Please Read if You have Ever Done Business With Abbey Insurance Brokers

Ex-Spendaholic

Thats brilliant Spike. :j They are good too if you want to add on another vehicle temporarily. I've done this frequently and it costs about £30 for the month. It never ceases to amaze me the premiums some people are paying through the likes of Abbey, Hughes etc.

mumoffour77

A Big Peeved off with Abbey and SERE at the moment......
Received a phone call from abbey saying that Abbey and SERE have now linked up.....and SERE gave them my details (I bought a car of them exactly a year ago) and wondered if my insurance was due for renewal....
I have one car insured with Abbey.....the new one is insured with Hughes.....they asked if i would consider them next year....NO because they quoted a funny amount when I bought the car!!

Phone call to SERE in the morning methinks!!!

cruesfan

Ex-Spendaholic wrote: »

I find www.directline.com far cheaper for car and house insurance than any NI company.

Totally agree on the car insurance. I insure my wife's car and my car with directline and the total price is less than what I used to pay for insuring my car with a local company.

House insurance was excellent in the first year but once the introductory discounts disappeared, they were no better than local companies.

spike7451

Ex-Spendaholic wrote: »

Thats brilliant Spike. :j They are good too if you want to add on another vehicle temporarily. I've done this frequently and it costs about £30 for the month. It never ceases to amaze me the premiums some people are paying through the likes of Abbey, Hughes etc.

Yup,I'm glad to be moving away from them.A couple of years ago they were'nt taking the dd's from my bank & were charging me £10 a month for the privalidge,despite me confirming with them & my bank the DD was OK.Needless to say,I refused to pay the £10 charges for their mistake.:mad:
Then in Dec 08 when I got laid off,they nicely made a tough financial situation even more difficult by changing my car insurance payments from 10x £41 payments to 6x £64 payments!!:mad:
Considering my savings had all but gone since redundency from VM in 06 & I was litteraly living on JSA,that extra £23 was a big chunk of change I could'nt afford.
Not only that,I found my premiums kept going up over the years.

leskerr

mumoffour77 wrote: »

A Big Peeved off with Abbey and SERE at the moment......
Received a phone call from abbey saying that Abbey and SERE have now linked up.....and SERE gave them my details (I bought a car of them exactly a year ago) and wondered if my insurance was due for renewal....
I have one car insured with Abbey.....the new one is insured with Hughes.....they asked if i would consider them next year....NO because they quoted a funny amount when I bought the car!!

Phone call to SERE in the morning methinks!!!

Sounds like a breach of the Data Protection Act to me. They are not allowed to share your details unless you have given explicit permission. I suppose there is a chance that it is small print in document you signed, but I doubt it.

Les

drew2k9

swannie_girl wrote: »

Yea I have used Hughes for the past few years they were always the best quote.
Like you thriftymonster some of the quotes given could buy you another car.
But what really gets me is some insurers especially for buildings/contents give you a quote and you say "Oh thats a bit pricey I was able to get a much lower one" they will then ask how much you were quoted and out of nowwhere will match the quote. I have asked why they dont give that amount at the beginning instead of waiting until you do your homework and then they will match. This really bugs me. I dont give them the business anyway, I give to the insurer that was honest enough to quote their LOWEST price first time round.

just so you have a better idea of why that happens, most brokers have different sets of rules given to them by the underwriters, and one of these rules which you may have come across a few times, is the "price match facility" which is given to brokers who may give a certain underwriters a lot of business, so the underwriters allow them to match the lowest quote in order to keep a good relationship between the broker and the underwriter, they aren't allowed to give this price unless they have a quote from another insurer to match, they will often be far below their "lowest" price (lowest set price).

an example would be someone trying to renew, you may get a letter from your current insurer saying, this is your renewal quote, then you check round, find a cheaper quote, tell your insurer you want to move as you got a much cheaper quote, they will usually say, we will match that, in order to keep your business, but at times they really cant go any lower.

but to add to that, a lot of brokers are just stubborn and annoying and try to milk you for every penny, especially if they are working based on commission.