Thanks for the cash, but I'll pass on the duck

Aflac pays you cash if you're injured. There's a new commercial (I don't know when it started airing) that shows a woman in her garage telling a man about how Aflac is paying her cash as the Aflac duck makes a bit of a mess playing with the tools. "He doesn't know anything about tools," the woman tells the man in response to a question from him.

Insurance commercials these days seem to feel this need to be humorous. There's GEICO, with their ads that say everyone already knows that GEICO can "save you 15% or more on car insurance." "But did you know Old McDonald was a really bad speller?" It's irrelevant, but at least it's amusing.

Compare the GEICO Old McDonald commercial to the Aflac "he doesn't know anything about tools" ad. The duck at one point attempts to start a chainsaw that could potentially slice his belly. Then with a caulk gun, he shoots the woman's coffee cup and an overhead light. The woman reminisces about how when she broke her arm, Aflac paid her claim in just four days. But with that duck fooling around in her garage, she could soon have a new claim to file.

Maybe that's amusing to you, but it's not irrelevant. "He doesn't have to know tools when he pays claims this fast," says a heading on the Aflac website. Yeah, but he does have to know tools if he's going to even think about touching any of the tools in my garage. If I chose insurance based on commercials alone, I think I'd have to go with GEICO, not Aflac.