**** Liberty Mutual Accident Forgiveness Ethics **** --- Sayonara, Adiós Liberty --- Bon jorno GEICO! ---

We happily switched insurance companies to Liberty Mutual in summer 2014... not due to unsatisfactory services with former insurance carrier State Farm... the change simply due to a small cost savings.  Recently we discovered our Liberty Mutual "Accident Forgiveness" is revoked -- the highly advertised auto insurance policy provision where no price increase will be extracted by Liberty Mutual for your first accident.

Well, here is the real story.  In early summer 2013 and while happily served by State Farm auto insurance, a severe storm deposited significant hail on our home and our two vehicles parked in our driveway.  My 2009 Dodge Charger experienced minor hail damage -- just a couple small dents -- not enough to ask for insurance help.  However, Terri's new 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee, then being less than five months old, experienced very significant hail damage. Small dents covered most of her Jeep's topside surfaces that required professional services and an insurance comprehensive claim.  We are highly concerned and outright angered that Liberty Mutual Insurance Company considers "Acts-of-God" (a/k/a: hail storm damages) comprehensive claim that exceeds $600 against our previous insurance company as an accident with cause for revoking our current Liberty Mutual accident forgiveness.

Insurance claims directly connected to Acts-of-God are never mentioned in any of the many Liberty Mutual Insurance Company on-air advertisements or in any plain language citation in company literature. These facts have been twice verified with Liberty Mutual customer service representatives on or about 18 Jan 2017, and verified again a few days ago.  I asked to speak to a manager empowered with decision making authority... and I was assured that a manger would contact me by phone within two days. The promised management phone contact was never received. Accordingly, I intend to file a complaint with appropriate insurance industry public and private sector authority citing these facts and to allege unethical conduct by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company regarding this matter.

So here's the Liberty Mutual deal.  A couple of this insurance firm's TV ads aggressively tout "Accident Forgiveness" as an auto policy marketing inducement.  The firm never discloses a provision whereby this forgiveness will be suspended for 5 years if a policy holder makes an Act-of-God claim against paid comprehensive auto insurance coverage.  So what type of injury requiring less than $600 can Liberty cite?  Clearly, an official corporate policy that suspends paid "Accident Forgiveness" for five years due to relatively small claims caused by clear Acts-of-God is GROSSLY UNETHICAL.  Damages caused by Acts-of God are NOT auto accidents as understood by reasonable people or by any classic ethical business definition.    

Direct quote from Liberty Mutual Insurance web site:

"What is Accident Forgiveness?  Accident Forgiveness is a policy benefit where Liberty Mutual won’t raise your rate due to your first car accident if you’ve been accident-free and violation-free for 5 years."

Click HERE to check out what unethical insurance advertisement looks like.

Note: the image displayed at the top of this post is from a personal collection shot during a NY City visit years past.

                

And Now -- The Rest Of The True Story

That most recognizable phrase associated with the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – is actually a two-decade later addition. These words are not inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and they were never foreseen as part of the statue's symbolic message by French sculptor and statue creator Frederic Bartholdi. The phrase is part of a poem affixed inside Miss Liberty's pedestal, inscribed on a plaque later added there in 1903. The Statue of Liberty was officially dedicated and unveiled on October 28, 1886. Those now cherished words are taken from a sonnet "New Colossus," written in 1883 by the wealthy New York City Jewish activist, emigrant advocate, socialite, and elite American Poet Miss Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). Her poem was published as part of a fund-raising auction that helped finance engineering and construction costs of the Statue of Liberty pedestal. Selected lines from Miss Lazarus' poem were later mounted on a plaque some nineteen years after statue construction was finished. The single original statue inscription is found on the tablet Miss Liberty holds in her left hand – “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” [aka: July 4, 1776].

Liberty construction commenced in Paris in 1875, a time intended in part to recognize the centennial year of “The Shot Heard Round The World” at the Lexington-Concord events that opened the Revolutionary War, and that valuable later alliance of French and new United States of America Forces during the American Revolution. Those now famous words “Give me your tired, your poor...” became fixed to the Statue of Liberty only after the largely forgotten Lazarus poem was rediscovered in 1901, some seventeen years after poet Lazarus's death. A friend and fellow New York City socialite Georgina Schuyler discovered the poem in an old bookshop and actively commenced a civic effort to resurrect those lost words as tribute to her departed friend Miss Emma Lazarus. Schuyler's successful efforts yielded the addition of a plaque containing the last five lines of Miss Lazarus's poem as placed inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal.  Later in 1945, a plaque presenting the entire fourteen-line sonnet was installed just inside the statue pedestal main entrance.

Full text of the sonnet “New Colossus”

– by Emma Lazarus, New York City, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"