According to a 2011 MSN Money-Zogby poll, nearly 30 percent called Farmers Insurance customer service ‘poor,’ Auto Insurance Blog reports.

The blog goes on to point out Farmers drops customers, refuses claims and employs unresponsive adjusters. State of Washington Insurance regulators intervened because Farmers refused a claim because an at-fault driver had road rage.

Insurance regulators in Washington state even had to intervene with Farmers when Ethel Adams, a 60-year-old woman left in a coma and seriously injured after a multi-vehicle crash, had her claim denied when Farmers decided the other driver acted intentionally, claiming an intentional act is not accident.

Eventually, after intense public pressure and the threat of suit from the insurance commissioner, Farmers finally did pay for Adams’s nearly $3 million in medical bills. In 2006 the ‘Ethel Adams Bill’ was passed.

It changed the definition of an accident to be any occurrence that is unexpected and unintended from the perspective of the insured.

However, Adams’s battle to make her insurance company answer for their actions did not stop there.  Farmers refused to apologize and continued to justify its actions. 

Incredibly, Adams pursued a bad faith lawsuit against Farmers, but under Washington law, her remedies were limited.  Farmers remained unrepentant because it knew any financial penalty would be nominal. 

Farmers argued that she was paid on the policy so there was no harm.  It said that the Consumer Protection Act did not apply because Ethel was not injured in her “business or property.”  Farmers said her emotional distress was not related to its actions, but to her injuries.

Farmers eventually did settle the bad faith lawsuit.  However, if Washington’s Insurance Fair Conduct Act had been in place at the time of her accident, requiring insurance companies to act in good faith, Ethel would never have had to go through this.

After the California Department of Insurance denied Farmers’s rate increase request, the JD Power ranking dropped substantially. Farmers posted profit over over $1 billion in 2010.