Fairfax, VA Car Insurance For Less Than You’re Paying Now

I can’t think of a single person who looks forward to buying car insurance, in particular when the cost is too high. Drivers have so many insurers to purchase coverage from, and although it’s nice to have multiple companies, it makes it harder to adequately compare rates.

You need to get comparison quotes before your policy renews since insurance rates are rarely the same from one policy term to another. Even if you think you had the best price a year ago you may be paying too much now. Starting right now, forget anything you know (or think you know) about car insurance because it’s time to teach you the fastest way to lower your annual insurance bill.

Choosing the best insurance company for you in Fairfax is not that difficult. If you have a current car insurance policy or are shopping for new coverage, you will benefit by learning to find better prices while maximizing coverage. Virginia consumers just need to know the proper way to compare company rates online.

How to Compare Car Insurance in Fairfax

Finding cheaper car insurance prices can be relatively painless. The only thing you need to do is take a few minutes to compare rate quotes online with multiple companies. This can be done in several different ways.

• The single most time-saving way to find low rates is to use a rate comparison form click to view form in new window. This form keeps you from doing boring form submissions to each individual car insurance company. Taking the time to complete one form will return quotes from many national carriers.
• A slightly less efficient method to compare rate quotes is going to each company website to complete their respective quote request forms. For example, we’ll pretend you want comparison quotes from GEICO, 21st Century and Allstate. To find out each rate you need to visit each site to enter your coverage information, which is why the first method is quicker.

  For a list of links to insurance companies in Fairfax, click here.

However you get your quotes, make absolute certain that you use apples-to-apples coverages with each company. If you are comparing higher or lower deductibles you will not be able to determine which rate is truly the best in Fairfax.

Are you getting all your discounts?

Companies don’t list all available discounts in an easy-to-find place, so we took the time to find some of the best known as well as the least known discounts you could be receiving. If they aren’t giving you every credit available, you are throwing money away.

• Government Employees – Active or retired federal employment could cut as much as 10% off with certain companies.
• Multi-policy Discount – If you insure your home and vehicles with one insurance company you may earn up to 20% off your total premium.
• Safe Driver Discount – Safe drivers can pay as much as 50% less than drivers with accident claims.
• Seat Belts Save – Using a seat belt and requiring all passengers to buckle their seat belts can save up to 15% off the personal injury premium cost.
• Sign Early and Save – Some insurance companies reward drivers for switching policies prior to your current policy expiration. It can save you around 10%.
• Drivers Education – Have your child take driver’s ed class in school.
• Accident Free – Claim-free drivers can save substantially as compared to drivers who are more careless.
• Distant Student – Youth drivers who are attending college and do not have access to a covered vehicle can receive lower rates.
• Payment Method – By paying your policy upfront instead of paying each month you may reduce your total bill.
• Club Memberships – Being a member of certain professional organizations could qualify you for a break when buying car insurance.

Keep in mind that some credits don’t apply to all coverage premiums. Some only apply to the cost of specific coverages such as collision or personal injury protection. Just because you may think you would end up receiving a 100% discount, you’re out of luck.

For a list of insurers offering car insurance discounts in Fairfax, click here to view.

Many Things Influence your Rates

Consumers need to have an understanding of the different types of things that help determine the price you pay for car insurance. When you know what positively or negatively impacts premium levels helps enable you to make changes that will entitle you to much lower annual insurance costs.

• Men pay higher rates – Statistics show women are more cautious behind the wheel. That doesn’t necessarily mean that men are worse drivers. Both sexes are in accidents in similar percentages, but the males cause more damage. They also get cited for more serious violations such as reckless driving. Teenage male drivers are most likely to cause an accident and are penalized with high car insurance rates.
• Performance makes a difference – The performance of the vehicle you are buying insurance for makes a huge difference in your rates. The lowest base rates are generally reserved for lower performance four cylinder passenger cars, but the cost you end up paying is determined by many additional factors.
• Pay less after the wedding – Being married actually saves money when buying car insurance. Having a spouse usually means you are more mature than a single person and it’s proven that drivers who are married are more cautious.
• Your job and insurance rates – Occupations such as lawyers, social workers and accountants tend to have higher rates than average because of high stress and long work days. On the flip side, occupations like pilots, athletes and retirees receive lower rates.

Slick advertising tricks that work

Consumers in Virginia get pounded daily by advertisements for the lowest price auto insurance from the likes of State Farm and Allstate. All the ads say the same thing that you can save if you move your coverage to them.

How does each company claim to save you money? This is how they do it.

All the different companies can use profiling for the type of driver they prefer to insure. A good example of a desirable insured might be profiled as between the ages of 40 and 55, has no tickets, and has a high credit rating. A propective insured who matches those parameters will get the preferred rates and as a result will probably pay quite a bit less when switching companies.

Drivers who are not a match for this ideal profile will be quoted a more expensive rate and ends up with the driver buying from a lower-cost company. Company advertisements say “drivers who switch” not “everybody who quotes” save that kind of money. That’s the way companies can truthfully state the savings. This emphasizes why drivers must quote coverage with many companies. It’s not possible to predict the company that will provide you with the cheapest rates.

One last thing

As you shop your coverage around, never reduce needed coverages to save money. In too many instances, an insured cut liability coverage limits and found out when filing a claim that their decision to reduce coverage ended up costing them more. The aim is to purchase plenty of coverage at an affordable rate, not the least amount of coverage.

In this article, we covered quite a bit of information on how to reduce car insurance prices online. The most important thing to understand is the more providers you compare, the better chance you’ll have of finding lower rates. Drivers may discover the best price on car insurance is with a company that doesn’t do a lot of advertising. These smaller insurers may often insure only within specific states and give getter rates as compared to the big name companies such as Progressive and GEICO.

To learn even more about car insurance

More tips and info about car insurance is available at the Virginia Bureau of Insurance website. Virginia drivers can find out which companies have the most complaints, file complaints about a company, and download brochures.