USA(A)! USA(A)!

You probably can’t tell just yet, but a regular feature on the blog is a series of posts titled “Spend Your Hard-Earned Money Here!” highlighting terrific companies that actually make it easier to Live Beneath Your Means. 

*crickets*

Really, I’m trying. I keep my eyes and ears open, looking for places that go above and beyond their customers’ expectations, places that deserve the very coveted LBYM seal of approval. Bad actors abound and alas, what I wanted to avoid was the corporate equivalent of praising my kids for, say, eating food I make, a.k.a. doing-good-grief-the-bare-minimum-of-what-they’re-supposed-to-be-doing. 

We’re all about high standards here, people! 

Good news—I’m writing the first post in the series! Bad news—I’m writing the first post in the series … because I got into a very minor fender bender in April, backing out of my parking spot in the lot of a neighborhood cafe. Unless you are my husband or my claims adjuster, this is news to you! Don’t worry. The collision was very minor—so minor that only one of the fenders involved had any actual damage (hint: not my Subaru’s). 

I’ve written plenty about insurance here so I didn’t think I needed another risk bad, insurance good, ooga booga post. Also, I’m an Asian woman well versed in stereotypes and I already talk about math a lot. Do I really want to write about my driving?

Exactly.

Insurance in all of its various guises is just about the only thing I buy that I hope I never have to use, but when something like this small mishap happens, I’m ever so thankful to have it. Still, I was pretty deflated by the prospect of my auto insurance premiums going up, thinking that I had just downed what might end up being a rather expensive cup of coffee 😐. Far worse than the accident were the weeks afterward waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Isn’t that what companies have conditioned us to expect? Buyer beware? Heads we win, tails you lose? Isn’t this the same belief that drives my spending waaaay too much time calculating per individual Post-it note prices when back-to-school shopping (please let me know if you find them for less than $0.00625 each)? I clearly need better hobbies.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received my new auto insurance statement from USAA. Ladies, ladies, ladies. My premium went down for the next six months. This is what we call around here a grande meal deal. And not only because the company is based in my hometown of San Antonio, Texas. There aren’t a lot of companies out there that I can wholeheartedly recommend, but USAA is one of them, an opinion I share with the thousands of respondents that gave USAA’s insurance business the second-highest Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a recent research study of 342 companies in 20 industries. 

NPS is a popular and easy-to-understand consumer metric based on one question—on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning not at all likely and 10 meaning extremely likely, how likely are you to recommend the company to a friend or colleague? To calculate NPS, you take the percentage of people answering 9 or 10—known as promoters—and subtract the percentage of people answering 0 to 6—detractors. 7s and 8s? You clearly just click through surveys and no one cares what you think. Kidding! You’re called passives and are excluded from the NPS calculation.

USAA’s insurance business (NPS = 64) came in second only to … USAA’s banking business (NPS = 65). I’m not kidding. Out of 342 companies, the two beat out blue chip brands with famously loyal fans including Apple Computers and Southwest Airlines. To the surprise of no one, the lowest NPS score in the study belonged to Spectrum, the telecom company (NPS = -16). 

So there you have it—the inaugural LBYM seal of approval. I don’t know exactly why my auto insurance premiums when down. Maybe Midwestern Nice applies to Wisconsin driving, too. Maybe repair shops in the state charge less or we buy more modest cars to begin with. It’s possible my auto insurance premium would’ve gone down even more had I not had an accident. Regardless, USAA could’ve raised my rates … and they didn’t. That’s how you build trust. That, and the friendliest customer service reps ever.

I just wish they offered health insurance.