Reading Savings Advertising Honestly

Every insurance advertisement promises savings. None of them are describing you specifically. Understanding what those claims actually measure makes shopping much less confusing — and much harder to manipulate.

What a typical savings claim describes

Usually it's an average among the subset of people who both switched to that company and reported saving. That's a self-selected group by construction: the drivers who found a better price and moved. The people who got a worse quote and stayed aren't in the number. It's not dishonest — it's just answering a different question than the one you're asking.

Why your number can't be predicted from theirs

Your price comes from your record, your mileage, your experience, your vehicle, your ZIP, your coverage choices — run through one company's filed plan. An average across strangers has no way to anticipate that combination. Two neighbors get different answers from the same advertisement.

The teaser price problem

Ultra-low headline prices are typically built on the most favorable possible profile with minimum coverage and maximum deductibles. If you don't match that profile, the number was never available to you. It's a headline, not an offer.

What to do instead

Ignore the claims and generate your own comparison. The only savings figure that means anything is the difference between what you pay now and the best real quote for the same coverage. That number takes about two minutes to produce and it's actually yours. Produce it here.

Why we do not print a number either

You may have noticed this site never tells you what you would save. That is deliberate. Any figure we published would describe someone else — a different record, a different vehicle, a different ZIP code, different coverage — and dressing that up as your outcome would be exactly the thing this page warns about. The only number that means anything is the one that comes back on your own comparison, built from your own details. Everything else is someone's marketing.