Why DUI Insurance Quotes Vary So Much Between Providers

A reader sent us three renewal-time quotes for identical coverage—100/300/50 liability, $1,000 deductibles, one mid-size sedan, one driver, one DUI eighteen months old. The highest was a little under three times the lowest. She wanted to know whether one of them was a mistake.

None of them was. They were three honest answers to a question the industry does not agree on.

Disagreement one: how long to rate it

Some insurers rate a DUI for three years, some for five, a few for longer. At eighteen months that does not change the quote much, but it changes the trajectory. The company with a three-year lookback is eighteen months from treating her as a standard driver; the five-year company is three and a half years away. Two of her three quotes came with very different answers to "when does this go down".

Disagreement two: how big the surcharge is

A violation surcharge is a percentage. Companies file different percentages with their state regulators, and non-standard specialists—whose entire book is drivers with something on their record—often file smaller DUI surcharges than preferred-market companies, because the conviction is less unusual relative to the rest of their customers. Our reader's lowest quote came from exactly that kind of company.

Disagreement three: whether to write it at all

Her highest quote was from a company that, as far as we can tell, would rather not have the business. A very high price is a polite decline. There is nothing wrong with that—insurers specialise—but it means the quote carries no information about what she "should" pay.

What she did

She took the lowest quote, confirmed it included an SR-22 filing, bound it, and set a calendar reminder for the renewal nearest her three-year mark. That is the whole method, and it is laid out in the shopping guide. The only mistake available to her was accepting the first number.