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A Social Media Ad Says I'm Overpaying for Insurance. How Do I Check?
The ad found you, not the other way around, and wondering whether you are the one paying too much is what careful people do. Before you type a ZIP code into that form, here are the three questions that separate a licensed Texas agency from a company that sells your phone number, and the one question we ask back.
The answer
Check the Source before you check the price. Ask three questions before you fill out anything. Who will advise me, and can I verify their Texas license? Who receives my information, and what calls did I just agree to? Is this a personalized quote or a referral, and who helps me after I buy? Texas requires a license to solicit or take an application for insurance, and the Texas Department of Insurance lets you look one up by name or number. Many ads that promise a new program or a secret rate are not selling insurance at all. They collect your information and sell it to other sellers, which is why the calls start. The wrong first question is “Am I overpaying?” The right one is “Overpaying for what?” and only the contract can answer it.
What the ad is really doing
You were not shopping when the ad found you. You were scrolling, and a number stopped your thumb. The ads come in a few costumes. A breaking news banner about a new government subsidy for drivers over 65. An article that looks like a newsroom wrote it when a program did. An exposé about a hack that takes a policy from 195 dollars to 22 dollars a month with all the same coverage. Utterly ridiculous, and it works, because the person reading it is hoping, and the people who built it know exactly how a careful person thinks.
Here is what sits behind many of them. The website does not sell insurance. It sells you. Federal enforcers put it plainly in a 2024 case. Lead generators collect, aggregate, and sell consumer information, or leads, for profit, and consent farms sell those leads coupled with the consumer's purported consent to receive certain types of telephone calls. The form asks for as little as it can and then starts qualifying you. Your ZIP code. Your address. The names of the people in the house. Any accidents in the last three years? Any DWI? Those are pricing questions, because a lead with a clean record sells for more, and it is sold to many agents at once. That is why the phone never stops. If you clicked, you did nothing wrong. You answered honestly, which is the one thing the form was counting on.
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The age question
- The ad says
- A new program for drivers over 65
- What is happening
- A qualifying question. Your age sorts the lead.
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The price
- The ad says
- Rates just dropped. Neighbors are paying $22 a month.
- What is happening
- An estimate. Nobody has underwritten you.
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The record question
- The ad says
- No accidents in three years? Check the box.
- What is happening
- A price tag. A clean record sells for more.
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The button
- The ad says
- Get your free quote.
- What is happening
- Your consent. The fine print under the button lets their partners call.
A composite of the ads we see. Not every advertiser works this way. Some licensed agencies run their own ads, some companies do both, and the three questions below tell you which one you are looking at.
What your information sells for
I know the prices because I paid them. At the start of my career, when I was at State Farm, I bought leads from vendors like these. The part that stayed with me was the people on the other end of the line. Some were never looking for insurance. Some had asked to be taken off the list and were ignored. I got people removed where I could, and more than once I handed a stranger the phone number of the company that had sold me their information so they could call it themselves. If you were ever on the other end of one of those calls, you had every right to be angry. We have not bought a lead since the day McDade Insurance opened. Here is what the market looked like from the buying side, and what the Federal Trade Commission found when it looked at it.
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The form, a data lead
- What it is
- The ZIP code, the names, and the answers you typed.
- Who bought it
- Agent after agent. Early in my career, me.
- What it sold for
- $15 to $50, and the same form sold more than once.
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The phone call, a live transfer
- What it is
- You call the number in the ad. A call center takes a few details and hands you to the first agent in line.
- Who bought it
- The first agent in line, whoever that was.
- What it sold for
- About $100 a call for a home lead in the busy months.
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The FTC, January 2024
- What they ran
- More than 50 quote websites.
- What happened
- Millions of leads sold to telemarketers over three years.
- The result
- $7 million judgment and a telemarketing ban.
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The FTC, August 2025
- What they ran
- Health insurance ads and websites that implied a government connection.
- What happened
- Roughly 119 million leads sold in one year, with paid actors promoting a program that did not exist.
- The result
- $145 million in settlements across two companies.
The lead prices are what I paid as a buyer early in my career, not a current price list. The regulator figures come from the two Federal Trade Commission cases in the sources, and the 2025 case involved health insurance. The playbook is the one in your feed.
The three questions
Ask them of any ad, any form, and any phone call, including ours. You do not need to know a thing about insurance to ask them. You only need to notice who answers quickly and who changes the subject.
- Question one
Who will advise me, and how do I verify their Texas license?
Start with the person. The ad wants you to start with the price, and that order is the whole trick. Texas law says a person may not solicit or receive an application for insurance in this state without a license from the Texas Department of Insurance. That makes the license the first thing to find, and TDI makes it easy. The TDI agent and agency search looks up a person by name or license number and an agency by name or license number. Look for an active license, and if the result lists company appointments, you are looking at someone carriers trust to write their policies. A licensed agency doing business in Texas puts its license where you can find it. Ours is 2539471. If the number is hard to find or is not there, you are probably looking at a marketing company, and the only thing it sells is your information.
- Good answer
- A name, a license number, and an agency you can find on the TDI search in under a minute.
- Warning sign
- No license anywhere on the site, or a company that describes itself as a marketplace, a network, or a matching service.
A license answers who may sell to you. It does not answer where your information goes. That is the second question.
- Question two
Who receives my information, and what calls did I just agree to?
This is the question almost nobody asks, because the button is big and the sentence under it is small and gray on purpose. Read that sentence before you touch the button. Under federal rules, a telemarketer needs your prior express written consent to send marketing calls or texts to your cell phone with an automatic dialer or a recorded voice, and the agreement has to say you are not required to sign it to buy anything. On a lead form that consent is usually one sentence that names the website's partners, sometimes a long list of them, and clicking the button is your signature. Once you have given written permission, a company can call you even if your number is on the National Do Not Call Registry, though it has to stop if you ask it to. So the question is simple. Who gets this, and can I see the list? A licensed agency can answer in one sentence.
- Good answer
- Your information goes to this agency and to the carriers it quotes for you, and nobody else.
- Warning sign
- The word partners, a link to a list you have to hunt for, or a sentence that mentions an automatic telephone dialing system.
- Question three
Is this a personalized quote or a referral, and who helps me after I buy?
This is the question that decides what the next three years feel like. A quote comes from a licensed person who has looked at your drivers, your vehicles, or your house, and your declarations page. An estimate built from a ZIP code and four checkboxes is not a quote, whatever the ad calls it. A referral marketplace does something else again. It takes your information and hands you to someone else, and that someone else is the person you will be calling at renewal, at claim time, and when the mortgage company needs a change. Ask who that is before you buy, and ask whether they will still be there. My grandfather used to say you lose them how you got them. If a relationship starts with a misrepresentation, it will never feel right at claim time.
- Good answer
- The person who quotes you is the person who services you, and you can name them.
- Warning sign
- A price before anyone has seen your declarations page, or a handoff to an agent you did not choose.
What happened to one of our clients
She saw an ad about a new law. Drivers over 65 with no DWI who put fewer than 10,000 miles a year on the car could get insurance for as little as 20 dollars a month. She was trying to do what was right for her budget and her family, so she typed in her information. Then it started. Ten to fifteen calls a day from agencies, brokers, and people she had never heard of, every one of them trying to sell her a policy, none of them the 20 dollars. What was a dream turned into a nightmare. She was being careful with money that has to last, and the form punished her for it.
She called us back, and we did what the form never could. We reshopped the policy she actually had, with everything she had chosen on purpose still on it. Uninsured motorist. Personal injury protection. Comp and collision, the coverage that pays for her own car. Rental car. With all of it on the table, she was paying about 30 dollars a month less than any comparable option we could find. The only way anyone was going to get her price lower was to take those coverages off the car. Once she understood that was the trade behind the 20 dollar number, she stayed, and she is still with us today. She did not have to get that right on her own. She had to make one call, and the reading was ours to do.
What happens to your information here
We will say it plainly, because you should be able to ask the overpaying question without your phone ringing for a month. McDade Insurance uses what you send us for one purpose, which is to work with you, and to be respectful of your time, your needs, and your wants while we do it. The person who walks through it with you is a licensed agent, and you can look that license up before the call. Sending us a policy puts you on nobody's list and on nobody's clock.
- What we use it for
- To read the policy or quote you sent and talk with you about it, by phone, email, or text, about what works and what does not.
- If we are not the right agency for you this year
- We ask whether we can check in next year around the same time, see whether we can serve you then, and respect the answer either way.
- What we do with it beyond that
- Nothing. We do not sell it, rent it, or pass it along to anyone outside the quotes you asked us to run.
Some of our clients call us every year on their own, to make sure the policy they have is still the right one or to ask whether this is the year to move. That is the whole idea. Our goal is to be the most knowledgeable, the most caring, and your favorite insurance agent, not the cheapest. We Are Driven To Serve.
Overpaying for what?
Clients ask me all the time whether they are overpaying, and my answer is always the same. For what? If you carry a liability only auto policy and pay 1,000 dollars a month, that is probably too much. If you insure six Ferraris for 1,000 dollars a month, you are probably paying less than usual. A dollar for a steak is not enough. A dollar for a drive-through taco sounds about right. Overpaying is a perception until somebody reads the contract, and the contract is where we verify reality. Nobody expects you to know which of those you are. That is the reading, and the reading is our job.
No real comparison starts with price. It starts with the contract and walks through the coverage, because what you pay only makes sense next to what it would cost you the day the policy is tested. At some point, your policy becomes a portfolio, and the question stops being whether the number is low and becomes whether each piece is carrying what you need it to carry.
So when someone brings us the question, the answer is a policy review with a licensed agent, somebody whose license you can look up before the call. We read what is on the paper, then what is not on it yet. For a house, we pull an aerial view and look at the roof and the general wear, tear, and upkeep the way an underwriter will, so you hear about a worry from us instead of from a nonrenewal letter. For the cars, the same walk, and sometimes a surprise in the other direction, like an antique listed as a daily driver on a standard policy when it belonged with a collector program such as Hagerty, which writes classic and collectible vehicles that are not driven daily at an agreed value. About 40 percent of the time we tell homeowners to stay with their current carrier, and sometimes even with their current agent, because that is the right answer for the family. The rest of the time, the audit, the carrier, or the coverage needed to change, and the price was the smallest part of it.
Before you fill out the form
Most people who fill out those forms are not shopping. They are hoping.
They want to know they are in the right place, and the ad was the only door they could see. Not everyone knows a neighborhood insurance agent or knows whether to trust one. Nobody should feel embarrassed or abandoned for asking. You do not have to get this one hundred percent right by yourself. That is what a licensed agent on your side of the table is for. Bring us the question, and you will get a straight answer from someone who is licensed to give it.
Charles McDade, LUTCF
Questions readers ask
How do I check if an insurance agent is licensed in Texas?
Use the Texas Department of Insurance agent and agency search. Enter the person's name or license number, or the agency's name or license number, and look for an active license. A licensed agency doing business in Texas will put its license number where you can find it. Our agency license is 2539471.
Why did I start getting so many calls after I filled out an insurance quote form?
The fine print under the button was your written permission for the website's partners to call and text you, often with an automatic dialer, and the form was likely sold to many agents at once. That permission lets a company call you even if your number is on the Do Not Call Registry. Each company has to stop if you tell it to, so say so on every call, and do not fill out a second form to make the first one stop.
Is a 22 dollar a month insurance rate real?
Treat it as an advertisement, not a quote. A number built from a ZIP code and a few checkboxes has not been underwritten, and the Federal Trade Commission's 2025 case described a dollar a day coverage claim that rarely delivered what it promised. A low price can be real for a thin policy on an older car. The question is what the number left out, and a licensed agent can show you on your own declarations page.
What happens to my information if I send McDade my policy?
We use it to review your coverage and talk with you about it, by phone, email, or text. We do not sell it or pass it along to anyone outside the quotes you ask us to run. If we are not the right fit this year, we ask whether we can check again next year, and we respect the answer.
Sources worth opening before you decide
- Assurance IQ and MediaAlpha to pay a total of 145 million dollars to settle FTC charges, Federal Trade Commission, August 7, 2025
- California-based lead generator agrees to settlement banning telemarketing, Federal Trade Commission, January 2, 2024
- United States settles suit against lead generator, U.S. Department of Justice, January 19, 2024
- National Do Not Call Registry FAQs, Federal Trade Commission, consumer advice
- 47 CFR 64.1200, delivery restrictions and the definition of prior express written consent, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, current
- Texas Insurance Code Chapter 4001, Section 4001.101, license required, Texas Legislature Online
- Agent, adjuster, and agency search, Texas Department of Insurance on Texas.gov
- Collector car insurance, Hagerty, carrier page
The purpose is to help the reader ask better questions before claim time.
Know if you are paying too much
You are allowed to check.
Send us the policy you have, or just the ad that made you wonder. You bring the paper. We bring the reading. A licensed Texas agent reads your contract next to the claim and, when the contract calls for it, shops it across 50+ top Texas carriers we know well. If you are already in the right place, we say so and you keep what you have. If something on the paper should change, you see exactly what, with the coverage attached to the price. Your information stays with us and the carriers we quote, and the decision stays yours, made with the whole picture in front of you. If the ad was about your car, start with the auto quote evaluation. We translate the insurance contract before claim time.
The audit is free. The decision is yours. No broker fees for personal lines clients.