Ryan F.

I was saving a substantial amount, at first, but lately Metromile seems to be addicted to rate hikes, and they don't actually save you a lot of money unless you hardly drive at all. When I signed up in 2016, I had a 1996 Ford Crown Victoria and thought "Hey, cool!" at paying like $15 a month and a couple cents a mile for basic liability coverage, but in July of this year, I financed a 2018 Kia Soul Plus. Part of what made me comfortable taking on a car payment was the thought that Metromile had my back on car insurance rates. For a short while, they did. I was quoted something like $44 a month plus 9.6 cents per mile for $250 Collision and Comprehensive, 100/300/50 liability, $1,000 medical payments. Unfortunately, when it came time to renew, I got a declarations page stating that my rate would go up to something like $58 a month and 11.9 cents per mile. I thought, "Gee, that's a sizable increase, but still a lot cheaper than what other insurers want, so I'm not happy about this, but what can I do?". So, a couple of weeks later, the guy I'm renting a parking spot from tells me to get out and I change my parking address back to my home address, which is roughly two blocks away. Metromile generated another declarations page for my next term, beginning 10/29, saying it would now be $67-something plus 13.5 cents per mile. I did some quick math and determined that my average monthly bill would be over the flat rate of traditional insurers, such as American Family, State Farm, and others, and none of them make you put a thing in your car that tracks mileage. Well, Root Insurance had my attention anyway because their app rides along and sees how you drive and then offers you a personalized quote. Long story short, I was able to get better insurance coverages than Metromile for a flat rate of $82 per month (paid for the whole term up front), and so I accepted this and canceled my policy with Metromile, effective 10/29. I asked Metromile what gave. Why did my rates skyrocket, and then do so again, and wasn't really given satisfactory answers. I was told things like, "Well, different zip codes, and general statewide increases...". If that's the case, then Metromile has definitely lost their edge and is due to lose more customers because the potential savings just are now minimal and not worth the uncertainty, or having to install spyware in your car to determine your rates. And like all proprietary software, we can't be sure that Metromile is limiting themselves to only what they said it would do. For example, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and other big name companies use proprietary software to gather data and use it for god knows what. I'm not sure that Metromile used my information from the Pulse device maliciously to increase their rate, though, as the Root app rated my driving 9 out of 10. *shrug* Regardless, I'd never be able to prove that. Perhaps Metromile's customers are being asked to pay more because people living on the coast are getting hit by hurricanes and the entire state of California keeps getting set on fire, but that still really isn't my problem, in Illinois. It's not fair to punish me for the proverbial foolish man who built his house on the equally proverbial sand. Then there's the marketing that's all over the CTA recently. Maybe we're paying for that too. The funny part is that it says "Switch to Metromile and pay pennies per mile. Yes, just pennies!". The part that they left out seems to be that it's getting to be a bloody awful lot of pennies, and more every renewal or minor change to your policy. Will the last one to cancel Metromile please turn out the lights?

UPDATE 2/17/19: Well, I moved out of Chicago to Fox Lake, IL and Root Insurance gave me a substantially lower premium and a pro-rated refund for living in a better zip code. I checked Metromile again and it was going to cost me the same as when I lived in Chicago. So now, there's a huge difference. The base rate with Root ($65 a month with paid in full) with Root is now less than it would be to leave my car in the garage 24/7 and never drive anywhere with Metromile.

I'd also like to point out some things that I didn't mention in my original review. The customer service at Metromile is pure crap. You'll wait longer on the phone to talk to someone from Metromile than you will if you call the Post Office 800 number, Social Security, or the IRS. Like, an hour or more is not unheard of. Root answers the phone in a few minutes if you have a question and need to talk to a person. Also, Metromile's roadside assistance sucks. When I was driving the Crown Victoria, I blew a brake line out in Fort Wayne, Indiana and needed a tow truck (I got it off the road safely on the last remaining brake pressure.). Metromile let me open a ticket on the app, but when the tow truck did not arrive (in the middle of winter, mind you), I called them back and they said something like "Oh, we sent the tow truck out to such and such street in Chicago." and I'm like "I'm 170 miles from Chicago and don't you have a device plugged into my car telling you where I'm at?". Who are these people? Anyway, at that point in time I dropped Metromile's roadside and got AAA. In fact, I had my old AAA card in my wallet and they let me renew my membership on the phone and sent a tow truck 45 minutes later.