this end of town to the other, & the Snapshot web portal was having a fit tellling me I was taking too many trips.

I was less than impressed with Progressive, and especially with their Snapshot program.

Using their "contact me" web-mail dialogue buttons was like sending radio signals into a black hole; & if Snapshots were incompatible w/hybrid vehicles 4 months ago, they should (a) have said so and (b) not issued one to a hybrid owner. It also seems to me Progressive should have been able to figure out I was not a good Snapshot candidate by virtue of the fact the vehicle they were insuring was a Toyota Prius ... but perhaps that notion is as outrageous as rates they were charging. (No tickets, no accidents, small town, low crime, and mileage considerably less than 12K/year... and PS, it pays to shop!)

I'm not saying Progressive couldn't have magically improved Snapshot in the ensuing 4 months by making it hybrid-compabible, or that they aren't suddenly answering questions sent through their Snapshot portal dialogue button. I'm just sharing my own experience for what it's worth.

I will caution you however that I have read ScanGuage-II devices (which also use the single OBD-II port) are incompatible with Snapshot devices, even if you somehow manage to hook each of them to the one port under the driver's dash.

I replaced Snapshot with a Scan Guage-II mounted to the top of my rear view mirror, and I find that to be of enormous utility.

Driving around with Progressive's Snapshot, on the other hand, was like driving around with my mother in the front seat. It made me drive like a pansy and it pissed me off.

But that's me

 

^^
Thanks. Not that I have Progressive Insurance but I do have a SG, that's a pretty funny incompatibility. It clearly seems like they need to improve their algorithm for determining a trip.

They could look a values like engine run time (in seconds) that resets that starts at 0 when you power up or look at the voltage.

 

Perhaps if I'd shared my experience 4 months ago instead of being embarrassed to admit it, I could have saved someone else the same grief. Better late than never I spose

 

Had these on a 2007 4 Runner as well as a 2004 Silverado. They caused some engine and traction warning lights to come on in the 4 Runner and I believe it caused the speedometer to read 16 mph high on the Silverado.....but not before we got a 30% discount. I don't think I would risk installing one on something that is so heavily computer controlled like a Prius. We have since removed them and returned them....both vehicles function normally now.

 

After 15 years, I am quite happy with SoCal AAA!

 

I have been using a snapshot with two negative outcomes.

1. The same as above. It is flawed and reads the ICE cycling up as a new trip.

2. I believe the device has messed with my computer. The car will intermittently start or not start with no given reason. After this answered, I did some google searching and my local toyota dealership confirmed my findings that the snapshot causes problems with cars of various makes. Ugg.

 

Oh Flo, you car wrecking tart!

 

"What driving habits impact my potential savings?
How often you make hard brakes, how many miles you drive each day and how often you drive between midnight and 4 a.m. can all impact your potential savings."
I drive too far each day to get any savings.

 

Happy with Mercury Insurance for 22 years!

 

I went with Liberty Mutual's equivalent. It measures acceleration and braking rate, total miles, and time of day of trips. Of course, too miles is bad. So is driving in the middle of the night, which is when my wife mostly grocery shops. Then for acceleration and braking not to be heavy and count against you, you have to be like a hypermiler going for a record on the peddles. The Sable, which sits most of the time, only ended up with 9% out of 30%. At least the discount on the daily ride didn't get cut to less than the 5% discount to try the monitor.

Didn't have any technical problems with it.

 

I don't mind being monitored at all.
With me they would find:

Hard brakes: None.
I live > 3 miles from work.
However (comma!) I frequently get called out after midnight.

Snapshot: fail

I'll stick with USAA, and wait until Flo gets a little more "Progressive."
I use the lizard for my 2 bikes. Progressive wasn't even CLOSE.

YMMV!