Car Insurance Quotes

youtellme90

I've been looking to renew my car insurance (up for renewal 27th December). I did a quote on Confused, GoCompare and MoneySupermarket on Friday - the average price was £600. I ran the same quote today (clicking edit quote, then changing the start date to 1st Jan) and I got quoted £710. Am I missing something or are the prices intentionally going up?

(Admiral quoted £590 on Friday, £709 today. I'm currently with Admiral and haven't had the renewal price in the post yet. As for the price, I'm a 23yo male with a 2.0 Leon, so I'm not worried about the price (I guess it's high because of my age and the car)).

forgotmyname

That does seem to happen. Repeat the quotes and prices do tend to creep up.

I have stopped doing quotes until i am ready to buy it for that very reason.

youtellme90

I was re-doing quotes in the hope the prices might fall! But if it's not only me having that experience I suppose I should take the same approach.

Buzby

Try Quidco Quotes, they've done me proud with Cashback these last 2 years. Re quoting on the same website has been known to increase costs due to cookie tracking.

youtellme90

Is the cashback reliable? I wouldn't want to pay a little more to then not receive the cashback.

As for cookie tracking - If I use different machines/clear the cookies do you think this would prevent the issue? Or would it see it as 'same user on confused.com', or even 'quote for same person as yesterday'?

Quentin

youtellme90 wrote: »

Is the cashback reliable? I wouldn't want to pay a little more to then not receive the cashback......

Cashback is never guaranteed, but the main cashback sites do show how reliable a merchant is.

There has been some evidence that the cashback element gets added on to the price with some companies (ie. going direct works out cheaper by the equivalent of the cashback with some companies featured on cashback sites).

So maybe do dummy quotes direct and via the cashback site to see if there's any point paying extra to end at the same net figure before buying.

These days companies store your quotes and "know" if you make multiple applications (and then play with dates/material facts etc) and seemingly load premiums when they detect this.

InsideInsurance

On the basis they have your name, dob, risk details etc it is fairly easy to track you even without usernames or cookies etc.

youtellme90

So the consensus seems to be leave quoting until the last minute?

InsideInsurance

youtellme90 wrote: »

So the consensus seems to be leave quoting until the last minute?

Ultimately insurers change their prices frequently, I believe that some even use when you are getting the quote as a rating factor these days - if this is true then there certainly would be an argument that you can get away with charging more to those last minute people than those who are prepared and do it in plenty of time.

If you do a quote and go through to the insurer you normally have the option to save it and the quote will be valid for X days (often X being around 30). As long as you've done this then you could in theory check again in a few days, if its gone down then accept the new price, if its gone up then get the old quote back and accept that instead.

The reality is you need to commit at some point and keep on going back can cause loading of premiums and if for some reason you cannot retrieve your previously saved lower quote then you've shot yourself in the foot.

Why did you change the inception date? You say you are already insured so presumably its just the expiry date of your current policy.

Whatever you get from Admiral, call them and they will typically cut c25% from their renewal price just by you saying you've seen cheaper elsewhere.

forgotmyname

Most will hold the quote for 30 days. So make sure you save the reference number for the cheapest quotes.

Mines due just into January and i would normally be doing quotes now. But i am holding off.

youtellme90

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Why did you change the inception date? You say you are already insured so presumably its just the expiry date of your current policy.

I was under the impression I could ring them up and change the inception date regardless of when I'd put it on the quote. This is what I did last year anyway, quoted for 27th Dec and it was £900, quoted for 1st Jan and it was £620 - therefore I phoned up and said the £620, but wanted it to start on the 27th. They didn't seem to have a problem, so I was hoping the same might happen again.

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Whatever you get from Admiral, call them and they will typically cut c25% from their renewal price just by you saying you've seen cheaper elsewhere.

I didn't find this to be the case before - well, it was a slightly different situation. I'd changed cars from a sensible car to a sporty one in the December.

October Insurance - £500.
December, changed car. New Quote - £620.
Price to 'change' - £700.

So I told them I'd cancel, sacrificing 2 months of no caims as I'd be saving ~£500 for doing so. They didn't seem to care, they even waived the ~£50 cancellation fee as I was staying with them. It all seemed a bit backwards to me, they wouldn't budge on the price, knew I was going to do it anyway, but they 'lost' as a result.