When I purchased my coach new in June 2015, I established coverage with AMCO Insurance, a subsidiary of Nationwide Insurance. I THOUGHT I had my online presence properly set up, but it turned out I was wrong. While on an extended summer trip through the West in 2016, my renewal came due. Since the notices were sitting in mail holding back home, I never got the word and my policy lapsed. My bad, my job to keep track of this. As luck would have it, on the last day to reinstate my policy, I had a claim for a fairly significant rock strike on the windshield as I entered West Yellowstone, MT. I contacted Nationwide Claims per my insurance card and received a claim number, despite the fact my policy had lapsed. What I didn't get was the statement "We're sorry, Mr Garrott, but your policy has lapsed and this claim is not covered." I made a call to my preferred service center in Georgia and gave them the claim number so they could order the glass. I continued my meanderings home for another 12 days and 2000 miles, blissfully unaware that I was driving an uninsured vehicle. We arrived safely and I was shocked to find multiple letters from AMCO in my held mail. When I called Nationwide and asked the Claims Manager why they issued a claim number on a lapsed policy, he stated that the claims staff issuing the claim numbers did not have access to policy validity information. I find that extremely difficult to believe and my opinion is that they deliberately kept me in ignorance so I would not reinstate the policy and have a valid claim. Having lost trust in Nationwide and having become a bad risk (I actually filed a claim), I found other coverage and made darned sure that I would receive all correspondence via email.
The moral of the story is that RV owners need to carefully verify that a system is in place to receive insurance renewal notices when on the road.
