Scammed by the state of Missouri

OK, now I'm really pissed off.

As many of you know, we lost our T-bird in October of 2009, due to a catastrophic engine failure. So, a few days after we finally got home, we called our insurance agency, to let them know. They first told us that we would have to come in and sign off to officially cancel it. Um, hello? We don't have a car anymore! Anyway, the underwriter (the big conglomerate who keeps most of your premium payment) kept billing us, and eventually the insurance lapsed after maybe two months, give or take.... THEN they sent us to COLLECTIONS for like $35 - an amount they billed us AFTER we asked them to cancel the policy.

What the fuck ever. We'll pay it when we get another car, we thought.

So, now fast forward to today - as most of you probably also know by now, we are buying a used car from a very dear friend and should be acquiring it in about 2 1/2 weeks. I had Vanessa call our old insurance agency today... Guess what? They want us to pay through the nose (to the tune of almost twice as expensive) because the corrupt state of Missouri says they can penalize us for not having continuous insurance coverage! Yes my friends, this is literally government of Missouri legislation! Forget the fact we explicitly asked to cancel the coverage and didn't even HAVE a car since October of 2009!

To add insult to injury, the insurance agency told us that our first underwriter doesn't even write these kind of "non-standard" policies, and they were the cheapest. They also told us that our most recent underwriter, the one who had the chutzpah to send us to collections, won't take us back because of that. Then the agency told us that if we wanted to avoid the penalty, the best option in this state would have been to switch their low cost "no car" policy. In other words, pay the underwriters for the right to LOSE A CAR in the state of Missouri!

I can't fault the agency because they were always good to us, but these underwriters... Jesus H. ben Joseph in a fucking handbasket! Can we say legalized extortion?

At any rate, we'll be going with a different agency - their underwriters found us a rate that's somewhat cheaper, with the possibility that the rate will go down in cost after six months.

Government reforms? "I fart in your general direction!"