You may have seen those advertisements for Jerry.ai, claiming that it can shop around and save you money on car insurance. I decided to test it out myself, and it appears to be true.
In less than 30 minutes Jerry.ai lowered my monthly car insurance from ~$50/month to ~$34/month. The coverage is exactly identical to what it was before. I didn’t even have to change carriers. (Jerry.ai renegotiated a new price with my existing carrier.)
My only critique/annoyance during this initial process is that Jerry first tried to offer me the rock-bottom state minimums. Sure, this looks great to see those low prices, but I still want my actual coverage. I had to log into Progressive (my current carrier) in a different tab and manually copy the values of my current policy into the “Standard” section of Jerry.ai so that it would give me a quote that matches my current policy details. Jerry, if you’re reading, this was annoying.
Nevertheless, after copying over 7-8 policy details, Jerry.ai did save me $200 annual which is a 33% savings. It took less than 30 minutes in total. It is definitely worth the time of any reader to give Jerry.ai a chance.
What excites me most is this statement from their website: “Hi Justin Reinhart, you’re all set for now. Jerry will continue automatically checking if you’re paying the lowest price for your insurance, for free.”
Really? I hope so.
P.S. What Came Next
Jerry has been sending me various text messages trying to get me to finalize my new policy. I thought it was finalized. Okay so there’s a few things I gotta sign.
Jerry asked for my VIN number via text. Why couldn’t they just lift it off my previous insurance policy? Nevertheless, it was easy to answer.
Jerry told me Progressive Insurance (the deal they found for me) has sent me some documents I need to sign—except I hadn’t received the email yet. This statement would be true but only 3-4 days later. If Jerry would just change their wording to tell the user to expect an upcoming email, this would not be so misleading. Telling users that an email was definitely sent makes the user think something went wrong. Why it is that Jerry can set up the architecture for this entire automated system but not bother to word their english sentences in such a way that they will always be true and accurate boggles my mind.
Jerry also sent me a text saying if I just follow a link that they’ll take care of canceling my old policy for me. I thought they were already gonna handle this? Whatever. I’ll click the link. Oh, that link didn’t lead anywhere and there was no way to reply to Jerry to let them know the link was broken. Their robots don’t reply when I tell them this.
Every text message sent to me by Jerry is under the guise of a new individual handling my issue. I think they’re all creepy robots. They all start with:
“Hi Justin, this is Billy…”
“Hi Justin, this is Caitlin…”
I think these are automated scripts. They don’t seem to respond to me unless they ask for a VIN number. If I provide the VIN, they congratulate me and thank me for how fast I got back to them. This is the only response I’ve ever received from these people so far, and I believe it is because the robot can actually confirm the VIN number and provide the canned response.
The only thing creepier than getting text messages from a robot pretending to be humans, is the idea that these might be real humans who are disallowed the ability to reply to me in a genuine manner. I genuinely hope they’re fake.
P.P.S. Someone actually did reply to me eventually. So a human does read replies. Also when I ended up calling Progressive myself to cancel my old policy, I complained that it looked like I had been lowered from Platinum status to Gold status. They put me on hold for 10 minutes and then came back and gave me another $20 discount on my 6 month policy. So now I’m saving 40%.
In Summary:
Jerry saved me money. It’s creepy but it works. But don’t take the automated messages too literally when they say an insurance carrier has already sent something; Wait a few business days and their statements will likely come true.