Weblog Quotes

As some of you may know, I have been scouring the on-line world for better car insurance quotes now that my policy is drawing to a close.

During this time, I used the three main comparison websites to narrow down my search. Now, for many people, these websites can be useful; as there renewal price is a couple of hundred pounds, or even less.

But for those of us (un-?)fortunate to be freshies, quotes are hitting above £700 or even over £1000. Some people are smart when it comes to saving a bit of money; but some people aren’t.

Whether you know or not, what you need to realise about these comparison sites, is they use something of a ‘best guess system‘ for some of the details in the forms they are retrieving quotes from. Take, for example, the number of years a named driver has held a licence. On the comparison site, you have a limit of 12+; but on a companies site that limit may be higher. Whether or not that higher limit saves a few pounds is open to experiment; but there are other instances where not every field is set to the correct value.

For those people who click the buy button and input their card details, take a look through the companies form for your next re-newel, either by amending the quote; or go directly to the site and start fresh.

Performing this my-self, the quote I received from the comparison sites was over £994. Using the companies site directly, the quote was under £799. Amending the quote from the comparison gave me a quote under £793, saving £4..ish ¹.

So as you can see, I saved £200 just checking details. And this includes an incident; zero no-claims; licence for less than a year; on comprehensive cover, with a named driver and £150 voluntary excess.

It’s a shame I only have less than £5 in my account.

So now you know, if you didn’t already. Amend your quotes!

If you have anything to add to this entry, leave a comment below.

¹ Maybe this is because I went back to the quote after a few days. It would need experimentation.