Car Insurance Comparison sites - nightmare!

neilsue

I am an enthusiastic user of comparison websites for all financial matters and have today looked at renewing my car insurance which expires 1st March. I used Confused, Go Compare and Money Supermarket. The renewal quoted from my insurance company was £ 761+. I picked up previous years quotes from the comparison sites, checked all the details, amended where necessary and three insurers came out as significantly cheaper on the information given. However, when I went to take out these policies I had problems with the on line connections, so called the number given, quoting references etc. The first company, 1st Central, quoting £ 352.00, went through my details and one of the verifications was that I was an employed recruitment consultant, in fact I am self employed and this was what had been input on the details for the comparison sites. Because of that change the quote miraculously went up to £ 600 +! So I went to the second company Insure your Car, their quote was £ 375 - with this I could just use the on line link and basically it was just a "pay here" ,overly simple, process. I was slightly worried given the apparent anomaly with the first company so rang the number given. They were going through the details and had not got the claims history at all. I have had 3 accidents and none of these had apparently "transferred through" from money supermarket. Their revised quote was £ 1200! The third company was my current insurer quoting at £ 408.00. When I spoke to them they said that the quote was no longer valid and it needed to be rebroked! They came in with a quote of just over £ 700. I am very concerned about these comparison sites/insurance companies which I have strongly advocated for many years but which are very close to fraudulently offering prices that are going to entice vulnerable people into signing up with them even if the price is signficiantly different when they sign on the dotted line. Why is it that information is not correctly transferred to the insurance companies, if this is the reasoning for sudden doubling of quoted prices. I have taken out my car insurance with Direct Line - a pleasure to deal with an an excellent price.

_Andy_

Quite hard to read formatted into just one paragraph

ACG

i used to work for a life iinsurance company.

We would appear on a comparison site for advisors. Any quotes on there that were then submitted on our site - if there was a difference in premium would never honour the 3rd party website. ITs exactly that - 3rd party. Your relying on the questions it asks and not what the company may want to ask.

I made a thread on here a while back at how rubbish comparison sites can be. You dont know what cover your getting, theyre cheapest for a reason usually just because it says you get x amount of cover doesnt mean its the same there will be cut backs somewhere.

dunstonh

Using adviser comparison sites (which many consumer ones share similar coding) you would often find real figures different to comparison sites.

Comparison sites tend to ask a limited number of questions to get a quote and assume the rest. Some providers will need more questions and once you disclose those to them the price could go up or down (it does go both ways).

DonnySaver

Had the exact same problem recently with house insurance. The price quoted on the comparison sites is nothing like the real figure by the time you've actually clicked through to buy it.

InsideInsurance

Comparison sites have gotten better over time, without naming names a few used to "estimate" your premium rather than actually getting quotes from the vendor. To my knowledge all of these have now stopped and all do get actual vendor signed off quotes.

That said, if you look on here you get the same names keep coming up that have "errors" in the transfers. Given other insurers are getting the right info it feels like deficiencies in the brokers software/interface (we'll give them the benefit of the doubt they are defects not intentional).

Unfortunately until people start registering complaints with the broker, the aggregator and the FOS it is unlikely anything will be done to remedy it.

luci

I haven't used comparison sites for a few years. I got fed up of them ignoring the details I had entered and quoting for something entirely different. The main changed they made were the level of excess, courtesy car and protected NCD.