As I was paying the premiums, a little voice said, “That rate for the cars seems high.  I think I need to do some checking to make sure I’m not paying too much.”  That voice has spoken to me before several years ago, and I had gone through the process of getting some quotes and going back to my agent, who had been able to make adjustments.

So I used my friend the Internet and got some quotes.  Sure enough, the auto policy was about twice what I was quoted by one of the famous companies that sells primarily through the web.  The homeowner policy quotes were a mixed bag, but it appeared that I could save several hundred dollars a year there as well.

So I gave the information to my independent agent, who has been a close personal friend for 40 years, and asked him what they could do.  Sure enough, they were actually able to beat the auto quote by a few bucks, and managed to save me several hundred dollars a year on the homeowner policy.  Both had to be written on another company, but that’s fine.

He and I had a long discussion about the difficulties of the insurance business.  The company that was providing my coverage won’t write homeowner policies for him, but have struck a deal with the famous Internet company to write policies through them for substantially less than what they are charging established customers for renewals.  And auto rates are constantly fluctuating, making it hard to keep up with who can provide the best rate for their customers.

There’s not a real satisfactory solution for any of us.  The situation with the consumer insurance business is a lot like how the telephone business used to be.  The phone companies would have all kinds of special deals that could save you money, but they wouldn’t offer them to established customers unless you called and threatened to change providers.

Doing the same thing with electricity service providers is next.  They play the same game.

Unfortunately, we now live in a world where there is no reward for loyalty.  Insurance companies, phone companies, electrical service providers, and on and on are only looking out for themselves.  They are not going to take care of our interests, no matter how many ads they put out there about being in good hands.

I think it’s sad that the world has changed in this way.  It adds to our distrust of big business.  But it’s increasingly true that the only person that’s going to take care of you is you.  Good luck out there in the jungle.  And let me know how you’re doing.

Five minutes later the phone rang.  It was a flight attendant making a call for my mother-in-law to let us know that they couldn’t take off due to rain in Dallas.  A few minutes later the phone rang again saying that they had been told they could take off in about 10 minutes.

So we made a detour by a local ice cream shop to kill some time.  While there I checked the status on my iPhone.  Sure enough, it had the flight “departing” on time, but arriving late, and giving a specific time — 6:33.

So we timed our arrival, pulling into the airport at 6:30.  At 6:31 the phone rang.  The flight attendant again, to tell us they were finally about to take off from DFW.  So there we were at the airport with an hour or so to kill.  We did what any rational person would do.  We found a What a Burger and had dinner.

And checked the American Airlines website again.  This time it said the flight would arrive at 7:15.  It still had the “departure” time as the original scheduled time, however — the time they left the gate.  And this time the data was right.  The plane arrived and we collected Reba.

The real culprit in this whole mess is the importance that’s placed on “On Time Departure.”  That data is tracked and published regularly to great fanfare as a measure of customer service.  If an airline has good numbers, they get praise.  If they don’t, then they get hammered.

So, no matter what’s going on, airlines do everything they can to leave the gate on time.  That counts as on-time departure.  So they get good numbers.

The problem is they leave people sitting in a crowded plane on the tarmac for hours.  Really bad customer service.  But it’s not measured, so it’s okay.  On time “departure” is what’s measured.

So what are you using as a measure of your success.  And are you getting good numbers, but at the expense of what really matters?