I Tried Progressive Snapshot To Lower My Car Insurance Rates—and Then Switched to Geico

Progressive, like car insurance companies including State Farm, Geico, USAA and others, offer a tracking service that in theory allows you to reduce your insurance premiums by demonstrating you’re a safe driver. I was an early adopter, so Progressive sent me a pod that plugs into a car’s OBD reader. More commonly, though, car insurance companies allow you to download a phone app to track your driving.

Once the tracker is activated, it collects basic performance data and tracks your GPS location. It sends that data to your insurer and a report is created. It takes several weeks to several month’s worth of data for an insurer to determine how the report will affect your policy, for good or bad.

Read: Who’s Tracking You? How to Avoid Car Tracking and Maintain Privacy In Your Car

I was offered Progressive Snapshot when I renewed my family’s car insurance. We have four drivers—two under 25— and three cars. I opted to put Snapshot only in my car, and to use the plug-in device rather than the app since I frequently drive cars other than my own. By opting for Snapshot I immediately got a discount of $25.

State Farm’s Drive Safe and Save app offers a discount when you sign up and that discount is adjusted (or not) based on your driving performance.

Read: Easy Car Diagnosis & Repair: RepairPal to the Rescue

The device easily installed; I simply pulled the cover off the OBDII port and plugged it in. Once it was installed, and every time I started the car, it gave me a quick double beep to signal that it was working. It was a good reminder to know that I was being tracked on each trip.

While it’s possible for Snapshot to track where you go, when you go, your speed, lane changes, whether you roll through stop signs and more, including when you break the speed limit, it doesn’t. Progressive only measures 4 things:

Hard braking, fast starts, amount of time driven and time of day you drive. Other car insurance company trackers also measure speeding, fast cornering and distracted driving.

Progressive does collect other data for its own internal assessment, and if you ask the company to provide more data for, say, defending yourself after a crash, they say they will try to accommodate. And, the site says they will not use data collected by Snapshot in assessing a claim if your car is damaged in an incident.

Read: I Went To Driver’s Ed And Learned … I Have A Lot To Learn About Driving!

I decided to put Progressive Snapshot on my car because I drive very little and almost never in the middle of the night. I decided NOT to put it on the family car because I didn’t want to stress other drivers with the monitoring or risk having our insurance go up thanks to other drivers behaviors.

Snapshot is not great for cars that log a lot of miles, have a variety of drivers or younger drivers who might inadvertently increase your insurance rates as they learn. Progressive says that 2 in 10 drivers actually increase their insurance rate after using Snapshot.

The Progressive Snapshot reader responds with a beep when any performance is detected that might penalize you. This is great for drivers who learn well from external input; if you recognize the message the beeps are sending and try not to trigger it, this could be a great tool to help improve your driving.

Phone apps don’t do this, however; they simply measure inputs, though you can see them on your phone app, a slower, less instantaneous way of learning but still valuable.

Once installed, and knowing the device was tracking me, it only took me about 10 minutes to get my first warning. I rolled up to a stop sign and pushed down hard on the brake to come to a complete stop and got a quick ‘beep beep’ from the device. Oops.

I tried softer braking that day and a few times the device beeped at me even if I approached a stop sign or intersection slowly. Though sometimes, when I was more considerate about my braking, not jamming on the brake in those last few feet, there was no beep. Puzzling.

Over time I noticed the beeping lessening. I became sensitive to it and learned to adapt my driving so as not to be punished. Still, I worried that Progressive was going to raise my rates.

I only drive locally, so I didn’t put a lot of miles on my car during my time with Snapshot, and I don’t typically drive between 11PM and 6AM, so those factors worked in my favor.

Using the tracking monitor it took longer to get my results and calculate my discount—about 6 months. At the end of the data collection period Progressive sent a prepaid mailing box to return the device. Once I returned the tracker, Progressive calculated my savings or penalty but did not share details with me.

I saved $30.

In the end, the discount was much less than the $130 Progressive claimed people saved on average. But it made me curious: could I save money by shopping around? So, I did. I found that Geico would offer the same coverage for about 20% less than Progressive, so I signed up, then called Progressive to cancel my policy.

Turns out, they didn’t do their part and instead of cancelling my policy, my account was sent to collections. It took more than a year to clean up that mess, and it’s easy to understand why Crash Network, an organization that rates car insurance companies for body shops and other service providers, ranks Progressive #75 out of 97 car insurance providers. The ranking, which measures “How well does this company’s claims handling policies, attitude and payment practices ensure quality repairs and customer service for motorists?” also ranks Allstate at #93, Liberty at #89, USAA at #85, State Farm at #81 and Geico at #80. Keep in mind, these rankings are on service and practices, not pricing.

Surprisingly, none rank better than Progressive, which leads me to my next move: no more tracking devices for me. Shopping around—and yes, I’ll be looking at those companies that rank higher on the Crash Network survey—is your best bet to save money on car insurance.