Am I doing something wrong re Car Insurance cashback?

Quentin

You keep ignoring the £30 fuel discount you missed (available from cashback sites but not via confused), so how can we be sure all your other comparisons were truly like for like??

Anyway, if you go direct to Hastings Direct you'll get the £30 fuel voucher, which may be of interest to you.

artha

Quentin wrote: »

You keep ignoring the £30 fuel discount you missed (available from cashback sites but not via confused), so how can we be sure all your other comparisons were truly like for like??

Anyway, if you go direct to Hastings Direct you'll get the £30 fuel voucher, which may be of interest to you.

Fair enough I accept your point so I decided to make a 3 way comparison for this one insurer to see what was the "real deal". The results may be somewhat surprising. I've taken into account both cashback and the £30 fuel voucher and the net results are as follows:

Direct to insurer - £311.41
Insurer via confused.com - £327.09
Insurer via Quidco - £330.28

I rest my case

raskazz

artha wrote: »

Fair enough I accept your point so I decided to make a 3 way comparison for this one insurer to see what was the "real deal". The results may be somewhat surprising. I've taken into account both cashback and the £30 fuel voucher and the net results are as follows:

Direct to insurer - £311.41
Insurer via confused.com - £327.09
Insurer via Quidco - £330.28

I rest my case

Of course insurers adjust their rates according to distribution method and the profitability of business sourced from particular agents.

It's not surprising to me that the direct rate is cheapeast as the insurer does not have to pay commission or cashback, and I suspect that direct customers have a lower lapse ratio (and so provide more profitable business) than customers from comparison sites or cashback sites.

Quentin

artha wrote: »

Fair enough I accept your point so I decided to make a 3 way comparison for this one insurer to see what was the "real deal". The results may be somewhat surprising. I've taken into account both cashback and the £30 fuel voucher and the net results are as follows:

Direct to insurer - £311.41
Insurer via confused.com - £327.09
Insurer via Quidco - £330.28

I rest my case

Your "case" has some glaring loopholes.

You originally grumbled that you were getting quoted £334 (after cashback) from Quidco, compared with £306 from confused.

I alerted you to the £30 extra fuel voucher that you get going via quidco. Thus your actual net price would be £304, which actually (just) beat confused.

But now you say the Quidco quote (when you take into account the extra £30 of free fuel) has gone up to £330 (thus £415 gross (ie without the £85 worth of cashback/fuel taken into account) compared with just £311 (£341 gross) direct from the insurer!

Are you happy you have compared like with like as £415 v £341 for identical cover from the same company seems very hard to swallow!

artha

Quentin wrote: »

Your "case" has some glaring loopholes.

You originally grumbled that you were getting quoted £334 (after cashback) from Quidco, compared with £306 from confused.

I alerted you to the £30 extra fuel voucher that you get going via quidco. Thus your actual net price would be £304, which actually (just) beat confused.

But now you say the Quidco quote (when you take into account the extra £30 of free fuel) has gone up to £330 (thus £415 gross (ie without the £85 worth of cashback/fuel taken into account) compared with just £311 (£341 gross) direct from the insurer!

Are you happy you have compared like with like as £415 v £341 for identical cover from the same company seems very hard to swallow!

There are no loopholes in my case as far as I can see which is why I posted the original question. As someone who has always found that a cashback site gives the best price, whether it be for goods or services, I have been somewhat perplexed by this latest anomaly. As you should have noted in my earlier posts I also saw evidence of this when I did car insurance for myself and OH last month with quite a number of insurers so I'm not a newbie making simple errors.

Nevertheless, respecting your apparent pedigree, I went in and did all 3 quotes today again checking that everything that could be selected was the same and got exactly the same result:

direct to insurer (allowing for £30 fuel voucher) net £311.40p
confused link to insurer (no fuel voucher) £327.38
quidco link to insurer (allowing for £55 cashback & £30 fuel voucher) net £331.27

Like you I am also surprised but it will make me check more thoroughly in future. I thought it was just worth flagging up to make sure that people don't glibly assume that cashback/discount is always the best deal for things that don't have a fixed transparent pricing

Quentin

Not to doubt, but to see for myself, I tried direct v via cashback for Hastings and they both came out the same. (ie the quotes were the same figure). Making the cashback site cheaper by the cashback to follow of £55.

So the only conclusion from all this is that we should check all the avenues before buying (the advice always given by MSE!)