Progressive doesn't pay up but ponies up to defend other driver to avoid paying out policy

                I follow this fantastic Twitter account that takes all of the daily Public Relations (PR) fails and posts them. The story that caught my eye today is written by Louis Peitzman for Gawker, in which Progressive Insurance defended a negligent driver who had killed a woman under Progressive coverage.

                So the story starts out, that in June 2012 Katie Fisher was killed in a car accident by an underinsured driver (, a driver whose insurance isn’t able to pay the affected party when liable,) which left Progressive (her insurance company) liable to pay out the difference in the plan to her family as she was covered in case of underinsured drivers.

                After Progressive refused to pay out the rest of the claim, Fisher’s parents tried to take Progressive to court to find out that in Maryland, US , you cannot legally take an insurance company to court for refusing to pay you out. In short, they had to sue the other driver. It was a shock to the family that on the day of the trial the other driver was being defended by Progressive’s legal team.

                Katie’s brother, Matt Fisher, wrote in a post on Tumblr, “If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy.” After being called out via Twitter by many people Progressive opted to respond to every Tweet, the exact same way. With a fake, robotic sounding, half-hearted apology that instead of expressing remorse – reinforced the fact that they felt they did nothing wrong. Tweet below”

“This is a tragic case, and our sympathies go out to Mr. Fisher and his family for the pain they've had to endure. We fully investigated this claim and relevant background, and feel we properly handled the claim within our contractual obligations. Again, this is a tragic situation, and we're sorry for everything Mr. Fisher and his family have gone through.”
- Progessive Twitter

I’m not a PR expert, having just really started in this field professional I can’t boast an in-depth knowledge of the communications world, but I can provide an opinion. I think that it’s in such poor taste to do what Progressive did to the Fisher family. An insurance company relies on trust, trust that as a company they will support you and be there for you. It’s not a little known fact that insurance companies hate paying out policies and will fight tooth and nail to keep from doing it, but to go as far as representing the other driver in a court case to avoid paying a policy? Are you kidding me? Instead of being on damage control, the company takes this heartless, robotic approach supplying half-hearted sympathy and then a statement basically saying “,but we aren’t in the wrong.”

Nothing goes better than not giving a crap than Flo's

smiling face!

                From a consumer standpoint, I think it’s incredibly hard to put faith in a company that will try so hard to get out of paying a policy that they will represent a negligent driver just in the hopes that it won’t have to pay. From a PR standpoint, I think that this robotic reply to angry and upset Tweets is only company damaging. At this point in time, they’ve been found accountable and instead of sucking up their pride and admitting to their mistakes and acting human, they opt to become regurgitated text on a feed. You can relate to this the same way people having an issue relate to automated phone services. You just want to speak to a real human being-and-for-the-thirteenth-time-NO-my-name-is-not-Kaylorr-Usse. Besides making us feel completely inadequate about being able to speak, people need a human connection and need to feel cared for.

                We also look for companies to own up to mistakes, yes it’s bad press for a while, but when you are able to admit mistakes it makes you look a lot better in the long run. Progressive has made a stance that they did nothing wrong, and specifically in this instance making a family suffer financial and emotional burden after already losing their daughter.

                I think that other companies should take note on what not to do from Progressive. So much so that there can be a little “how not to treat people like crap” guidebook from this tragedy:

·         Don’t flat out refuse to pay out a policy and expect no retaliation

·         Don’t try to settle outside of court at an insultingly low amount

·         Don’t go in supporting the driver who caused the death of your Progressive customer in front of that customer’s family – that one should be rather obvious

·         Don’t say nothing about after being held accountable

·         Don’t tweet the same robotic dribble to everyone who Tweets you about this incident. They’re people looking for reassurance and accountability- saying you haven’t done anything wrong but you’re sorry for the family’s loss means nothing…especially retweeted upteen times.

The original Tumblr post by Matt Fisher can be found here:
http://mattfisher.tumblr.com/post/29338478278/my-sister-paid-progressive-insurance-to-defend-her

The Gawker article by Louis Peitzman can be found here:

http://gawker.com/5934436/comedian-calls-out-progressive-for-defending-his-sisters-killer-progressive-responds-in-heartless-robot-fashion