icbc's at it again

[nature boy]

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/IC ... story.html

i think they should preface it by saying "false" claims. like the fender bender i got into last year. the guy was barely going 10 km/h, the only reason his damage was so great is because he was going downhill and slid under my car, the damage on the mazda wasn't even noticeable. AND he claimed injury. seriously.

[geForce]

Even though it's just a 4-5% increase on the basic insurance only, which only equates to about $10 per year if you have full discount, I still think it's wrong for ICBC to raise prices BASED ON the amount of claims they have.

Aren't they still turning a profit? They laid off a bunch of people not because they were in the red and needed to cut costs, but because someone uncovered the truth that they hired way way too many people in an attempt to hide their excess profits. That's how I understood it anyway... but now they're trying to use those layoffs as an excuse to say they're trying to lower costs to keep rates affordable?

Ludicrous. So ludicrous that it's gone to plaid.

[jeSteR]

OOOooooo the schwartz is strong with this one.

[nature boy]

i would think the rates are based on the fact that claims are made anyway. that's why your premiums go up when you have an at-fault accident.

[nature boy]

as in, if there are more claims made, then those who caused these claims would be paying already anyway.

and lol at the guy who got a mil but only wanted 350k.

[joel]

so tricky,
so the increase the basic charge that everyone has to have with ICBC, and decrease the optional insurance that is supposedly competitive with other 3rd party insurers...

not only do they increase their bottom line, they help improve competitive pricing for optional insurance by doing so...

dunno about the trend in injury claim costs and whether those are all legitimate or not. can't really say whether price rise is justified or not, we'd have to get a closer look at their books i imagine to determine that. last time i checked though they had been making oodles of monies. but higher cost of running business does usually justify increases in prices for services that business offers.

i'm not sure if icbc is mandated to make a certain amount of profit annually, so that the gov can pilfer it every few years for gov spending in other areas.

[nature boy]

what i'm wondering is didn't they JUST increase the rates? that's just poor planning man.

[se7entse7en]

They probably just made some bad investments and want all of us to bail them out again... you know... just like we're bailing out BC Hydro for 'allegedly' screwing with California... just like we're bailing out Translink for... you know... being Translink.

[nature boy]

hey, that's democracy!

[joel]

the powerex settlement with California was pretty bogus from what I heard. Basically, you have a power shortage in the states so prices on energy were skyrocketing, we were selling to California at market prices as were many other power companies during that time. and years later they decide they don't want to pay the bill and sue saying powerex was manipulating the market and taking advantage of them.

ok, how about the next time california runs out of electricity, we just don't sell them any and let sit in utter darkness.

california would have never won a legal case against hydro, but what would have happened is both sides would have lost and the lawyers would have won (the legal battle has been going on since i started working fulltime like 8 years ago), so hydro settled for losing in the short term.

[nature boy]

california, you bastard. i'm never going there again unless i'm going to l.a., san francisco, san diego, or any of the other surrounding counties.

[joel]

just a thought with all these gov agency that "continual screw us", the tax paying citizen.

what if we looked at it another way, and took ownership of these governing bodies. stopped looking at these like foreign entities out to screw us, but starting to look at these crown corps as "our companies" that as tax-payers we are share-holders. and rather on being so focused on how much they suck, work and focus towards how we can improve them and make them better for the people they serve.
praise the ways they are succeeding and providing feedback to them and the politicians that help set the mandates for these companies focus...

or i'm i just being to idealistic?

[se7entse7en]

[nature boy]