AllState Rewards: An Honest Review

AllState Rewards An Honest Review - picture of hands on car wheel with view out front windshield

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Our family LOVES rewards programs. We love airline rewards. We love hotel rewards. We love cash back rewards. We seriously LOVE rewards! In fact, we’ve used rewards to travel all around the world, practically for free. We love rewards so much that we’ve even started providing free rewards advice for other people who want to get the most out of their rewards. Seriously peeps, we don’t want to hoard them all for ourselves. We want you to get in on the action.

So, when AllState Insurance introduced its new AllState Rewards program a few months back, I was naturally curious and expectantly hopeful. Already being an AllState customer, I decided to check it out.

AllState describes the program as a way to reward drivers for their good driving habits. Heck, you don’t even have to be a customer to take advantage of this program. Better yet, it doesn’t cost a dime!

So far, it sounded pretty good. So, I decided to dig a little further. What I found was extremely disappointing and kind of insulting for a rewards enthusiast like myself.

What Is AllState Rewards?

Haven’t heard about AllState Rewards yet? Oh, you will.

AllState Rewards is a program that rewards drivers for their good driving habits. Each time you pass one of their “safe driving” barriers, such as driving 3 consecutive days without any “hard braking” incidents, you earn points. In theory, you can then use those points to get deals on items ranging from watches to restaurant gift certificates. Sounds pretty decent, right?

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Well, color me skeptical that an insurance giant is less interested in making money than they are in giving away free shiznit. They have to be getting something out of this, right?

How Does it Work?

As I stated earlier, AllState Rewards program participants are awarded points for their safe driving habits. Here are a few of the ways that you can earn points through the rewards program:

  • 10,000 points – Sign up for Drivewise
  • 5,000 points – Activate you AllState Rewards account
  • 500 points – Watch AllState Rewards “How To” videos
  • 500 points – Enter a promo code from emails
  • 200 points – Take 10 “safe trips”
  • 200 points – Drive 3 consecutive days with no hard braking
  • 200 points – Drive 3 consecutive days with no high speeding

Seems pretty legit, right? But, as with everything, all we have to do is follow the money (or in this case, the points) to see what AllState is actually after.

What is this Drivewise you speak of?

Stick this in your car...and be "virtually" followed everywhere you go.
Stick this in your car…and be “virtually” followed everywhere you go.

In order to participate in the rewards program, you have to first sign up for the AllState Drivewise program…and they’ll give you a whopping 10,000 points for you to do it! So, what exactly is it?

AllState Drivewise is a program that AllState customers can use in order to get a reduced rate on their car insurance premiums. Once accepted, participants are required to put a device in their car that monitors their driving habits. In theory, AllState claims this information will not be used to increase your premium prices. However, you have to assume that they use this information to decide how big of a driving risk you pose for insurance purposes. What other purpose could it serve?

The device itself is a bit invasive. It knows when you were driving, how fast you were going, and even when precisely you tapped your breaks. The scariest part is that it also can piece together exactly where you’ve been. How do we know this? Although AllState claims not to collect GPS information, a closer inspection of the data collected by the Drivewise device shows that a “GPS Trail” of “GPS time, GPS position, GPS speed, and GPS accuracy” is transmitted once per trip. Nothing like having big brother tag along with you for a relaxing Sunday drive!

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When you look at how the program awards points, it becomes clear that AllState doesn’t really care too much about your safe driving. What they really want is to get your access to your information, both your contact info (5,000 points for email codes) and especially your driving info (10,000 points for Drivewise). Although AllState claims that nobody but you, your agent, and occasionally an AllState representative can see the info, I’m always a little bit hesitant about giving away my info due to the increasing number of data breaches we hear about on the news.

drivewise app
The AllState Drivewise mobile app

Who Can Participate?

The “cool” part about this rewards program is that you don’t even have to be an AllState customer to participate! How’s that for spectacular? Even if you aren’t an AllState customer, you can give your private information away to them simply by downloading the Drivewise app to your smartphone! Just carry your smartphone with you, turn on the app while you drive, and start telling AllState exactly where you’ve been earning points right away. What could be easier than that?

Of course, the app is getting just a two-star customer rating at the iTunes store and a three-star rating for Android…so there is that.

Redeeming Your Points

To be perfectly honest, I don’t mind giving up a little bit of information if I actually got something out of it. Clearly, I’m still an AllState customer, and we even participate in the Drivewise program with one of our vehicles. Plus, I’m super stingy and I’m always up for getting great deals on some good stuff. However, redeeming your AllState Rewards points is like entering the seventh layer of hell. There are some decent deals available, but your points are practically worthless. Rather than actually let you use your points to “buy” things, your points only give you a chance to win items. Let me explain.

Auctions

The first way that you can redeem your AllState Rewards points is through an auction. Essentially, if you imagine an eBay platform that uses rewards points instead of real money, you’ve pretty much got it nailed. Here is what one of the auctions looks like:

AllState Rewards Auction

Much like any other online auction site, you can bid on any number of auction items using your rewards points. When the time runs out, the highest bidder wins. Unlike many other online auction sites, you can’t just pay a flat fee to buy an in-stock item outright. You actually have to win the auction, which is pretty much impossible. Believe me, I’ve tried. Unless you jump on at the very last second and outbid the thousands of other people who are trying to get that same $10 gift card, you are totally S.O.L.

Additionally, I’ve found that you’re going to need a lot of points if you ever want to be the “winner” of any of these so-called rewards. This $10 gift card will likely go for several thousand points once the bidding is done. My time is worth far more than watching these silly auctions tick down to 0:00:00. For reals AllState, just put a buy now button on here and you may actually have a reward instead of a lottery ticket.

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Sweepstakes

Speaking of lottery tickets, another way that you can redeem your AllState Rewards points is through sweepstakes entries. Yep, you heard that right. Your reward is a the chance to “purchase” a ticket to a drawing. So, instead of actually being rewarded for giving the company access to your personal information, you just earn the opportunity to have your name picked out of hat to win (almost certainly not win) a prize.

Allstate Rewards Sweepstakes

You can use your AllState Rewards points to purchase as many drawing entries as you wish. So, go ahead and blow the whole load of them on this $10 Lane Bryant Gift Card if you want! Of course, once you spend those points on sweepstakes tickets, you don’t get them back – regardless of whether you win or not. So, unless you actually win the gift card, you didn’t truly receive a reward at all. Thanks for that AllState.

Daily Deal

The last way that you can redeem these stellar rewards points is through the AllState Rewards Daily Deal. Each day at 1 P.M. Eastern, the AllState Rewards program comes out with some shiny new daily bargains. There are several different categories to choose from – including home and garden, jewelry, handbags, and women’s apparel.

The Daily Deal is a points and cash type system. For those who may be unfamiliar with points and cash, it works exactly how it sounds. You use a chunk of your AllState Rewards points plus some additional cash to purchase the item you want. So far, so good.

With most points and cash programs, you can usually get steeply discounted prices on some super cools stuff. For instance, we just used points and cash to book a hotel room in Jamaica for Spring Break. For a hotel room that costs about $320/night, we used 150,000 IHG rewards points plus $70 per night for a 7 day stay on the beach. That’s about 21,400 points per day and a 78% discount…on a hotel room, on the beach, with an view of the Caribbean Sea, mind you. Had we wanted to, we could have paid for the entire stay on points. As you might imagine, the AllState Rewards program is not nearly that generous.

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Behold! Here is what you can get with the AllState points and cash deals:

AllState Rewards Daily Deal

Yes, you are seeing that correctly. You can use 5,800 rewards points PLUS $140.00 of your own money to buy this purse. What a deal!!! (Man, there is sarcasm dripping all over this piece…)

First of all, you can probably guess my thoughts on spending a gajillion dollars on a handbag, but I digress. Let’s think about this for a second. 5,800 AllState Rewards points is equal to the 3 consecutive days of no hard braking reward…29 times!!! So, if a kid darts out in front of you, make sure you don’t brake hard. You’ll lose those precious points…

The kicker with this whole deal is that you’re only saving a whopping 29% on this silly bag! You can probably walk into the store and find it on sale for less than that. You really rewarded me there, dincha AllState? Thanks/no thanks for your crappy coupon.

Frequently Asked Questions: AllState Rewards

So, what is AllState Rewards?

  • AllState Rewards is a program that is operated by the AllState Insurance company. Through the program, drivers can earn rewards points for what the company considers “safe driving.” These points can be redeemed through the AllState Rewards portal for discounts on merchandise, gift cards, and chances to win auctions and sweepstakes.

Who can participate in the AllState Rewards program?

  • Anybody who is willing to give up their personal information, including loads of driving info, is allowed to participate. You don’t even have to be a customer. AllState Drivewise participants need only use the Drivewise device in their vehicle and sign up for an account. Non-customers are able to download the Drivewise app to their mobile device, sign up for a rewards account, and use the app while driving.

Is there any cost to participate?

  • No…unless you consider letting a ginormous corporation know where you’ve been, when you went there, and how fast you were driving to get there to be a cost. Then, yes.

Where do I go to redeem these precious points?

  • All you have to do is go to www.AllStateRewards.com to “redeem” your “rewards.”

How long do my AllState Rewards points last?

  • According to their website, the points never expire. Bonus!

Can I turn my rewards points in for money?

  • Is that a serious question? Ummmm….no.

Who can see my information?

  • As of August 12, 2015, AllState claims that only you, your agent, and occasionally an AllState representative can see your driving info.

AllState Rewards is Great if…

Here’s the thing. Obviously, it is hard to complain about free. I’ve got no problem with rewards programs. In fact, I love them. I am more than happy to give you a little bit of info if I’m actually getting a reward. A rewards program, this is NOT.

Seriously, let’s not call this a rewards program since you can’t actually redeem your rewards points for any rewards. If you’re going to call it AllState Rewards, at least allow these points to be redeemed for something concrete.

Instead of being an actual rewards program, AllState Rewards is nothing more than a marketing scheme that is designed to get you to download their app so that they can collect your information. Of course, most businesses run these type of info gathering programs, including us (Join the VIP Club, y’all!)….but we’re not claiming to be a rewards program. Furthermore, to be a part of AllState Rewards, you’re giving out far more than just your email address. You’re giving up your right to privacy for the chance to purchase a crappy coupon.

So, if you want to give up oodles of information and sit on your computer all day to outbid thousands of others on crummy coupons and gift cards, the AllState Rewards is a wonderful program for you! Personally, my time is worth way more than that.

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RELATED: All State Drivewise: An Honest Review

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80 Comments

  1. Who needs to worry about the “the man” spying on you when you can voluntarily join programs to give out this information!

    I appreciate the honest review of this program. You really went in deep with this and exposed it as a bit of a joke.

    1. Right?!? People give up their privacy and their freedom way too easily these days.

      1. Just ran across your article on AllState Rewards, you nailed it! Just had a survey for them and pretty much told them the same thing…..worthless!

        1. Ha! I love that you actually turned the survey back in. What a total waste of a “rewards” program! If you’re going to have a rewards program, then actually have a rewards program. If not, don’t bother…

    2. In the fine print on the acceptance of Drivewise you give them authorize them to look at your email and also pictures in your phone ! Why is this needed for car insurance? What’s next a camera in your bedroom,

    3. THank goodness the redeem rewards ends this month. You are correct and a very nice and honest review of the program. It is basically worthless. Free is not free. Free is NOT FREE. I have over 100 grand of points and I can’t use it for anything Free.

  2. Sounds just like the Verizon Rewards Program. Since Republic or low cost carriers don’t work where we live, I was a little excited to get all these reward points. Until I tried to redeem them! After losing several auctions, I gave up. We probably have 4 billion verizon points that are worth absolutely nothing. I would so fail the Allstate game. Too many critters in the road and wide open places to speed!

    1. lol, I said the same thing: “Too many critters in the road and wide open places to speed!” It’s not fair tfor your car insurance to penalize you for stopping for a deer/whistlepig/rabbit/cat/squirrel that jumps in the road… not like you can control that.

      1. That’s what I think. Hard braking without context means nothing. If you brake hard to avoid hitting a person, your hard braking could even SAVE Allstate hundreds of thousands of dollars!

        1. i have allstate rewards for a few years now. i am a very careful driver and somehow i get penalized approximately 30 times a year for hard braking events. when i actually investigated those so called hard braking times, it was an average of 8 thru 12 MPH initial speed. so basically, most of my hard braking events came from parking my car. hard braking should be meaningful when you are driving at least 20 thru 30 MPH but not at 8MPH. i told allstate reward reps and i was told they cannot do anything about it since it was their device that registering those hard braking events.

          1. It depends on the car you have, a previous car I had gave me the hard braking warnings all the time, with my newer car with anti lock brakes I get no such warnings.

    2. Ha! Just run those critters over without braking and you should be good. 😉

  3. Progressive has had one of those devices too and I REFUSE to ever use that in my car. I am on occasion a wild driver, I admit. While I do like to hyper mile, sometimes living in a city you have to hard brake–its just the way it is when someone runs in the street in front of your car. Plus, when I’m on a highway, especially when I’m driving to rural ares, I generally go 5-10 mph over the speed limit and drive even faster if all the cars around me are speeding and not speeding is considered unsafe (like when I’m on the NJ Turnpike and cars are flying past me)

    Those devices don’t reward safe drivers. They keep your insurance affordable if you drive like grandma. IMO, they serve to raise your rates if you occasionally are the “wild” driver on the road. Plus, if you shop around for car insurance, you can always find a cheaper company than any big-brother-device-in-your-car insurance.

    1. Yeah, we have it in one of our cars, but it is rarely ever driven. Personally, I think the Drivewise program is a joke. Holly wrote a whole piece about it and I linked to it at the end of this one. Check it out if you get a chance.

      1. We have a single car in our family. Wife doesn’t work and I work from home. We don’t really go out much. We put about 4k miles on the car each year. I’ve saved 26% four years straight now. Higher than most I would say by far, I love it.

        You slam the program because you only saved 17% instead of 30%? Even if your rep misinformed you… is that reason for you to slam the whole program?

        Then you complain about a braking event. She says it happened in a parking lot, where the speed limit is probably 12.5 miles per hour. So if she had to brake hard, odds are she wasn’t paying attention or she was speeding. The article came off extremely defensive, like how dare they ding me for how I drive!!!!

        I’ll admit some things don’t make sense, like why driving at night is riskier than driving during rush hour. But who cares, I’m still saving money.

        17% in new savings for an insurance company you had been with admittedly for 10+ years.

        1. I agree with you Frank. My daughter told me about this and I’ve already saved 10% on my premium. Yes, it still a work in progress. Sometimes it does say that I’ve braked hard when I haven’t. But I like it so far. Mine is a little doo-hickey though (they now have the app) and it helps me remember to be more conscious of my driving habits. And I like saving money especially since Allstate is real bad about raising their rates for no reason.

          1. Louise King says:

            Problem is, you’re saving 10% and they are raising your rates 40%, so you are still losing.

          2. I love how people say that the only thing the insurance company gets is your personal information from Drivewise. They also hope to get SAFER DRIVERS, so the insurance company hopes to pay out far less claims too. That is why they have a website designed for you, the driver, to be able to go in and look at your own results……..if you monitor your own driving habits, and if you are a safer driver, then THEY pay less claims. Wow, everyone is a critic nowadays. If you don’t like your 10% discount then don’t do Drivewise; any discount to me is better than nothing.

          3. Louise, no they don’t raise your rates 40%. Get a clue.

  4. I’m a sucker for a good rewards program, but this sounds a little too out-there for me. I wonder what all that data does to your rates if they don’t like what they see? Thanks for outlining all the pitfalls.

    1. According to the company, it will not increase your rates. But that seems to beg the question, “Why do they want all of this data if it isn’t to increase rates?”

  5. What a bunch of garbage! This kind of crap makes me LIVID.

    At work, they switched over our old “reward a fellow employee” program. You used to get cold hard cash. Now, you get points and it’s probably from the same stupid catalog as above. The best option is one of the 4 restaurants. I don’t need more crap in my house. I want more money so I can save it and retire earlier! On top of this, there’s even awards that don’t give anything! I felt like an @ss for giving a co-worker a reward that was just an e-card. Ugh.

    All the CEOs see is “cost savings.” These kind of half-hearted attempts at giving us crap we don’t need really demoralize me.

    And I just got an All State commercial on Pandora during writing this response. Ugh.

    1. Ha! An e-card, eh!

      Double Ha on the AllState commercial!

      Yeah, these type of fake rewards programs are pretty crummy. Don’t get me wrong, I like rewards programs…but only if they are truly a reward. If not, don’t waste my time (and patience) please.

  6. Boo Allstate! I was all excited and ready to earn some rewards. Well. Maybe. I don’t know how I feel about having continuous monitoring. Plus I don’t have Wi-Fi away from home/work. So I guess it would have been a no go anyway!

    1. Yeah, the program is pretty lame – which is unfortunate if you’re already a customer.

  7. Thanks for the honest review! I’ve always wondered if trading that kind of information was really worth it. I’m not a very big fan of “the man” knowing where I am at all times, though I think I gave that up when I got a smartphone. Oh well.

    1. Yeah, I don’t like the smartphone thing either. It probably doesn’t work, but I always turn my location services off. At least I feel like nobody is watching that way.

      1. I used to do the same thing. Then I stopped looking up directions the night before and started relying on that dang navigation system. So now the big G knows EVERY last thing about me. It definitely creeps me out. And I wouldn’t want this in my car for the same reason. Why do they want info on non-customers? It’s either marketing to the good drivers to get new customers, or selling information to the bad one’s insurers, right? I’d be interested to see if those privacy policies morph.

        1. Yeah, that is what I’m wondering as well. I mean, I suppose the goal is to convert those non-customers to customers, but that is an awful lot of data to collect just for nothing.

  8. I had heard about this program before and I even knew people were sketchy over it because of the GPS information. I did NOT know how completely ridiculous the “reward” portion of the program is. Seriously, I bet they are mostly only collecting information from complete suckers (no, not you, Holly) who think this sounds totally awesome! And I have to question how safely suckers drive in the first place…

  9. Isn’t it AllState that has the commercials where a young lady is seated at a table telling a guy that she gets a check from AllState for being a safe driver?

    1. Yep. That is another one of AllState’s programs.

      In truth, I don’t mind their insurance coverage one bit. We’ve been customers for a long time. I just don’t like being told I’m getting rewards when I’m really not. It is a great way to drive more traffic to their website, however.

  10. Ohhhh no, someone knows where you drive?!?!? who cares, the paranoid schizophrenics can stay out of the program then…more auctions for me to win! There is this thing called an auto clicker, you download it and it clicks the bid button for you, i set it up, and go to bed, in the morning collect my prize… big woop!

  11. The bid increments for the auctions are ridiculous. 1 point bid increments for an item that would be expected to end up costing over 30,000 points??? What a waste of everyone’s time. If they would just do a ‘max bid’ feature the auctions would be so much better. If their auction software doesn’t support that, how about bid increments that reflect the expected final point value (based on historical data) of the item… 5, 10, 25, etc. point increments to save us all some time.

  12. Don’t forget, you can also only enter the Sweepstakes up to 25 times per day, so even if you wanted to just throw your points out of the window with one login, you can’t. You have to log in every single day to enter those un-winable Sweepstakes. They also used to have the Auctions with ‘extended time’ which was basically the biggest waste of time on the planet. Basically, whenever anyone would place a bid in the last 10 seconds of the auction, the time would restart to 10 seconds left, which extended the time of the Auction to infinity… at least they got rid of that one!

    I’ve spent many auctions clicking on bid like a mad man in the last seconds, only to have about 100 other bids magically outbid my own. ‘Rewards program’ right…

    1. I quit Allstate after being a 20+ year customer – because of this stupid “rewards” program. I’m now a happy Farmers customers with house, umbrella, and 4 cars… Away with Allstate!

    2. I have had similar experiences, Sara. Just tonight there were only 10 people bidding on a $10 “Power Play” — 1 in 10 chances to win. Not bad, right? Wrong! My bids did not even appear to register (you can click on total bids and see where you landed among all bids). I have a pretty fast trigger finger, but it made no difference. In this case I am sure Allstate is artificially raising the bids to get more points for its pathetic gift cards. I am out!

  13. Has ANYONE ever won an Allstate sweepstakes? I have been in a TON of them and have won nothing……

    1. I won a $25 Target gift card. I used points to buy the max number of extra tickets for each day the sweepstakes was active. I thought this was going to be the key to finally being able to win stuff with Allstate Rewards. Turns out I just got really lucky, because I did the same thing with a bunch of other sweepstakes and haven’t won since. I’ve basically got like 200,000 points that I can’t get rid of because the auctions seem impossible to win.

      1. This whole AllState reward flim-flam has moved me to quit this insurance company (house, 2 cars) and move to Farmers — after more than 30 years with AllState. What a hocus-pocus reward program. I’ve never been able to use any of my nearly 100,000 points. Gurrrrr

        1. So, you’ve been with Allstate for 30 years…. and you’re going to leave because you don’t like this reward program they added that has nothing to do with their plans, service or pricing? Seems odd.

          1. You bet! And I saved over $400 by moving to Farmers…and I also was able to get earthquake insurance, which Allstate no longer offers….the frustration with their “rewards” program was the “straw.”

          2. So, you left because it was a big money savings and an improvement. You acted like you left because of some stupid rewards program.

            It doesn’t make sense to leave a company whose service and pricing had served you well for 30 years because of an optional reward system.

          3. John Luzietti says:

            Frank is an Allstate troll.

          4. No, I’m not a troll…. just someone with common sense. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of some of your comments. WShoeBox claimed they left Allstate after 30 years because of this rewards program. When I called them out on that… turns out they actually left because they saved $400 on their premiums at another place. Quite a different story isn’t it?

            Idiots are bashing this program because they saved “ONLY” 17% instead of 30% or “omg they said I hard braked when I didn’t”. Ya, I’m sure their devices with computer measurements were wrong and your feeling was right.

  14. I think a legitimate company could have come up with more reasonable program. I’m really quite disgusted with the whole thing.

  15. Spot on. Allstate rewards is a bigger waste of time than pretty much anything I can think of. What a crap program.

    1. Warren Schumacher says:

      Agree, totally worthless “reward.” I quit Allstate, after 20+ years because of this terrible bait and switch “reward” program…

  16. I am not sure why people are so paranoid about this program. Its Big Data. Not your data that would be interesting to any BIG company – including Allstate. Also – it is an incremental program not something they are taking away from anyone. Completely voluntary on every level. You may not see value in it so – don’t use it. I like being able to find my car in a mall parking lot, ordering roadside assistance and being able to know where he /she is en-route. Ordering car repair service. To me seems like their is a lot more to like than hate there. The device showing in the email is obsolete info. Not sure why post is showing that.

  17. I’m not going to argue with you whether this is a crummy rewards program (because it is), but the 10% savings you get from signing up for Drivewise is definitely worth it, especially for a single guy in his 20’s driving a sports car. It’s not so bad now that they have the app for it and you don’t need the added dongle, so all you have to do is record a few trips a month then turn off your phone while in the car so it doesn’t pick up anymore; besides, if you’re driving safe you shouldn’t be distracted with a phone right?

    And I hate to break it to you, but everyone’s tracking you nowadays from Disney to Google…if you don’t like that kind of invasive treatment then I suggest you move to Papua New Guinea and live in the jungle gadget-free.

  18. TOTALLY agree about this rewards program. I have over 170k and have nothing to do with them! Ugh

  19. K Krosnick says:

    All this is so true. It’s just so frustrating to NEVER be able to win ANYTHING!! with my points.

    1. After 20+ years with Allstate, I quit them because of this sham of a reward program…couldn’t ever make it work…and I saved $400 +/- by changing companies…that was the biggest bonus!

  20. D Williams says:

    I didn’t see anything in this article about discounts you get on hotels using your points. We’re going to use ours on a trip. Anybody have any problems with using points to get hotel discounts?

  21. Timothy Everhart says:

    I just read this and you nailed it on the freaking head. Allstate rewards is a stinking joke.

    1. Ha! Thanks Timothy. This piece came out of a burst of frustration 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it.

  22. The Allstate Rewards program is quite useful to me. I use it to purchase gift cards at a 10% discount. Just like using cash and it only eats up 100 points to buy a $100 gift card for $90. No handling fee on e-gift cards. The Drive Wise program saves me and the wife about $113 every 6 months on our insurance. My wife is much better at getting the Drive Wise discount than I.

    1. I’m with you, get a discount for no “bad” driving habits and use rewards for gift cards at 10% discount. Just paid for another cruise with them.

  23. Drivewise turned out to be a fraud. We have 2 Priuses, 1 truck – everything fine for 2 years. Truck is seldom drove. Suddenly I started getting email that my truck device was not ‘communicating’. Long story short they force you to drive every week or they send you warnings then eventually deactivate the device. So now no discounts on the truck. The next year I got the reports on the Priuses and suddenly got ZERO discount for both cars as well. Prior years got discounts on all cars and truck. They changed the breaking habits of the cars so that it excludes the Prius because the car NORMALLLY breaks too hard. So I got over 350 hard breaking events and my wife got over 200 in a year so no discount. The Prius charges on the break so it brakes harder than other cars. I called and told them that but they regurgitated a company line. I pulled all devices from our cars. How do I know they will not use a driving habit against me in a claim?????? No integrity.

    1. We have 3 vehicles also Expo gets used mainly for trips, never had a issue with it not being used it actually has the biggest discount as it also has the least amount of miles driven.

  24. I’m not so excited about the Rewards (point) Program, but love the Drivewise Program. I’ve earned $72 so far and at the end of my policy period will apply the credit toward my next premium payment.

  25. I have two major gripes about the Allstate program. One, I’ve determined that if you are driving the speed limit and approaching a traffic light which turns yellow, you may get charged wit a hard braking event if you try to stop for the red light. Simple engineering math will confirm this based on Allstate’s deceleration criteria. I suggested to Allstate that measuring hard acceleration would be a better measure of aggressive driving habits. Measuring hard braking only encourages me to blow through a red light!
    Secondly, a few months ago Allstate changed the bidding process so that bidders can set a maximum bid. This change has GROSSLY inflated the value of winning bids. Prior to this change, gift cards typically sold for bids amounting to about 1,500 to 2,000 points per dollar of value. For example, a $5 Shell gift card might go for 7,500 to 10,000 points. I just looked now and there is an auction closing in three hours on a $5 Shell gift card. The bidding is already over 225,000 points. There is also an auction for a $5 Dunkin’ Donuts card ending in twelve hours and the bidding is over 237,000.
    So, essentially after Allstate made this change, the “equivalent” value of my points went from about $ .50 per thousand points to about $ .02 per thousand points. What a deal, huh?

  26. Like many of those posting I was jittery about privacy issues, but I was looking for ways to reduce my auto insurance premiums and since enrolling earned an immediate 10% cash back, I signed up. I think the program must have evolved since the article was written. The comments about the auctions, sweepstakes and daily deals are spot on. It is rare luck to benefit from those. But there was no mention of gift cards and purchasing these is the surest way to see real cash benefits. Being able to buy CVS $100 gift cards for $90 has provided a consistent 10% discount on all my prescriptions. My wife spends several hundred dollars a month at Belks and similarly the 10% savings there is a help to our budget. Finally, we have currently earned a 3% discount towards our next premium and expect this to grow to 10% or more by the next premium due date. So, all in all I would give the program 3.5 out of 5 stars.

  27. It is now an App on your phone. Rewards, it’s just like PCH. However, cash back towards premium is great!

  28. Allstate customer says:

    Yes, the program is all app now. No more OBD devices. The app now…penalizes me for driving home from work at 11PM, and, “hard breaks” me at the same turn every night. This is a turn in a 35 mph area. Also, does not realize when I hit 80mph? Tried it. Did not record it. Archives my “bad” driving but not my 80mph good driving. Look, the app is junk. I save a whopping 3% as my bill keeps going up every year. To the anti-lock break comment; my vehicle has them. Still records “hard breaking” when it is not applicable. Funny thing is, every time I try to fill out the app survey, my phone app shuts down.

  29. Has anyone ever scored a free gift care during the daily deal? I sent an email asking how many are offered and got a generic response. Today the daily deal is a $5 chevron gift card for 500 pts. I logged in to three different computers and has all three prepped and ready to push the “add to cart” button. I watched the countdown and it showed available for less than one second. All three clicked on “add to cart” immediately and we all got the same response. “All items are already in carts”. I suspect that this is a complete sham. If they are even offering this as a deal, they should post how many are available.

    1. Yep, total bullshit propaganda. It sucks and should be discontinued!

  30. As of October 2018, they’ve quietly reduced the free sweepstakes entries for logging in to one per day instead of 5. Thanks Allstate. ?

  31. Yep, total bullshit propaganda. It sucks and should be discontinued!

  32. Jeffrey Allender says:

    lets also remember you don’t even need the Drivewise app on your phone to collect points. I get at least 1 email a week with a 1,000-2,000 point promo code I can type in for “bonus” points. Also, the “free” daily deals you see that are actually “free” tend to be sold out SECONDS after they start. So clearly hundreds or thousands of people are sitting at their computers waiting to get their hands on a 5 dollar wal mart giftcard which they probably only have a hand full of anyway.

    I do have to say there is only ONE way to benefit from this. If you are happening to make a large purchase at one of their retailers they have under the gift card section, you can save 10% off giftcards. I cruise a lot of Carnival and they offer 10% off carnival giftcards. I’ll buy the giftcards with my rewards points and use the cards towards the purchase of my cruise, and also for on board spending.

  33. I have no complaints. The points add up quickly for doing something I do anyway–driving, and trying to drive safely. I won a $10 gift card the first time I tried an auction.

  34. I find I spend very nearly as much time on the phone trying to get the app to work as I do driving. After numerous calls, having been given conflicting information, I was told essentially my choices were to give up Drivewise and the attendant discounted premiums, or to go out and buy a new phone. In my opinion, neither is an acceptable option. If Allstate advertises a program that earns a discount, they should provide a working program.

  35. JoAnne Jenkins says:

    This program is actually very popular with the cruise community, because they can pile up free points (from the emails sent out frequently) and use them to get cruise gift certificates for 10-12% off. Most of us added the app to get signed up for the program, and then deleted it. And when you are paying a ton of money for a cruise anyway, why not save a couple hundred for not a lot of effort?

  36. Dont get fooled. They have 50% mark up on top of their discount! Just google the same product to see the difference! Eg: Fitbit Versa – $50 more than what they have it on their website!

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