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I've had very different experience with Allstate and they are the founder and a charter member of my "never do business with again" club. This club goes back over 35 years now.
I had taken a new job in a new city and bought an old house and insured it along with my cars with Allstate. This house had a lot of Victorian style scroll work on the front porch and was covered in about an inch of paint from over the years. I was working on removing the paint and patching before painting. I was working on this project in evenings after work and on weekends. Suddenly I get a letter from Allstate that my home wasn't insurable and they were cancelling only about 3 months into a full year's premium I had paid. The story I got from the agency I bought the policy from was their regional manager just happened to drive by my house and somehow he could tell the house was in disrepair. Mind you, I had to get this information from the agency's owner since the agent I bought from was they serving prison time for fraud. I was able to get the regional manager's phone number and called him up. I tried briefly to talk rationally but soon was calling him words that would make the crustiest old sailor blush; obviously to no avail. This was in early 1988 and was and will be the last dealings I have with Allstate.
So much for my story; do a web search about Allstate post hurricane Katrina and all of the lawsuits they've been in since for not paying claims. After all the Louisiana residents they screwed over, they are still the proud sponsor of the Allstate Sugar Bowl every year, which seems to me like a slap in the face to those residents. While you're looking, check out what the state of Florida did to them in 2008. Allstate got so bad the state insurance commissioner barred them from selling any new auto or homeowners policies for a period of time. They were allowed to service policies that were already in place, just not sell new ones.
I suppose if you live in an area that's a bit more immune to natural disasters than coastal areas and your home is in pristine condition you might be allright. In my humble opinion; Allstate is little more than an internet scam, and they will never lay their "Good Hands" on this guy again.
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