Here is my brief background. I used to work at State Farm at a claims operation center. I worked in injury for a year. I worked for the company for nine years. I do have family members that work at State Farm. I quit working at State Farm for the following reasons: I could not ethically do my job; management was inflexible with my school schedule; and I feel, my immediate management was setting me up for failure because of my educational goals. (I passed my state's bar exam recently.)
I learned the following while working at State Farm:
Lying is an effective negotiation tactic.
If you are a staff assistant and you have connections with management, you can get $30,000 to $40,000 for a knee injury that is at best questionably related to a car accident. Then about ten years later that same staff assistant can bully and harass a claim specialist that does not give preferential treatment to him or any customer. (This same staff assistant complained to my team manager so that I got removed from that staff assistant's claim, and the staff assistant got the monetary compensation that he wanted.)
State Farm does not put adequate resources into investigating insurance fraud.
State Farm is okay with auto property damage fraud of up to $8,000 to $9,000 per claim per SIU training I had attended during the last year that the ACC environment was around.
Also, I was threatened with being fired because a SIU team manager was upset about the level of detail I had put in my file due to my claim investigation. My file notes indicated a fraud ring consisting of certain foreign nationals. I had named that particular nationality specifically.
State Farm will pay on a total loss when the vehicle was subject to a conversion. (Few claim specialists in total loss would know what conversion is.)
State Farm encourages fraudulent injury claims based on business practices circa 2017, so long as those claims do not exceed the claim handler's minimal authority for all the people involved.
Agents are not adequately trained in the policy they are selling. Most do not know what the policy covers or what customers mean by full coverage. Example: (Most customers think that rental is included with full coverage.)
State Farm metrics promote at least unethical claim handling and probably in some states -bad faith claim handling. For instance, claim handlers are supposed to have adequate time to thoroughly investigate a claim to make a proper liability decision. My management was on me like a fly on dung if my investigation did not wrap up on the same day because some customer was complaining or because I needed to get in contact with a witness.
One claim I worked, my manager wanted me to find against our insured because our insured had made a left in front of a motorcycle. I told that manager that the claim was not so simple, and all the witnesses needed to be contacted. I think that claim took about a month to resolve liability. I had to hold my ground against my manager. For the benefit of our insured, I was able to make a favorable liability decision for the insured because of my taking the time to do a proper investigation despite pressure from management to resolve the claim.
State Farm is inviting fraudulent claims by doing away with its State Farm field inspectors.
I'm sure many of you have similar stories. Please post for this community's reading pleasure.
Best of luck to you all.