Our family had our cars, home, valuables, etc. insured with Buchanan for over 25 years. No problems, but we had few incidents and pay on time. In August, 2016, we ask him to set up a separate auto policy for our adult daughter and her car- she had been on our policy. We noted that staff seemed inept with what we considered a simple request- setting up a new policy for an existing customer. In December, we receive a DMV notice that we have a lapse in insurance, owe a civil penalty of $50 per car, and risk losing our tags. We look at our records and discover that Buchanan had not billed us in September for our auto premiums. We received no payment invoice, no late notices, no notice of cancellation- nothing from the agent. We contact Buchanan, and say we suspect they suspended our auto billings when they set up the policy for our daughter. We ask him to investigate and cover our DMV fines. His response was to accuse us of missing a payment- when we have never done so in 25 years, and then say he has 2500 customers and can't be making calls before sending lapsed insurance notices to the DMV (even for customers of 25 years!). He said he would get back to us about issues on their end. We have mailed and left messages- he refuses to get back to us. He has no email listed on his website or billings and no voice mail (we resorted to US Mail for communications) - that gives you an idea of how easy it is to communicate with him when he doesn't want to hear from you.
We had to pay $200 to the DMV and our auto rates have now gone up due to the lapse in coverage- due to incompetence on his end. I like to review when I can pat someone on the back, but this seems worth letting people know about.