Car Insurance Comparison Website Problem

oysterpearl

Hello,

My partner has been trying to get some quotes for her car insurance and has been using the main comparison websites such as Compare the Market, Go Compare etc. All of a sudden, the cheapest companies that were quoting her (Admiral and Elephant) have disappeared and are no longer quoting. They are listed at the bottom as being unable to quote.

Is there an obvious reason for this? I know she has tried to add and remove various named drivers to see how it impacts on the price. Is it just that she's tried too many times?

Thanks for any help.

Quentin

Try getting quotes direct from their websites. If that fails, maybe they really don't want her.

kingstreet

Ask her to make sure she hasn't inadvertently changed something she intended to remain the same. If she accidentally changed from SD&P to business use, that could suddenly remove insurers who don't offer that type of cover.

Failing that, go back to the very beginning and start again.

oysterpearl

Thanks for the replies. Direct quotes are getting significantly higher premiums than what she was getting from Admiral and Elephant when they were quoting through the comparison websites.

As far as we can see, nothing has been changed, other than which members of her family she has added as named drivers.

Is it possible that for whatever reason, Admiral/Elephant stop quoting people who attempt to obtain so many quotes?

Gloomendoom

oysterpearl wrote: »

Hello,

My partner has been trying to get some quotes for her car insurance and has been using the main comparison websites such as Compare the Market, Go Compare etc. All of a sudden, the cheapest companies that were quoting her (Admiral and Elephant) have disappeared and are no longer quoting. They are listed at the bottom as being unable to quote.

Is there an obvious reason for this? I know she has tried to add and remove various named drivers to see how it impacts on the price. Is it just that she's tried too many times?

Thanks for any help.

I don't know the reason for this but it also happened to my wife. One minute Admiral and Elephant were among the cheapest of the bunch and two days later they were almost three times the price they first quoted and way up with the most expensive.

In the end she stayed with her current insurer.

InsideInsurance

oysterpearl wrote: »

Is it possible that for whatever reason, Admiral/Elephant stop quoting people who attempt to obtain so many quotes?

Yes, though any saved quotes she has will still be honoured.

Insurers review their prices regularly and now with the aggregators they can compare not only their price and conversion rate but also where in the list they rank (though not what the other insurers quoted).

Typically insurers want to have a diverse pool of people on their books to mitigate against things getting too polarised (if you think of Home insurance a company doesnt want to have 20% of its book in 1 county as if that county has a major flood or freeze incident their claims are massive where as if an insurer has an even spread then yes they get some claims from that area but thats balanced by the fact a different county ends up have a very mild winter)

Admiral Group seem particularly prone to withdrawing from quoting if people are playing a lot on the aggregators -v- other insurers.

huckster

This has been reported before that if you muck around too much with comparison site quotes, the Insurers think you are trying to manipulate the risk details to obtain a cheaper premium. I believe the comparison sites and Insurers confirmed that this was the case, saying that people should know the details of the risk they want covering, not making changes on multiple quotes to see what affected the premium.

oysterpearl

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Yes, though any saved quotes she has will still be honoured.

Thanks for your replies.

One of the quotes she did last night was far cheaper than the others from Admiral and was through ComparetheMarket.

She still has the e-mail, but if she tries to click Buy Now on it, it refreshes the quotes and it goes back to the stupidly high ones and not Admiral nor the cheaper prices. Is there any way to access an old quote through this website as we can't find the option anywhere?

InsideInsurance

huckster wrote: »

the Insurers think you are trying to manipulate the risk details to obtain a cheaper premium

Or your a competitor trying to work out their rating engine

Quentin

To avoid this happening, use "virtual", anonymous details whilst you are playing around to find out the cheapest quotes.

oysterpearl

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Or your a competitor trying to work out their rating engine

If this is the case, do you think they will not quote permanantely or is it possible that they'll start quoting again?