moneysupermarket.com

eurows

I am absolutely incensed.

I have been on www.moneysupermarket.com to search for car insurance. I now have 8 references on my credit file for 8 different insurance companies. I know these are so called 'soft searches'. But how dare they! Apparently soon as you click the search for the best price. The insurance companies automatically do a credit search on your account.

Now I phoned www.moneysupermarket.com and they say it is in the pdf of their terms and conditions on the site and you agree to the terms and conditions before you search for car insurance.

I am now inclined NOT to use their site. They refuse to remove the searches. Saying it is not their business to do so. But it is their button I pressed.

But please be aware these sites are searching your file BEFORE you apply for their insurance. I did not even want credit on my insurance as I was paying in full.

There ought to be a warning when you press search to say we will search your credit file. BY LAW

Spiderham

I don't get why this is an issue. No other provider can see they have made these checks, only you can. By "searching for the best price" you are asking for a quote and your credit rating is something that more insurers are using to get that price. This means to found out what your price is they will do one of these credit searches which doesn't leave a mark on your history.

eurows

Why should a search of my credit file affect either a provisional price or the price I pay for insurance?

And just because it does not affect my credit rating does not make it right.

Spiderham

Why shouldn't it?

Insurer's are only allowed to use the publicly available info (eg if you have a CCJ). Insurers will have done research and noticed that those with certain credit histories have different numbers/sizes of claims to those who have different histories. It's just a new piece of available information which allows them to better rate insurance; they'll be using a credit reference company as they have the info aggregated in one place rather than having to trawl through all the public sources making it easier and able to be done in the seconds between you pressing "find quote" and the prices appearing.

InsideInsurance

Two reasons:

1) Credit rating is a rating factor and so directly impacts price - if you have a poor rating it suggests financial difficulty which increases your fraud risk

2) Installments - a few insurers can use credit rating to decide if they will offer installments and what APR (though most dont)

Wutang_2

As long as no one overreacts...

kingstreet

Are these credit searches or ID/address checks, what used to show as "unrecorded enquiry" as these have appeared for years?

InsideInsurance

They vary by insurer, so looking at my credit file the application types are:

RBS brands (eg direct line, privilege, churchill): Insurance Quotation
AA: Insurance Quotation
Admiral Group (eg Admiral, Elephant, Diamond): Unrecorded Enquiry
RSA (eg MoreTh<n): Unrecorded Enquiry

dwsjarcmcd

It is not moneysupermarket doing the searches but the insurer. So if you go to each of the 8 companies individually to get a quote, you'll be left with 8 searches. It will just take you much longer to do it!

Oh, and don't go to Aviva, they leave hard footprints.

dunstonh

I know these are so called 'soft searches'. But how dare they!

What is the problem? They tell you they do this and they do it. As do all the others.