Attn: The President, upper management, and shareholders of GEICO

To whom it may concern:

Subject: GEICO practices

Recently, I canceled my GEICO auto insurance policy. I'm writing this letter to inform you of why I made this decision.

I had been a GEICO member for almost three years, from 1995 to 1999. Up until recently, GEICO had provided insurance for my car, while I had lived in Eugene, Oregon and after, when I had moved to Bend, Oregon. Eugene is a city of some 140,000 residents and is a college town; Bend is a city of 50,000 residents with a large percentage of retired persons.

About a year ago I purchased a $220,000 house. The insurance I got for the house was through State Farm, because at the time it was easiest. I called GEICO to see what I could get for rates on the new house, and was informed that because I had moved to Bend, my insurance had to increase. I couldn't understand this, since Bend is a much smaller city with, as I said, an older population.

Recently, I purchased a second car, and set out to do some research. I discovered that with both State Farm and Farmer's Insurance, the insurance rate for my first car was much less for Bend than it was for Eugene. At this point, I began to reflecting, and it occurred to me that Geico, over the period of time in which I had been insured with them, had increased my insurance about once a year, for no other reason than unspecified "market forces". Given these facts, I can only conclude that it is Geico's policy to constantly raise rates on its customers, periodically and when they move from city to city, regardless of whether the new city is actually a higher risk environment or not. It seems apparent to me that it is GEICO's policy to raise rates at any and all opportunities.

I also recently discovered that GEICO has, in the past and present, made it a policy to donate funds to police departments for the exclusive purpose of purchasing radar and laser speed detectors. The intention of GEICO is to thereby increase the number of speeding tickets and justify raising the rates of their customers even more. This does not sound like the actions of a company who has its customer's interests at heart.

Since that time, I have stopped my GEICO policies and changed to another major insurance provider. I have found that their policies are more customer friendly than GEICOs, more clearly defined, and indeed, less expensive than GEICO.

I will not do business with companies who have aggressive and unfair business practices, with the sole intent of taking every opportunity to extract more money from their customers. I refuse to support a company who seems, for all intents and purposes, amoral, who works actively against its customers, and who appears to have every intention of sqeezing every penny out of their customers. I will no longer do business with GEICO, and I will encourage friends and family to stop or to not consider doing business with GEICO.

A copy of this letter has been posted to the Web, in hopes that others will be made aware of GEICO's practices and what the hidden costs are of doing business with GEICO, and will be warned enough to choose some other insurance company besides GEICO.

Sincerely,

Sean Russell