THE RECORD
August 14, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Are there any grownups around who haven't been skinned by some insurance company somewhere? Insurance must be one of the biggest rackets going and so I'm not surprised to see the efforts of the Campbell bunch to jump into bed with them by trying to destroy ICBC and throwing the driving public to the mercy of international gangsters. At least ICBC does have some degree of public control and accountability and could be called the least evil of them all, but once that control is gone the sky is the limit in the skinning game.

My first encounter with the insurance racket happened when we were still living in Cambridge, England. Although I never had an accident, or received a ticket with my motorcycle, one day I got a note that my premium was raised. I went to see my agent for an explanation who told me that it was because I was a foreigner. I was a British citizen just like he, but he replied: "Yes, but you weren't born here!" I was shocked by the audacity of the situation, but what I saw in the following years under private insurance beat everything anybody could imagine.

In the '60s an acquaintance came to me for help, almost in tears, his car insurance was cancelled and he couldn't get another one without paying something like two months of wages. He was working as a junkman and driving a truck all day. He needed his spotless Studebaker to go to work with. He never had an accident, or received a ticket.

I called a friend who was an insurance adjustor to see what could be done for the man. My friend laughed and said: "Oh well, that's the old switcheroo game!." He explained that the company representatives went to Victoria every year, asking for a big raise in premiums, but never quite got what they asked for. They went around it by randomly canceling a certain percentage of their accounts which then permitted the other companies to pick them up under the "assigned risk" category, which meant that they could charge anything they'd wanted.

So, the poor junkman's premium went from $200, to $900. and the crooks laughed their way to the bank without anybody being able to do anything about it. This theft was perfectly legal, as I believe that insurance companies can cancel anybody's policy without giving any reasons.

A similar crooked deal happened to me a year of two later. I had a custom furniture shop at 7th and Cambie in Vancouver, when out of the blue my insurance was cancelled. I had no claims, no problems and so I called my agent, by the name of Doug, who assured me that it must be some mistake and that he would look after it.

He phoned me a few days later and said that he couldn't find a company that would accept my account because an investigator came to my shop without my knowledge and sent in a report that I had a stove and a chimney pipe sticking out of one of the windows to heat the place with. I said: "Doug, you know my shop very well, we're only two blocks from City Hall, have a proper furnace and a brick chimney, we get inspected by the fire department twice a year. They'd close me down in a minute if we did anything unsafe, or illegal!"

The Vancouver Sun wasn't a complete big business propaganda sheet in those days and one day they broke some stories on a man whose car insurance was cancelled because an investigator saw some so called "pornographic material" in his house. It turned out that he had a small copy of Michelangelo's sculpture of "David" and a print of Picasso's "Blue Nude" hanging on the wall. Either of them about as pornographic, or even erotic, as a basket of apples. Another insurance was cancelled because the young couple involved were living together without being married.

I was the member of an autosport club in those days and one of the other members, by the name of Bob, was an insurance executive. So, being a great leg puller, I said to him at the next meeting : "Hey Bob! What sort of a business are you in that cancels some poor kids' car insurance because they aren't married?" Bob blew up: "I had to do it ! If they break the laws one way they are going to break it in other ways and we don't need clients like them!"

I didn't even know he was involved, but it was good for a laugh and character reference anyway! We both left the sport some time after that and I haven't seen Bob for several years until I met him on Granville one day. We chatted for a few minutes and I asked him how Karen, his wife was? "Oh, we're no longer married! I'm now living with my secretary!"
I'm keeping a few more of these insurance horror stories for the next issue. If there's one thing I've learned it is that anybody who'd wanted to do away with ICBC must either be an idiot, or a crook on the take. Unless we'd want to pay several times of our present premiums so that our money can be taken out of the country to feed multinational corporate shares.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International