Metromile Found a Way to Make Car Insurance Enjoyable

I’ve loved the money I’ve saved by switching to Metromile and you will too. Read my Metromile review below and see how easy it is to start saving money on your car insurance.

As a human being with a brain, I’m not the biggest fan of paying for things that I don’t use. From groceries that don’t get eaten to gadgets that don’t get utilized, I’m always looking for ways to keep my wasting down to a minimum. I mean, who doesn’t? I even went as far as getting rid of my car a few years back. I’d been working from home for half a decade at that point, and the most driving it saw was the two days a week I had to move it from one side of our street to another for street sweeping. I wouldn’t even take it to the grocery store for fear of losing the parking spot. So, down to one car our family of two went. But that wasn’t the end of our issues involving paying for more driving than we were doing.

From 10k miles to 2k

About a year ago, my wife quit her office job to work with me full-time at home. This meant that the distance our car traveled every week went down to less than what it used to cover in a single day. Naturally, we called our insurance company to adjust our premium. You wouldn’t believe the hoops we had to jump through. Between sending proof to one person, not seeing the difference reflected on the next bill, and sending in more proof to people higher up, the process somehow ended up taking MONTHS. No joke. Even when it was all finished, the cost barely went down. Also, by that time they’d instilled the fear of the insurance gods in us. Heaven forbid we ever take a long-distance trip somewhere and end up going over our estimate. Needless to say, those Metromile flyers for pay-per-mile insurance we’d received in the mail were looking pretty good.

Making the switch to Metromile

When it came time to renew, we made the decision to switch. It was such a breath of fresh air, I don’t even know where to start with the differences. Once we’d chosen our coverage—which was the same, plus a little better than the comparable one we’d had with our last insurer—the hard part was over. We plugged in the Metromile Pulse, downloaded the app, and never. looked. back.

The Cost

The monthly bill for Metromile is a combination of two things:

• The base rate – determined by factors like the plan you choose and the area you live in; the same every month
• The miles you drove – determined by, you guessed it, how many miles you drove that particular month-long billing cycle; varies every month

So, yeah. The days of jumping through hoops trying to get our insurance company to charge us only for what we need are finished. Plus, no more anxiety about going over if we want to take a trip. In fact, they actually only charge you for the first 250 miles/day. So even cross-country road trips are back on the table.

The Pulse

The Metromile Pulse is how they keep track of basically everything that’s going on in your car—with the exception of driving habits. They pride themselves on being judgement-free ;). The routes you’ve taken, where you parked your car, and diagnostics are all tracked with this handy little device. So, if you can’t remember the what/where of that awesome restaurant you randomly found two weeks ago, you can just look it up. Being terrible about remembering where you parked is now a nonissue. And wasting time flipping through your owner’s manual, or money taking the car to a mechanic, just to find out that light on your dashboard means is not something you’ll have to do again. As for sharing this information it’s gathering, not to worry, Metromile will never sell it to third parties.

I also have to mention just how easy it was to install. At first I thought I was missing instructions because all I got was basically one side of a postcard. Nope! All you have to do is plug it into the OBD-II port. The instructions weren’t even instructions, actually, they were pictures of typical locations of where to find the port.

The App

If you thought getting excited about a car insurance app wasn’t a thing, you’re totally normal, and totally wrong. Metromile’s is beautifully designed, and has everything you could possibly need in one place. It’s broken down into four main tabs:

1. Overview – Here you can see the location of your car, and even get walking directions to get to it.
2. Trips – This has a full monthly breakdown, including maps, of every drive. It even lists how many you’ve taken, your fuel cost, and total miles driven at the top.
3. Billing – At the top you’ll find the total cost of your bill, as well as the total of miles, so far in the current billing cycle. Below you can compare your bills from previous months.
4. Insurance – On this tab, you can start a new roadside, glass repair, or accident claim with just the touch of a button. It also has all of your documents listed, so you no longer have to panic if you can’t locate your proof of insurance, or spend 80 years online trying to look up something basic like your coverage.

Wish I had it sooner

This is definitely one of those things I’m kicking myself over not getting sooner. Though, I’m sure you can tell, as I’ve now written over 900 words about something that’s supposed to be a pretty boring topic. Honestly though, I think Metromile is probably the perfect modern insurance. It’s new, so it didn’t have to go through the process of shaking off outdated practices like more geriatric companies. It’s incredibly convenient, which everything really needs to be these days. And, best of all, it doesn’t cut any coverage corners—which used to be one of the only ways to actually get a cheaper rate. Also!… Just kidding, I won’t make you read anymore. For more information on Metromile, you can check out their website here.

Happy driving!

Thanks to my friends at Metromile for sponsoring this review. All opinions are 100% my own.