Car Insurance… what's going on there then?!?!

By Mark on Friday 7 May 2004 at 16:38

I got a renewal notice through today from my current insurer. My premium had gone up by £60 from last year's, even though I'm older and more responsible(?), so I decided to shop around a bit.

My first gripe is this: what's wrong with opening the quotation forms in the same freaking browser window? Every one of the insurance sites I visited spawned an irritating popup when I clicked the 'online quote' button.

Now, I'm a web designer, and I know there's no good reason for this, so why do it? It's annoying, pointless, and confusing, especially when you have several sites open at once and you have to keep track of 5 or 6 different popups…

My second problem; do brokers just make up their prices on the spot? On some sites I could get cheaper prices just by refreshing the page!

Now while this is great and everything, it does kind of make me wonder how UK insurance prices are actually set; do they just write a script that randomly generates them? And if they're so unconcerned about what prices they actually offer, how about making them a couple of hundred quid cheaper?

In the end, I went to the web site of my existing insurer (because frankly, I was prepared to pay the extra £60 just to not have to type in my name, address and car details any more times), and their online quote was £70 cheaper than the paper quote they had sent me!

So I saved a tenner. Figure that one out…

5 comments:

On Friday 7 May 2004 at 18:17, Matt said:

So, you're £10 less of a risk than yesterday - nicely done.

I got the same thing trying to get house/contents insurance; I got a few quotes, then went back to buy it a few days later - the price had gone up. Waited a few more days and it was lower than before. True story. I reckon Lloyds of London is just a monkey with some dice.

On Friday 7 May 2004 at 18:30, Mark Bell said:

Maybe that explains it Wink

On Monday 10 May 2004 at 12:44, Big Stuie Hendrix said:

I would like to put out that I know little about car insurance except to say that the AA shaft me plenty all year long. I would also like to take this opportunity to say hello to my friend barwick and also say thank you for letting me and the boy and dan stay at your house the other day mark. cheers then.

On Monday 10 May 2004 at 12:48, Mark Bell said:

No problemo Grin

On Tuesday 11 May 2004 at 10:59, Matt said:

Alright Stu.

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