!8: Catalog Progressive Car Ins: January 2012

!±8± What to Do When You Make a Late Auto Insurance Premium Payment

What should you do if you make a late auto insurance premium payment? How will a late car insurance premium payment affect your auto insurance rates?

So you are enjoying yourself on a holiday weekend with your family when you suddenly realize that you completely forgot to pay your car insurance premium. The firs thing you need to realize before having a panic attack is that like you, many people in the United States forget to pay certain bills. With so many things a person has to pay such as rent, cell phone bill, utilities, car bills, insurances and other things it is not uncommon for a normal human being to forget about one of those important bills. Whether you completely forgot about the automobile insurance bill or you simply didn't have enough money, is important to understand that this can have horrible consequences if you do not try to immediately remedy the situation.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that a late payment to an automobile insurance company will only result in a late fee. This however, is completely untrue because some insurance companies actually are very strict when it comes to late payments. Some of those strict companies can threaten to cancel your policy, while some other ones actually do so. An example of this can be seen in case that you are late in paying your premium often. The insurance company might not cancel your policy right away, however they can issue you a "non-renewal notice" meaning that at the end of the year when is time for you to apply once again for insurance with the company, they will no longer accept you. If this happens you will have to go get insurance from another automobile insurance carrier.

Another consequence of not paying insurance on time would be that after reviewing your payment history, they only allow you to renew the policy with them if you pay the full term. This means that instead of giving you the chance of getting a monthly bill and making you pay premiums, you pay the entire amount at the beginning of your coverage year. If you do not have enough money to renew the policy, then your best bet would be to go out and try to get insurance with another company. However, it is worth mentioning that once you make late payments that will be reflected if you go and apply to other companies, in which case they too can make you pay fully before giving you coverage.

One thing that most people are unaware of is that like any other type of credit, insurance companies share record of previous policyholders and how they acted toward the company. If you are a good customer you will have discounts in other insurance companies, however if you are making late payments and such things other companies can raise your rates and some may even deny you coverage.

Perhaps the worst consequence of not paying insurance payments on time would be that your policy is canceled immediately. If this is the case you won't even know the status of the policy until you either get some literature in the mail, a call from an agent or a returned check in the mail. You won't always get a check returned because some companies use it to pay the balance that you still owe. Believe it or not those are the good ways of finding out that your insurance policy has been canceled.

Suppose for a minute that you are driving down the road and get pulled over by an officer. When they ask you for insurance you give the card and he finds out that you are uninsured. You can expect to be fined heavily or in the worse cases you could be taken to jail depending on your state's regulations. Even worse, think what would happen in the event of an accident. You think that everything is going to be ok, and at the time of giving the bad news to your insurance company they tell you that your policy was canceled before the accident. You will be left with a wrecked car and having to pay the other person for their damages.

These are the horrible consequences that the seemingly "innocent" late payments can have in your policy. Perhaps the smartest thing to do when making a late payment is to call the insurance company to inform them of the reasons for the late payment and to announce them that the payment is coming. With some companies you might even be able to call immediately and pay over the phone.

With so many bills to pay every month and with the stressful life that most American families have, the best important thing is to have a calendar with the date all the bills are due written in it or even better schedule your payments to be automatically drafted from your checking account via a direct deposit. This can help you prevent not only late car insurance payments that can prove to be disastrous, but other bills that might damage your credit history in the future.