Jose in Tillamook, Oregon 97141, has four vehicles on his policy and claims to be the only driver. Despite my interrogation, he refuses to reveal any more drivers. One day, his son was driving one of the cars to pick up his girlfriend from the airport in Portland, Oregon, and got in a crash. It totaled the newer SUV. So far, the insurance company has refused to pay the $135,000. The other party has a judgment against the driver and the client. The insurance company is charging the client for a permissive use accident. The customer argues that he shouldn’t have to pay extra for the accident because he wasn’t driving.

I can count on two hands how many times a client or prospective client asked me to sell them insurance, but with a date of yesterday, so the accident they had today would be covered. Before insurance applications were required to be uploaded through secure internet connections to the insurance company, the industry relied on the honesty and integrity of the insurance agent to properly date and time the binding of a risk. The quarterly newsletter from the State of Oregon blurted out stories of agents caught in such illegal activity as backdating a policy and the fines and other sanctions they received. Now it’s impossible to backdate a policy because the computer time and date-stamps all activity.

Late and cancellation fees can eat you alive. On top of the billing fee, you might get charged as much as $20 if you pay late. Then, if your policy goes past the cancellation date, depending on the company, you might get charged another $25 to reinstate the policy. That’s $45 just in fees.

In the early 2000s, the personal insurance industry experimented with correlating a driver’s credit to the cost of managing their policy and a factor that would predict loss. The companies ordered credit reports as if you were applying for a loan at a bank or a credit card. After a few years, they had enough data to prove the correlation between bad credit, high accident activity, and poor payment behavior. They started charging more for drivers with awful credit and lowering premiums for those with excellent credit.