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It took a recession to make it happen, but consumers are finally beginning to appreciate their insurance companies.

Insurers maintained or cut policy prices and made more effort to show customers how to reduce insurance costs in 2009, and policyholders responded with a much more positive view of their insurers than in past years, according to a survey of just under 13,000 homeowners insurance customers conducted from April to June 2009 by market researcher J.D. Power and Associates.

"The insurance industry is being impressive on pricing at a time when so many others are not," said Jeremy Bowler, senior director of J.D. Power's insurance practice, in an interview Sunday. The attitude among many of the customers surveyed is that "insurers are not hitting customers when they are on their knees when everyone else is." He said he saw similar results in an auto insurance customer survey conducted in around the same time period.

Overall customer satisfaction with homeowners insurance had been about flat for the last four years but surged an "unprecedented" 21 points on J.D. Power's 1,000 point scale, to an average of 773 in 2009 from the year before, Bowler said. Most of the increase was driven by customer satisfaction with the price they were being charged, which rose 46 points on the same 1,000 point scale, he said. Overall, 60% of customers surveyed said their homeowners insurance costs stayed about the same as the year before, 8% saw prices drop and 32% said their price went up, which Bowler said was a better performance than in past years.

Amica Mutual was the top scorer among the companies J.D. Powers ranks, and has led the ratings for years. American International Group Inc.'s (AIG) homeowners insurance company came in last in the ratings, which Bowler said was driven mostly by customers that gave AIG lower-than-average scores for such things as customer interaction. Bowler said that customer reaction to AIG's government bailout probably played a role in AIG's lower scores.

The top scorer overall was USAA, which J.D. Power does not include in its rankings because it offers homeowners insurance only to the military and their families.

-By Lavonne Kuykendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4141; lavonne.kuykendall@dowjones.com