Lying About Mileage and The Consequences You Might Face!

Getting multiple auto insurance quotes is the best way to save big money on your auto insurance policy. However, during the auto quoting phase or on your insurance application, many auto-related questions are asked of drivers. Most of the time, the person getting the quote doesn’t have all the information they are being asked on hand. Thus, the urge to make up, guess, or even flat out lie to the quoting agent about their auto information can arise, especially when we are talking about auto mileage.

Where does the urge to lie to your insurance agent come from?

This is a very complexed question with a plethora of reasons. In fact, this question doesn’t have a correct answer. However, in the insurance world, there are several very common reasons. One is to save money. Another is having issues with their driving record, and needing to make themselves eligible to receive an auto insurance policy at all so they can legally drive.

With that said, one of the most common questions that people tend to lie about is how many miles they drive per day or year. Some people lie about their mileage by oversight. Others purposely lie about their miles driven, when they know the car’s actual mileage.

For example, the average driver drives around 15,000 miles per year. With insurance carriers that place a high value on miles driven, a person could initially lie and say they only drive 10,000 miles per year to receive an initial discount. Although this could work once, the insurance carrier has ways of finding out if you are lying to them or not.

How can my insurance company find out I lied to them about my mileage? 

Insurance companies can easily find out the real number of miles you drive per year. If you have decided that lying to your auto insurance company to save money today is the way to go, you could be kicking yourself at renewal.

If you drive your auto 30,000 miles per year, but lie and tell your insurance company 15,000, you might save some dollars initially.

However, when the policy comes up for renewal in six to 12 months, the insurance company will have its underwriting technicians dig deep on the policy to make sure nothing has changed. This is where they find out they were given the wrong mileage on day one.

With today’s technology, and how many industries are connected and share information. An insurance company will search for your actual mileage in these three different ways, possibly even more.

• Asking the driver during the initial quoting phase. 
• Checking with your auto mechanic. 
• Checking with your dealership. 
• Checking past claims you have files and see what the mileage was at that point. 
• Carriers have even been known to hire consulting firms of severe offenders to track this information down.

What are some of the consequences of lying?

Once your auto policy is 60-90 days away from its renewal date, all the fact-checking begins. If the data comes back and you are found to have lied to your insurance carrier, they have a lot of recourse they can take against you.

• An increase in insurance premiums 
• Non-renewed
• The policy can be canceled (This means the carrier will cancel your policy, and depending on what state you live in, give you 10-45 days to find a new auto policy)

Final Thoughts

As you can see, it doesn’t pay in the end to lie to your carrier to save money on day one. It usually will end with you either paying more money to keep the policy, or having your auto policy non-renewed, or flat out canceled.

If you have questions about your auto mileage or would like to shop for another auto carrier, please contact the experts SureBuyCarInsurance at 855-838-6093 today. Our licensed insurance experts are standing by to search the insurance market on your behalf.