‘I just fixed mine and my husband’s. Almost $100 saved.’
A South Carolina TikToker says a Progressive customer service agent admitted, mid-call, that the company’s AI tools had quietly miscoded her occupation as “forest work” and that fixing it dropped her annual premium by $1,000.
The 56-second clip has racked up more than 653,000 views, mostly from drivers and licensed agents arguing over which parts of her advice are sound and which might need some nuance.
HAM (@pineappleb911), a 29-year-old South Carolina creator whose channel runs to general life commentary rather than auto coverage, posted the clip on Wednesday. She has since added a long edit to the caption, walking back parts of her own framing, conceding she is “not a licensed agent” and apologizing “for the miscommunication.”
HAM says she was on a routine call with Progressive when the agent paused to ask what she did for a living.
“I said, ‘I work in an office, why?’” HAM recounts. “She said, ‘Well, we merged with AI like seven or eight months ago, and it has you listed as “forest work.”’ I was like, ‘What? Like I just work in the forest?’ She’s like, ‘Yeah.’”
The agent updated the occupation. “My policy went down by $1,000,” HAM says. “That’s $166 a month.”
She closes with two pieces of advice: check what occupation your insurer has on file and “request any speeding tickets or accidents to be removed from your record.”
Occupation is a real rating factor at most major US auto insurers, partly because some jobs correlate with crash exposure, partly because some carriers attach group discounts to specific professional fields. Several state regulators have spent the last decade asking whether that is a defensible practice.
Massachusetts already prohibits the use of education and occupation in auto rating. New York banned it in 2017, and California’s Department of Insurance has proposed rules to end the use of both factors after a 2019 state report found the practice produced premiums up to 25% higher for lower-income drivers.
In states that still allow it, the way the data gets entered matters. A handful of commenters in HAM’s thread reported the same fix on their own policies. Remilaboe wrote that an incorrect occupation entry was costing her $1,255 a year. Mills said Progressive had her down as commuting 100 miles each way; correcting it cut $600 from her premium.
HAM’s advice to call and have your tickets and accidents “removed” was disputed by other users who identified as licensed insurance agents.
Cassidy Wolff, who identifies herself as a licensed State Farm agent, wrote: “An insurance company cannot remove a ticket or accident from your record.” Empress, who said she works in customer service for an insurer, added that violations and at-fault accidents “actually show up on a report from a third party, and if you don’t mention it during the quote it will affect your rate once it shows on the report.”
HAM offered more accurate advice in her own edited caption. A violation continues to affect your premium for a finite window (typically three to five years) after which most insurers stop weighting it in your rate. As Progressive’s own driving-record explainer says, “In most states, common traffic violations such as speeding tickets remain on your driving record for three to five years,” and “insurers are usually most interested in your recent driving history when determining your rate.”
That is materially different from removal. The ticket stays on the motor-vehicle record at the DMV and remains discoverable; what changes is whether the insurer is allowed to keep using it to set the premium.
HAM’s recollection that Progressive “merged with AI like seven or eight months ago” is the agent’s reported words, not a public announcement, and is worth treating with care. Progressive has not announced a specific AI merger or vendor integration in that window. The way the error manifested, with HAM’s occupation overwritten with a bizarre and unrelated value rather than a small prediction error, is more consistent with a data-migration or automated-reclassification event than a real-time AI customer-service tool.
Carriers, however, routinely ingest driving history, vehicle data, and personal information from third-party vendors like LexisNexis Risk Solutions and then run periodic re-rating jobs across active policies. An algorithmic mis-mapping in any of those steps can leave a customer carrying an inflated premium for months without ever being told the underlying field changed.
Several commenters with industry experience pointed out that the same kind of automated data fill is what produces another frustration: phantom drivers. CBS Colorado documented the practice in December 2024 after a Denver customer found an unknown name added to his policy with an associated premium hike. In that case, Progressive’s own statement to the broadcaster was that the company “regularly review[s] information from third-party sources about individuals who possibly live in the household and should be added to active policies.”
Multiple users in HAM’s thread reported the same pattern, with roommates, ex-tenants, or prior residents auto-added to their policies, with the higher premium standing until the customer formally re-excluded them.
HAM closes the edit in her caption with candor: “Policies vary by state, zip code, age, occupation and risk factor. The purpose of my video was to be informational in case anyone else’s occupation got input incorrectly by AI… If you have further questions or concerns, call your insurance company. I am not a licensed agent and I was just sharing my personal experience.”
For drivers in the 47 states that still permit occupation as a rating factor, that is the actionable piece: pull up your declarations page, check what the carrier has on file, and call if it doesn’t match what you actually do.
Motor1 reached out to HAM via TikTok direct message and to Progressive via email for additional comment. We’ll be sure to update this if either responds.
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