I'm back with Churchill after a few years with Saga, purely because of price.

I won't say that I haven't had a claim for a few years coz that's tempting the laws of Sod, but I've got good NCB and was very disappointed that Saga couldn't come up with a more competitive price this time round.

I always look at the Defaqto ratings, though I don't really know just how accurate they are in terms of the claims experience, which as you say, Andy, is the crucial bit and often missing when it comes to reviews.

Other than on price, making insurance comparisons without reviews of that claims experience is a bit like buying a car, leaving it in your garage and telling everyone how well it drives.

Exactly. I mean, how often do you see reviews of anything, whether it be cars, TVs, clothing or suchlike after a decent amount of time, so its long-term use can be evaluated? In my experience, 99% of reviews, especially by us consumers are doing so within a month or two of buying said product, especially if something's gone wrong. This patently skews the results.

A good example of this (a bit off topic but worth it, given it sort of applies to the insurance market, so bear with me) was that I bought, after a good deal of research, a Bosch bagless vacuum cleaner a couple of years or so ago. It got very good reviews from the 'professional' reviewers (e.g. Which? magazine & Co) and was very reasonably priced when compared to the expensive Sebos & Mieles and (seemingly) less reliable Dysons at the time.

Since I bought it, I had experience no end of problems - no actual breakdowns, but the large number of filters, possibly an inherrant design flaw or two (in my view) and IMO over-sensitive motor protection sensors mean that the unit is often going into the equivalent of a car's 'limp home mode' when the filters (easily) get clogged up with dust. You have to either spend a fortune of replacing the filters (or at least buy one complete set of spares when the others are cleaned, still not cheap) or clean/wash them and wait a day or two for them to dry out enough to use again. This needs to be done probably once every couple of months.

I re-read the reviews of this unit to see if anyone else had this issue, and lo and behold many people have, but most actual descriptive reviews have stayed the same (no edit function, except on Amazon and one or two other sites [including HJ]) even if the star rating has dropped from 4.5 / 5 to 2 / 5 tops. This is what I mean about reviews of cars and especially difficult to quantify products (if you don't use the full range of its services) like insurance. The star ratings are also an 'across the board' figure, when they should be broken down into sub-groups, such as:

1. The original purchase experience (over the phone/website, stock and delivery, condition of the product when it arrives, etc);
2. Product usage, both in the short and longer term (you should be able to edit this at any time). Obviously for certain products, like cars, this could be broken down further;
3. Customer service experience if and when things go wrong or you need help. Again, this should be subject to editing over the longer term by customers.

I find it amazing that word of mouth review in many areas of life still dominates, despite the ease at which online reviews can be made and updated, if people set it up correctly. To me, some, perhaps including insurance and financial firms, want to set up unrepresentative reviews so that people are confused and just go by price - either cheapest, or, ironically, you get what you pay for and go expensive. To me, neither is entirely the truth in getting a good experience (that's not to say a middle ranking price is best as a 'compromise'!).

As HJ has said many times (and in my opinion too), the insurance industry is broken and needs a serious overhaul. To me, its set up for the benefit of the companies and not its customers as well. Very little transparency and a toothless ombudsman IMO (the same with utilities and other industies).

I used brokers, and specifically Swinton for the first couple of years after passing my test, purely and simply because I wanted to deal with a person.

Around 1991 we bought a Mini, the condition of which was entirely consistent with the cars we'd had before. Bought one evening, in the rain, no chance of seeing it properly till the next day, when it turned out to be a rustbucket.

Anyhow, I rang Swinton, got a quote and went into the local branch next day to insure the car (before we picked it up). The price quoted in the office was higher than the one I'd been given the day before, due to a couple of very minor changes to the info I'd given them first time round; can't remember exactly what they were. Not significant matters of disclosure, just "month when I passed my test", "time at current address", something like that.

I'm not generally a forceful or robust fighter of my corner when it comes to dealing with injustices inflicted upon me by officialdom, but on this occasion I had a stand up row with the office manager and eventually walked away and got my insurance somewhere else.

If they'd wanted the business they could have had it, but he insisted, seemingly as a matter of principle, that a pathetic amount of extra money was more important than having me as a customer.