Jonathan Ritchie – State Farm Insurance Agent

I see that many of you are having wonderful experiences with this office and State Farm overall. It’s probably because you are not comparing their rates, challenging them with competitive quotes or planning on moving to another insurance carrier. As my homes and vehicles got older our rates kept going up and up. We finally decided to compare with other companies and found we were paying more then double what we should be.
I have been with State Farm for over 5 years and have insured my primary residence, rental properties as well as multiple vehicles through Jonathan Ritchie’s Office. In all that time there had NEVER been a claim on our homes so we were their «ideal» customer. I had recently been married and my wife and I were looking to consolidate our homes and vehicles under one insurance policy. in June of 2014 my Annual StateFarm Homeowners policy was paid automatically from escrow by our lender. We completed our research in November and had decided to move our Home/​Auto Insurance policies to another carrier because their rates were less than half of what I was already paying through StateFarm. At that same time we decided to also take advantage of the lower interest rates so we refinanced with our same lender.
While working on our 2014 taxes we realized we had never been refunded by StateFarm for the unused insurance. Shortly after that we received our annual Homeowners renewal notice from StateFarm for 2015 – 16. I contacted my representative Craig Bachler at Jonathan Ritchie’s StateFarm office to find out why my cancellation was not processed. Craig said he just needed the new insurance carrier’s Declarations page showing the policy initiation date in order for our policy to be backdated and a refund processed. We immediately emailed the requested document and followed up with a phone call a week later to check status. We were told these things can take time and we should just «sit tight». We waited OVER TWO MONTHS with NO phone calls, emails or any other form of communication from Jonathan Ritchie’s office. So we, ONCE AGAIN, had to initiate contact for an update. We emailed Craig then followed up with a phone call. Spoke with the receptionist and was told Craig would «be in touch». The following day Craig emailed us denying our refund. He noted in his email that StateFarm’s policy is to not refund customers when they leave them and switch to other insurance carriers. He acknowledged in his email that we did contact him in November, but, he said it was only to advise him that we were refinancing and we didn’t mention anything about canceling our policy. That’s not true. When we contacted him we had already initiated a policy with another insurance carrier which began in November. The reason we called was to cancel our policy, not to advise them of a refinance which would be meaningless to him since we had already moved to another insurance carrier. What he said makes absolutely no sense at all. We don’t have to notify our insurance carrier that we have refinanced when we retain the same lender. It’s their word against ours and State Farm Corporate doesn’t care to step in since we are no longer their customer.
BOTTOM LINE:
BEWARE OF STATE FARM AND THE JONATHAN RITCHIE OFFICE!!!
NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR CANCELLATION REQUEST OVER THE PHONE PUT YOUR CANCELLATION IN WRITING. THEIR WORD OVER THE PHONE MEANS NOTHING…
EX-​State Farm Customer

Continue to have great service. I needed a certificate of insurance and they literally had it emailed over in minutes. Awesome.