State Farm Disaster
I considered making this a page of complaint (yet again!) about the clumsy way our “health insurer” handled our claim for reimbursement of the Australian episode. But at least United/AARP didn’t put us in pain or peril as Regence and Humana did. The process they put us—well, me— through illustrates some flaws typical of large, legalistic organizations, and the story might have had some instructive value. If only I could send them a bill, at my old consulting rate, for the time I wasted because their various guichets didn’t talk to each other…

But a kindred disaster, almost immediately afterward, may do the job even better. This one was the doing of a real insurance company, one with which I’d done business satisfactorily for 62 years, and it illustrates the damage remote, anonymous, rule-bound bureaucrats can do to formerly civilized and humane business relationships.
State ’Way back in Chapter Two, I mentioned my first dealings with State Farm in 1958, noting that we’d been their customers ever since, for auto and home insurance, with satisfaction on both sides. Over all that time, our premiums had added up to substantial profits for them and security and good will on our part.
Well, in early 2019, the Ralstons had a water leak in their downstairs kitchen and had filed a claim for the cost of the repairs. Then, a hailstorm damaged most of the roofs in Chankly’s neighborhood to the point of requiring replacements. We filed a claim, and State Farm paid off. And immediately notified us that they considered us a bad risk and would no longer insure our dwelling.

I howled to our “Good Neighbor,” agent, Doug Wood:
Just working on my personal history website and happened upon the attached page. It bears my photo (as of 1958) and Mike Guhin’s, with the story of the beginning of my long (and until now happy) association with State Farm.

Can State farm REALLY afford to throw away loyalty like ours? Just because some pencil-pusher doesn’t know how to divide by 62 years, to get a meaningful measure of our claim frequency? 
Eventually worked out OK, after two appeals from Doug to the desk jockeys in beautiful downtown Bloomington, but left us with a sour taste all the way down our collective alimentary canal.
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