Free 3 months insurance - con or not?

curlytail

I have just taken out my house insurance with Direct Line as they were the cheapest out of numerous others. I had a card stating that they would give 3 months extra cover for free. I expected the expiry date to be shown as 3 months after my usual renewal date of March but it did not. On enquiring they told me the 3 months free had been reflected in the premium I was given. How can a consumer know if this is genuine or not. If we had 15 months shown and the premium was better or comparable with competitors oferring 12 months at least we would know we had genuinely gained 3 months free or at a reduced price.

Has anybody experienced the same or something different as I have noticed Churchill are promising a similar deal?

forgotmyname

i think the advert i spotted was 12 for the price of 9, So the same deal worded differently? Or you didnt read the terms properly?

Its not a con i think you just didnt check it out properly or ask the simple question do i get 12 months or 15 months cover.

If unsure you need to ask.

InsideInsurance

To be honest, DL would love to be able to do the deal as 15 months for the price of 12 instead of 12 months for the price of 9. By moving your renewal date they make all the spam/ junk mail you receive around your renewal worthless.

Unfortunately most insurers run very old systems which has many things heavily hard coded and so to change the policy length at a system wide level is almost impossible. I did a piece of analysis for an insurer once with IT estimating approximately 7,000 places where 12 months was either hard coded or assumed and only a 10% confidence factor they had found all the critical ones.

Need to look at the advert again, all the ones I've seen are the 12 for 9 as said