Insurance companies continue to screw over owners of Hyundai and Kia vehicles; either Kia owners are outright being denied coverage—like myself— or they’re finding themselves suddenly dropped from insurance companies that they’ve been customers of for years. That’s what’s happened to one Kia owner in Washington state who suddenly found herself without car insurance.
NBC’s Washington affiliate KHQ reports that Venessa Russell was a customer of the insurance company Safeco, a division of Liberty Mutual Insurance, for the last five years. That is until she got a random message from her broker saying Safeco was “”declining the quotes due to the Kia being on the policy.”
She quickly realized that insurance is, in fact, a scam with Russell saying “You pay every single month on time, never lapsed, never nothing, and to have them just say thanks for that free money for the last couple of years. Now I’m dropping you.” Her broker informed her she was being dropped due to a “trend on social media showing people how to steal and carjack Hyundais and Kias.”
For those of you not familiar with what that trend is, it started in late 2021 on Tik Tok with a group of thieves called the”Kia Boys.” In a series of videos, the group showed how easy it was to steal various Hyundai/ Kia models sometimes using nothing but a USB. Unfortunately, the trend gained traction and there have been thousands of thefts nationwide which led to various cities threatening to sue Hyundai/Kia over the threats and a messy recall campaign by the automaker to install immobilizer devices.
Worse yet, models that were never even targeted by thieves have been dropped from insurance for simply being a Hyundai or Kia. Williams drives a 2020 Kia Telluride, a model that has push button start on every single trim. Her owning a Telluride did her no favors when she tried to get insurance elsewhere.
Russell says she was denied by all major insurance companies solely due to the make of her car. She added all drivers listed on the insurance have had no accidents and received no tickets in the last twenty years. Her broker was able to find one smaller company that would insure her Kia, but the cost was simply too high.
Russell was quoted $7500 a year to insure two cars with three drivers coming out to over $600 a month. That’s a $200 monthly increase from her previous insurance. This additional cost was after dropping a driver and a car from the insurance.
Unfortunately, the higher costs weren’t feasible. She did finally find someone to insure her, but she wasn’t able to bundle her home and auto insurance like she had been doing. KHQ reached out to Safeco for comment and the company said they don’t respond publicly on underwriting decisions.