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The Auto Club of Southern California, an AAA affiliate, received 3.30 out of 5 overall stars for its high percentage of customers that recommend its offerings, renew their policies and participate in its extensive discount program.
The Auto Club of Southern California received an A- credit rating for financial stability from AM Best.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
The Auto Club of Southern California has an average monthly rate of $192. While this premium isn’t as high as CSAA Insurance Group’s average of $217, it’s $69 higher than Erie’s $123. Auto Club of Southern California is also $57 more expensive than its AAA counterpart, the Auto Club Group.
When it comes to customer satisfaction, 80% of Auto Club of Southern California customers said they were satisfied with its customer service. It ranks higher than The Auto Club Group and nine other large insurers, including Nationwide, Allstate, Geico and Progressive.
The Auto Club of Southern California ranked near the top among its competitors on ease of service in Insure.com’s ranking. Eighty-five percent of customers experience ease and convenience when accessing policy documents and services.
Comparatively, Auto Club of Southern California ranked higher than nine other insurers in the survey, including Allstate, Geico, Progressive and Nationwide.
When it comes to policy offerings, 85% of The Auto Club of Southern California respondents said they’re satisfied with the companies’ policy offerings, such as insurance for homeowners/condo/renters, pets, flood and more. The company placed third in this category, led by Erie – 88% of Erie’s customers gave it high marks in this area.
Nine out of 10 Auto Club of Southern California’s customers would recommend it to others. Other top-ranking insurers in the survey include Erie – which led the category – State Farm and Progressive.
Seventy-five percent of Auto Club Group customers graded it well for trustworthiness. The highest-ranked insurance company for trustworthiness was Erie at 86%, followed by State Farm at 82%.
The Auto Club of Southern California is one of the top-ranking insurers for customer renewals, tied with Mercury Insurance for second place. However, they both fall slightly behind Erie’s 100% rating.
Sixty-seven percent of customers were satisfied with how the Auto Club of Southern California handled claims after an accident or vehicle incident.
Allstate topped the ranking with 86% of its customers saying they were satisfied with how well the company handled claims.
The Auto Club of Southern California didn’t do particularly well in this category, but none of the companies we ranked did. Forty percent of Auto Club of Southern California’s customers rated it well for its digital experience. Customers rated insurers based on the ease and convenience of locating necessary information, phone numbers and policy details online.
The highest metric for this rating was Geico at 64%, followed by CSAA Insurance Group and Progressive at 60% each.
The Auto Club of Southern California topped this category. The company offers hundreds of discounts outside of auto-related ones and 70% of its customers say they are satisfied with them. In addition to discounts for being a good driver and student and low mileage usage, the Auto Club of Southern California offers rate reductions for automatic payment, loyalty, insuring more than one vehicle and more.
When customers bundle their auto, home and life policies, they often save on their overall premium. The Auto Club of Southern California comes in seventh in Insure.com’s ranking with 55% of its customers satisfied with its bundling.
As a AAA affiliate, the Auto Club Group offers a variety of coverage types. Note: Some of these may not be available in your state.
The Auto Club of Southern California offers hundreds of discounts through AAA. These often include entertainment, shopping and hospitality discounts, as well as auto, finance and home and business. Some of the top auto discounts include:
The Automobile Club of Southern California (Auto Club) was founded in 1900 as a motor club. As an AAA-affiliated provider and a membership insurer, it provides hundreds of discounts including rate reductions, road service, and shopping, travel and hospitality packages to its more than 63 million members in the U.S. and Canada.
The Auto Club is the parent company of affiliated motor clubs that offer insurance to members through affiliated insurance companies (ACE insurers). One of them, the Interinsurance Exchange of the Automobile Club, is one of California’s largest auto insurers.
AAA—California. “AAA discounts.” Accessed January 2024.
Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (1,459 people with auto insurance). Online market research company Slice MR conducted the survey. Respondents were asked to name their auto insurer and then grade it in the following categories – customer satisfaction, ease of service and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
Respondents were then asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of more than a dozen presented – trustworthiness, claims satisfaction, digital experience, discounts and best for auto/home bundling. The responses for each attribute were totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create a percentage.
Respondents were then asked if they would recommend their auto insurer to someone else and whether they would renew with their company. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
Finally, respondents were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation.
They then collected AM Best data, which measures financial strength, and National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives. The Insure.com team identified the NAIC company code or codes that were the primary underwriting companies for each carrier and line of business using total annual premiums. The associated NAIC complaint index score was used in the calculations. If more than one underwriting company was identified for a line, the editors used a weighted average of the NAIC complaint index scores.
In addition, we also created star rankings for each company. Respondents were asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of the more than the dozen presented, again including customer satisfaction and policy offerings. The number of responses for each attribute was totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create the star ranking.
The editors also collected insurance rate data from Quadrant Information Services.
With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., Managing Director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For auto insurers, we took the following and gave each a weight.
Each insurer was awarded from half a star to 5 stars. No insurer in our star ranking received less than half a star and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.