Independent consumer file. Not The General. Not Sentry.

The GeneralInsurance Reviews

THE BRIEF

Six practices the public record keeps describing

The General is financially strong on paper — AM Best A+ (Superior), via Sentry — and it will insure drivers standard companies reject. That is not a reason to ask them for a quote. Strength of the balance sheet is not the same thing as how a claim gets paid. Everything below is tied to a publisher or a public complaint. Where the numbers disagree, both numbers are on the page.

Complaint index, as each publisher printed it

A bar at 1.0 is what NAIC treats as expected for the company’s size. Longer bars are worse. These are not one study.

01 · Price

The number in the ad is not the number on the bill

The brand promise is a break on the rate. The complaint that shows up over and over is that the break expires between the quote and the second invoice.

  • Trustpilot’s November 4, 2026 unprompted review describes a $97 quote, a small policy change, and a $129 renewal, with agents saying the offer can change anytime.
  • A BBB review says a policy that started a little over $200 was rebilled an extra $200-plus within two weeks, and a refund request turned into another invoice.
  • Compare.com’s review of the company lists “final price higher than the first online quote” as a recurring complaint theme, alongside sudden increases.
  • WalletHub’s scoring gave The General 0 out of 5 on discounts and counted about three discount programs, against far longer lists at large standard carriers.
Trustpilot profileCompare.com reviewWalletHub review

02 · Renewal

Clean records still get a higher price

Nonstandard insurance is priced for risk. Customers say the price also moves when they cannot point to a new ticket, crash, or lapse.

  • Milinda H.’s December 9, 2025 BBB review says the premium kept climbing with no tickets and no vehicle incidents.
  • Insurify reviewer Jane, in North Carolina on July 7, 2025, says one claim was average and the two-car payment still climbed toward $600 a month.
  • A May 2025 Reddit post describes a jump from $193 to $710 and a representative citing old offenses the poster says the state DMV did not show as points.
  • Insurify’s own write-up says dissatisfied customers specifically call out rate increases that erase the reason they bought the policy.
BBB reviewsInsurify ratings

03 · Getting out

Canceling can create a new bill

People leave because of the price. A second cluster of complaints says the exit itself produces a balance, a collector, or a DMV lapse flag.

  • Milinda H. says she could not find a contact path to cancel, coverage dropped when a payment was missed, and she was billed for a month she says had no coverage, then sent to collections.
  • A January 2025 Georgia Reddit post says a large increase arrived after month one, the writer replaced the policy and canceled, and a $591 balance hit collections months later.
  • A May 2025 Reddit comment says a representative confirmed a zero balance at cancellation, a debit still posted, collections called after a bank reversal, and the DMV was told the insurance had lapsed.
  • If you are switching, bind the new policy first and keep the cancel confirmation. Several of these fights turn on paperwork the customer did not keep.
Reddit, r/povertyfinanceReddit, r/personalfinance

04 · Claims

The adjuster does not call back

This is the largest pile in the BBB complaint file: a claim number exists, and then the file goes quiet. It hits their own customers and the people their customers hit.

  • An October 29, 2025 BBB complaint says a full-coverage, at-fault claim produced no conversation with the assigned rep, manager, or app-listed adjuster while rental days ran out.
  • Crystal L.’s September 22, 2025 BBB review says the claim was closed with the truck unrepaired and no rental after three weeks of silence.
  • An October 22, 2024 complaint says four deployed airbags and a verbal total-loss call were followed by no next-day answer.
  • A June 2025 Jaguar total-loss complaint says there was still no settlement by November.
  • Third parties report the same stall: Marilyn M. after a failure-to-yield finding, a parent whose baby was in the car, and a May 9, 2025 claimant who says they sent the police report.
BBB complaintsWSJ Buy Side review

05 · Repair shops

Body shops have graded the claims desk a D

CRASH Network asks repair shops, not policyholders, how carriers pay and behave. The General’s grade has been a D for years.

  • WSJ Buy Side reports a D from CRASH Network every year from 2022 through 2024, and a D− in 2025.
  • Yahoo Finance’s 2026 review cites the same D− and says the most common NAIC complaint type is claims-handling delay.
  • A BBB complaint describes a July crash whose adjuster would not answer the body shop and would not pay for a rental.
  • A low shop grade is not proof a single claim was denied in bad faith. It is a multi-year pattern from the people who fix the cars.
Yahoo Finance reviewWSJ Buy Side

06 · Regulators

The complaint index is not a normal 1.0

NAIC’s complaint index compares a company’s complaints with its size. 1.0 is the expected level. Publishers do not agree on a single figure for The General. They agree it is high.

  • Insurance.com (October 2026) reports a NAIC complaint ratio of 4.69 — more than four times expected — and an A+ AM Best rating. Financial strength and complaint volume are different facts.
  • Insurify’s ratings page lists 4.68. Its company review page has also published 9.22. Treat both as that publisher’s figures, not as one official number.
  • Yahoo Finance cites a three-year NAIC average of 2.91 for 2022–2024, still well above the benchmark near 1.0.
  • WalletHub published 5.59. WSJ Buy Side, using 2024 private-passenger data, says The General Automobile Insurance Co. was over 3.5 times the industry average and Permanent General Assurance over 3.7 times.
  • BBB’s letter grade is A+, and the company is not accredited. Customer reviews on the corporate profile average 2.42 out of 5 across 223 reviews. The complaint total on that same nationwide file has been listed from about 326 to 351 in three years, depending on the day. The pages are hosted in Nashville because that is headquarters, not because the filers all live there.
Insurance.comInsurify company reviewNAIC consumer help