Barclays car insurance - absolute disgrace

Ginger_lady

We've just been on the phone with Barclays who gave us a quote (about an hour ago) for £723 for our car insurance, which was a better quote than we'd got from our existing provider. So, we then cancelled our existing insurance and phoned back Barclays to take up the insurance. Only to be asked all the same questions (and give the same answers) but for the quote to have gone up to over £845!

We tried to find out what the difference was between the quote that we'd been given an hour earlier and the one now, only to be told that we should have signed up to it there and then and that the £845+ was the best quote they could give us.

They couldn't give us any explanation whatsoever for why this was and couldn't understand why we didn't want to still go ahead with the quote.

Absolute joke. My partner and I have been with Barclays for bank accounts for over 13 years and have life insurance with them too. We're now going to close down our accounts with them and swap to First Direct instead. We told them as much but they still wouldn't budge on the price.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Who can we complain to (other than the bank)?

Grrr!

Quentin

As they didn't give you a quote valid till some future date or time then you haven't really got any grounds to complain.

adamc260

Quentin wrote: »

As they didn't give you a quote valid till some future date or time then you haven't really got any grounds to complain.

I know rates change generally on a monthly basis but... I dont know of any insurer that does it on a less than 24 hour basis, thats a lot of work for actuaries and underwriters

hcb42

there must have been some fact which was not picked up at the first quote - might be as simple as mishearing a postcode...

keith1950

Hi, I don't think Barclay's have much control over this, their insurance is administered by BISL ( Budget Car Insurance ) who use a long list of insurers. I was told by someone at Churchill ( an actual insurance company, therefore not an agent or broker ) that quotes for the same car can in some circumstances vary during the day because if they had met targets they were given a bit more leeway to haggle. I find it best to get online quotes as they are usually honoured for at least a month. I there cannot see what the length of time you have banked with Barclay's has got to do with obtaining insurance through an agent/intermediary.

mikey72

A lot of insurers appear to give a higher quote second time around.

Maybe they think if you have comitted to them, they were the cheapest, so they can inflate the price a bit, or that you're too far down the road to change away from them.

What happened to the quotes being valid for a month?
I know they have got shorter, but "buy now, this price can't be offered again" is really the lowest sort of selling.