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.