I’ve been playing with Progressive MyRate, formerly Progressive TripSense for about three years. I’ve been pretty cynical of this program and I’m even more so now. Here’s how it works:
If you are a Progressive Auto Insurance customer and sign up for MyRate, you get a sensor, a cable and some software in the mail. You put the sensor in the OBD-II port in your car and it records your driving habits for six months. Every six months or so, you pull the sensor out, use the cable to upload the data to Progressive and you get a discount based off your driving habits. You do not get to see all of the data that is collected but you can view reports of some of the data online after you upload it. They originally launched this program in Minnesota and now it is available in a few other states.
In my experience, I have received the minimum discount: 5%. Considering I pay about $600 every six months for insurance, this comes to about $30 in savings in exchange for giving Progressive detailed reports of every single trip I make with my car. In my opinion, getting that kind of data is worth a lot more than thirty bucks. In order to save more, you need to not drive you car regularly, have very short commutes and avoid driving at night. I see how this would save money if you used it in a second car that you didn’t drive much or if you used public transport most of the time instead of your car - something that is not terribly common in Minnesota.
What Progressive does not tell you is that the MyRate sensor is actually a rebranded Davis Instruments CarChip and you can access all the data that is collected by using Davis’ CarChip Software. No hacking is involved but you should know that you cannot modify any of the data on the chip using the software. Note that there is apparently now a wireless version of this chip that Progressive is providing that may not allow you to use the CarChip software.
Looking at the latest instructions on how MyRate works, I noticed that in some states you can now actually get charged more for your insurance based on your driving habits. I find this very unethical considering the valuable information you are providing Progressive. In Minnesota, unless the terms have changed without me knowing, you will get a minimum of a 5% discount if you submit your data and can get up to a maximum of 25% discount.
In addition to my qualms about Progressive MyRate, my recent experience has been rocky. I got an email notifications letting me know that it was time to upload my data. I lug out an old computer running Windows 2000 and plug it in because this program requires Windows. Honestly, Progressive MyRate is the only reason I even have a machine running Windows in the house. Either way, for some reason it would no longer recognize the sensor. I tested a few things, reset the cables, restarted a couple times then broke down and called support. They said they’d call me back and 3 days later I got a call asking me to try pressing on the cable differently. It didn’t work. Following up later, they asked if my cable had a particular dot on it and it did. They said that the cable will no longer work and I’ll need a new cable. I’m confused why a particular cable would disable itself or stop working. They decide to ship me out a new cable and a week later it never showed. I follow up and they send me a PDF to ship my chip back to them. A bunch of trouble just to get a tiny discount in exchange for details of every single trip I’ve taken in my car in the last six months.
Progressive MyRate is a program that I’d recommend if you rarely use your car, live in a state where you are guaranteed a discount and that your rate won’t increase and if you don’t have any privacy concerns regarding giving your driving habits to your auto insurance company. I’m guessing that isn’t very many people.
For me, while it’s been an interesting experiment for three years I’m now shopping around to see if I can get a better rate without the sensor.
Comments 11
We use the TripSensor / MyRate thing too, it’s nice to know that can be accessed with the CarChip software - I will probably try it out next time I have to bring the chip up from the car. We generally get around 15-18% because we avoid driving late at night and I only commute three times a week - we use public transportation for everything else, which isn’t bad inside the city. For $200+ a year, it is worth it to me. You used to be able to see everything that you were submitting before a recent update I thought, with the speeds and everything. We still have some windows machines around so it’s not an issue - if I was Mac/Linux only it would be much more of a hassle I agree.
Posted 02 Jun 2008 at 13:55 ¶Hey AAron,
Posted 02 Jun 2008 at 20:42 ¶thanks for linking my new kitten..his name is “Boo”,
He’s a red point Birman. He just celebrated his 3 & a half month birthday today!
I love your blog….keep up the twitter!
I would shop around and be sure to tell them that you are planning on jumping ship unless they can make you an attractive offer. Just make sure you have a better rate quote elsewhere else before you pull the trigger.
Posted 03 Jun 2008 at 06:25 ¶Self-imposed monitoring is pretty odd, if not scary. I wonder if down the road you can get a discount to wear an ankle bracelet like they put on people on house arrest.
- Mitch
Posted 04 Jun 2008 at 06:08 ¶Mitch,
While I don’t agree with giving up more of my personal privacy to a corporation for a financial benefit, at least it’s better than mandatory monitoring.
Bill
Posted 04 Jun 2008 at 07:27 ¶Wonder if you can drive your car backwards to shave off some miles…. Nah they probably thought of that…..
Posted 04 Jun 2008 at 21:57 ¶That’s so cool that you have that photo. I love it.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 07:49 ¶I took mine with my iphone, I’ll post more later
this morning….
This is nothing. Just wait till OnStar starts submitting all the information to the insurance companies. It will get even worse, when they start reporting data concerning the technical condition of your vehicle: tire pressure, oil pressure, seat belts on/off, whether GPS is in use or not, the volume of your radio.
I will not be surprised if very soon insurance companies will start jacking up rates if they see that you like to drive with your windows down, radio blasting, no seat belts and have a low tire pressure.
Even worse, imagine you get into an accident which is not your fault, but you had all that data submitted to the insurance company. They may deny coverage after the accident has occurred.
Posted 12 Jun 2008 at 11:09 ¶Vasil hate to break this to you but GMAC offers insurance and they do use the OnStar data to help determine rates (voluntary) but OnStar can see your data no matter what. An insurance company can not deny claims if you are found not at fault. Even at fault it’s not likely that data would be used. With MyRate the data is only provided to law enforcement with a court order, period. In theory Progressive would attract more safe drivers with the discount increasing the amount of premium taken it while reducing the amout in claims paid out. Smart actually. Steal the best drivers from other companies by offering the discount.
Posted 24 Jul 2008 at 12:40 ¶Great information! Installing this chip would probably increase my insurance by 1,000%. I have a lead foot
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 08:42 ¶People complain that their rates aren’t representative of their actual driving behaviour.
Now that there’s an option to show the insurance company how they actually drive, people are complaining that the IC will have accurate data.
Bottom line, only the people who have something to hide won’t wanna join the program.. which is exactly the point. It’s called self-selection.
I drive well, get a big discount and laugh at the suckers who complain about Big Brother.
Posted 25 Nov 2008 at 14:42 ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
[...] the effect of minimizing aggregate insurance rates, pollution, and accidents. Others, though, are skeptical about the benefits, and argue that to realize any significant discount, one would have to drive quite rarely. [...]
[...] get anything but the minimum 5% discount for my car by just being in the plan. I tend to agree with Arron Landry about the data being worth far more than my 5% discount. I guess I’d be far less skeptical of [...]
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