Car insurance curiosity possible warning

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Not really a rant as such but read on and I will explain

My car insurance is nearly due, I had the reminder
so like all good citizens I went to "confused.com" to compare
the price

My insurer quoted me £350 ( I have a young driver attached as well)
The cheapest quote was £250
My insurer was £280 via confused

So I phoned them a bout a week later to ask
" so whats all this about then?"

Long story short ( about half hour on the phone)
during one of the "on hold crap music in lug'ole moments" went back to confused
.com and was "told" that the page was out of date please refresh
so I did
the prices quoted recently had all risen by nearly £50
( I was also thinking about changing cars so I got a few quotes)

When the customer service person came back she told me
1) what cars I had been looking at quote wise
2) and the prices

So People if you are going to try and pull the wool over their eyes
( I was truthful BTW) they know what you are looking at

surely this is in breach of something or other?

After a little bartering I did get a £40 discount so I went away reasonably happy,
if somewhat embarrassed as the figures I quoted them had actually risen
by circa £50

The other thing that the insurance company did was to send me quotes for
the 4 other cars I had looked at "out of curiosity"
So you have a user name and password on these sites but they can still be accessed remotely
( And NO I did not give them my username / password)

 
I think I know what you mean. Although you visited a comparison website your details go into a prospect management database that inevitably gets farmed out to loads of insurers in the hope they can offer you something. They pay the comparison website per prospect and for the data that shows them how close or far away they were from writing the business; giving them chance to re-quote and set their rates accordingly.

Registration number (DVLA lookup) is something that they also get your details from and pay per unit. The devil is probably in the detail (small print) somewhere and your agreement to the terms probably covers them but nevertheless, disconcerting.
 
I had the same when I renewed mine, same company £30 difference, phoned them and pointed this out and they "price matched" :shrug:
 
Flash In The Pan said:
I had the same when I renewed mine, same company £30 difference, phoned them and pointed this out and they "price matched" :shrug:
Click to expand...

On Saturday the AA dropped my house & contents by £120 just to beat directline. That's some achievement on a £380 policy. Very cut-throat business if you know how to play their game.
 
I hate those sites. They are never accurate. Any time I have tried to progress a quote they have renaged on the offer and quoted something totally ridiculous.

I got my insurance through Chris Knott Insurance Services this year. No fannying around. A straight quote followed by the proposal by post a couple of days later.
The insurer is Highway, who quoted around £380 via t'interwebs. Through Chris Knott this became £257.
My car is an import. Subaru Legacy 2.0l twin turbo. My renewal from my previous insurer was nearly £700:annoyed:
 
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A couple of years ago when my insurance became due I started ringing round various companies/agencies/ brokers and found that I only had to give my details to the first one as the others all had them already, even the updated information! I did wonder if they were all working off one central computer.
 
Kerioak said:
A couple of years ago when my insurance became due I started ringing round various companies/agencies/ brokers and found that I only had to give my details to the first one as the others all had them already, even the updated information! I did wonder if they were all working off one central computer.
Click to expand...

Somewhere in your policy it will tell you that your data gets shared among other insurers.
Therefore, if you make a claim with one then later take try to take out a policy with another, but don't tell them about previous claims, you'll get caught out PDQ.
 
I was thinking of Changing my insurance in September but that has been taken out of my hands, Ran over a roundabout last night and caused thousands of pounds of damage.:bang::bang:
 
I have just renewed my car insurance. Due to an error in the renewal, they quoted me £690 this year rather than £360. So I went on confused, managed to get cheaper quotes, phoned directline back and managed to beat them down to lower than the confused prices. So it's always worth doing
 
i went on confused 2 weeks ago, got a price from kwikfit as cheapest, went to order it and reading through all the details they had the wrong engine listed(1.6 instead of 1.8) all done through the reg number. none of the other insurance companies got it wrong. once i altered it they were bout £50 more than the rest. ended up with elephant this year.
 
A similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago. My (then) insurer was quite a bit cheaper on confused.com although I didn't query it with them.

In the end, I went to our local Swintons and they cut the cost in half (almost to the nearest penny).



Steve.
 
I did mine yesterday. My renewal with Direct line was £347.

I tried Confused.com and got a quote for £284 with swift cover. So I tried to be clever and go to Swiftcover direct.....£311! :thinking:

I gave direct line the chance to price match and they failed by £10.:suspect:

Finally I tried Chris Knott. Traditional 100 question session on the phone.....£269, better excess and eurpean cover included :thumbs::woot::clap::wave:
 
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i wont use confused as you just get hammered with crap next time your insurance is due. As for my insurance i did mine through lloyds TSB and was actually with admiral but when i rang them they said they couldnt match the price that lloyds were offering (dont bank with lloyds so wasnt a customer discount either).
 
I get my insurance through the AA. Last year I received the renewal notice quoting a figure of over £500 an increase of over 25%.

I rang them up and said this can't be right. I'm a mature driver, max no claim bonus etc. They looked at the rate and my details again and said no it isn't right!

Suddenly my insurance premium came down to just over £300!!!
 
Had exactly the same thing with my insurance this year, the quote on Confused was over £100 cheaper than the renewal they sent.
Rang them up to query it and the sales guy explained that they discount the policy prices on Confused/CompareTheMeercat etc... to lure customers in. The next years renewal is then increased to recover that discount, in the hope that the customer will just assume that they will be the cheapest again.

They matched the Confused figure for me with no problem at all.
 
Don't even get me started on car insurance.....

Here in Canada, the Government has the monopoly over car insurance so there is no competition. My OH who has a clean driving record spanning 14 years has just had to fork out the equivalent of approx £1700 *splutter* to insure a BASIC 2005 Honda Civic :annoyed:
 
My insurer constantly tries to get me to pay more by just renewing. I phone around and get them to price match, a couple of weeks ago they couldn't match my best price so I jumped ship, no reason to have any kind of loyalty to an insurance company, they'll all stab you in the back and look for any excuse not to pay out should you ever need to claim
 
mikeward said:
i wont use confused as you just get hammered with crap next time your insurance is due. As for my insurance i did mine through lloyds TSB and was actually with admiral but when i rang them they said they couldnt match the price that lloyds were offering (dont bank with lloyds so wasnt a customer discount either).
Click to expand...



what do you mean ''get hammered with crap''

i have just saved a fortune with confused.com couldnt of been easier.
 
Spam letter, emails, all sorts of unwanted bumf from all the companies who appeared on your results when you searched
 
ah ok thanks spam dont bother me like it does some people.

it is worth it to save 300 a year on one car

250 per year on he other

and 150 on the house.
 
I used confused and compare the meerkat (love that ad campaign)

anyway I think they're pretty good, gives you a decent set of quotes even if you're with directline and just want to wave some figures in their faces..
also your data does go to the sites.

I'm with elephant and when I logged into their site all of my confused details were there waiting for me.
personally I think it's a handy way to do things. as for data protection, well they're not going to steal my washing with the data they have on me hopefully..and I've not been hit with junk mail/email/phonecalls from their 'partners'
 
minimeeze said:
Don't even get me started on car insurance.....

Here in Canada, the Government has the monopoly over car insurance so there is no competition. My OH who has a clean driving record spanning 14 years has just had to fork out the equivalent of approx £1700 *splutter* to insure a BASIC 2005 Honda Civic :annoyed:
Click to expand...

Thats scary! ( and disgusting)
 
If you look on moneysavingexpert.com, martin lewis's site, he has a simple method f renewing your insurance, including websites that offer cashback for certain insurers. SO you renew cheaper, and get paid to do it.

Mine up in august, so will try then.

Don't forget though, that half the insurers are connected.

Directline, CHurchill, Tesco + a few others are RBS group.

Sheilas wheels, morethan (i think) + others are HBOS group.

they all target different markets and so charge accordingly.

Tesco for example will only insure my car if I fit a tracker. Which a 1.8 ford focus estate doesn't really warrant, specially on a T plate.
 
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