First off I am a regular [daily] user of this excellent site since November last year.
Secondly I work in marketing [for an independant agency] and am interested in your thoughts/opions on buying car insurance.
What I would like to hear from users of this site is how they would like buy car insurance? Do you prefer to do this over the phone, internet, by post or in person?
Do you contact each company seperately, use an aggregator site (e.g. confused.com, moneysupermarket.co.uk etc) or other?
Would you prefer to search for the best insurance yourself or prefer to be contacted by insurance compaines (by phone, email, post)?
Do you stick with the same company year after year or always look for the best deal?
What is most important to you - lowest price or level of cover?
What would be the best way of buying car insurance in your opinion? Any suggestions appreciated!
Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.
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I have used confused.com for the last two years and I have just renewed my insurance. I stuck with last year's insurers after getting them to lower their premium when I told them it was much higher than I could get elsewhere. They had increased my premium by around £50. I can't understand why they raised it so much, as they must realise that people will look elsewhere for a cheaper deal. I stuck with them in the end, even though they were not the lowest, because of their lower excess.
I can't think of a better way to buy insurance than by using something like confused.com.
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I'd rather pay more for good service (both in terms of contacting them regarding policy changes etc and if I had to make a claim) so am always wary of Confused.com etc producing names I don't know of.
I have found that confused.com doesn't work all that well for me (or at least it didn't last time I quoted) as many companies produce very high quotes and/or refuse to quote. I'm a 20yo male driving a brand new Focus 2.0tdci titanium with 1 years no claims. Clearly that's quite a bad combination of factors to most insurance companies! I've stuck with Direct Line (and in fact didn't even bother to search around at my last renewal just before Christmas) as I was happy with the service I received last year (one glass claim and quite a few occasions when I added temporary drivers, European cover, etc) and happy with the price. I suspect if I really hunted I could save a little bit but probably not an enormous amount, and I really don't have very much spare time. For me to spend a few hours hunting I'd really have to save a lot to make it worthwhile, and in general I don't think I would do. Also I know Direct Line have a good reputation and the 'grass is always greener' syndrome would worry me with a new insurer unless they were another big household name.
All I want is to get the best insurance (not necessarily the cheapest, but some combination of price and service level) with the minimum legwork possible. If for no work at all (ie stay where I am) I can get something very close to that then that's absolutely fine.
I suspect that in a few years when I'm perhaps 25 I'll get on better with aggregator sites as the majority of insurers will be able to offer me competitive quotes. At the moment the quotes on there can range from about £1200 right up to £3k and it's almost not worth the effort as long as my current price is somewhere around the bottom of that range. I've always found that by contacting insurers directly (via their websites) the price is different to that on the aggregators, and generally a bit lower. I spent quite a bit of time hunting a year ago and moved from a broker to Direct Line but didn't feel the need this year. I'm very much in favour of building long term relationships with companies like insurance and banks and don't really want to move every year if I can help it.
Hope that helps!
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I drive bangers, and so does the whole family, so all we are interested in is the cheapest TPFT policy for each of us. We do this by using the aggregator sites and then following the cheapest deal route. Most seem to end up with a phone call to confirm (for the tape) the pertinent details.
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I deal with my regular insurance brokers (Sheraton Insurance Brokers of Wickham, Hants.) who are unfailingly excellent. They review what is available each year and at the moment they recommend Zurich both for my car and SWMBO's.
Zurich are reasonably competitive and rthe extras they offer are worth having - not least that you can talk to a human being when you ring them (I have no objection to pressing buttons as long as you get a person to speak to when you've finally made your choice of department, not yet another recorded voice).
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SWMBO and I have both used Confused.com for the last couple of years, and I would recommend it to anyone. Hassle free way to save a small fortune.
We've both ended up with the same insurer who not only matched the "new business" premium quoted on Confused at her renewal, but knocked another 10% off for us having another car insured with them.
Not worth phoning around any more.
Cheers
DP
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I always go for the cheapest quote from one of the well known companies. I'm always careful to compare like for like eg excesses etc.
I occasionally use Confused or Insuresupermarket to get a feel for where companies are pricing themselves in the market but I always actually get the quotes from the various companies' own websites.
Never trust renewal quotes - you can usually get cheaper as a new customer online.
I haven't done the "ring round" for years - no point now that nearly all companies quote online.
As for high street insurance, I've never used that and judging from the number of branch closures I'd say it's a declining industry
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I use confused.com and sometimes the odd phone call. Always buy over the net.
Any insurer/broker who phones after doing the above, chasing up business will not get any from me now or in the future.
Martin
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I always end up changing insurer. You get a decent quote for a new policy, and the insurers seem to try hard to recoup their profit at renewal. I suppose this is why so many firms can guarantee to beat your renewal quote. Last time, I got past the call centre girl and spoke to someone who easily undercut the best figure I'd had. Otherwise I have to change each time.
The firm that boasts of being good for the older driver was useless, as far as I was concerned. Over 40 years with no convictions, and the last modest claim I had back in 1968 meant nothing to them. Perhaps they just assume that over-50s have plenty of money.
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I use quotelinedirect.co.uk. It gives me an idea of what I ***should*** be paying and then go back to the local broker and ask them to match it. Once or twice they've bettered the internet as well.
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"The firm that boasts of being good for the older driver was useless,"
And yet, strangely, they work out best for me by the time you take into account various "extras" such as cover for continental driving, legal cover, hire car, (no) charge for monthly direct debit etc. Their quote is about 15% cheaper than my present insurer who I have been with for 13 years.
This after a trawl through about 10 other insurers websites (what a pain it is filling in the same details time and time again!) and using confused.com.
Anyway I'm switching to those people who cater for the older driver!
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Phil
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Very interesting - thanks for your feedback so far - keep it coming please!
Looks like the internet is the best channel for buying car insurance and using price comparison sites.
Anyone got any suggestions on how the process of buying insurance could be made easier?
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hmmmm....................free market research...................
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I use the NFU and pay by direct debit. For me I rate the excelent customer service, No call centres, English staff and local branches against the small savings I could make by shoping around.
If you use the NFU for all of your insurance needs then the mutual benefit makes them very competetive.
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I'm a 26 yo with an old Volvo 360. Simple you would think. The trouble is I've modified my car by fitting Megasquirt fuel injection system, [which, despite its problems is better than the old Bosch LE-Jetronic system that never worked properly from cold and was sapping the power curve]
Anyway, I like to make sure that I'm insured properly, and so I declare everything and therefore I would like a thing on mainstream insurers that's similar to what confused.com allow you to do, which is list the modifications in a way so that you can click on it, rather than just saying we can only quote you if your car is unmodified. That means that I wouldn't have to spend ages on the telephone clarifying quotes. That would save me a lot of hassle when it comes to renewal.
Also, please don't call back if confused.com happens to have put my details into the website for me...its very annoying to get two or three ringbacks from different companies chasing things up, if I'm interested I'll call you and like someone up above says, its more likely that I'll NOT use you rather than use you.
Incidentally I didn't go for the cheapest by any means. I went for Tesco, who were perhaps 50% more expensive than the cheapest quote, purely because of flexibility, the ability to add temporary drivers easily and cheaply, the fact they would guarantee my 4 years NCD, even though I was only TPFT etc. That's despite having to ring them up to get them to quote me for the mods.
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>>>If you use the NFU for all of your insurance needs then the mutual benefit makes them very competetive
I use the NFU Mutual as well. This year my insurance is less than last year thanks to the benefit. It is also nice to speak to English people, with Derbyshire accents, when I have a problem!
I hate foreign call centres and try not to do business with firms that use them.
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Steveb - I suppose I kind of am asking for free market research, however I am not incentivising the replies given so they should be an unbiased reflection on how the process of buying car insurance could be made better. What's wrong with that?
Thanks to those who have given their views so far - please keep it coming.
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I've used confused.com and not found it as good of late as it used to be.
It is a must to get quotes each year if you wish to buy competitiveley, but as one poster above says, it's not totally about price. My experience with 'cluckcluckcluck' was 'buy on price,not very nice'; would not go near them again whatsoever as unpleasant to deal with and could not give a t*ss about providing what it says in their policy. All too often these days the customer counts for nothing, as the business is conducted by big companies that need not worry about individual customers.
Ask your garage for your type of vehicle (if they have a bodyshop) who they recommend for customer satisfaction when handling claims for your model of car. Most ins co's now use national contract bodyshops and pay low rates for the work. A friend just had their Skoda returned from one such establishment after a nsf bump, and none of the lights worked! These places need to turn work through quickly to make a profit, and provide the loan cars at no charge to the insurance company. Something has to gove somewhere.
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I agree about some form of satisfaction rating against each insurer. It can be done - Uswitch does this for electricity and gas switch information. I'd like to balance the quality against the price - not easy today.
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