confused? - no, just hacked off actually

nanana_2

Just a cautionary tale about confused.com and some of the companies that quote via it.

To date I've been a named driver on my wife's policy and visa versa. This year however I have made a claim so we used confused to compare prices with me and without me for her renewal.

She is also considering changing cars in the near future so we also ran a few different scenarios through confused. With me, without me, for present car and for potential next car.

We decided at the moment to go with me on the policy and for the present car.

First problem. We followed through (if you've used confused you'll know what I mean) to the first company only to find that a) The address was missing the house name - No problem we just added it again. b) The car was a different model to the one we'd selected - it had suddenly become fuel injected. No problem we corrected it. The problem is of course this meant the quote changed from that indicated in confused. Yes you guessed it, it was more expensive. (Even though it should I'd have thought been cheaper without the fuel injection).

We went back to confused, did it all again making sure everything was absolutely correct. Sure enough exactly the same things happened.

I rang the insurer offering the best quote, and explained the situation. I was told (after some lengthy but polite discussion that actually it was all irrelevant anyway as if I'd read the small print on confused I'd know that the quotes weren’t quotes - they were estimates. I've yet to find this stated anywhere on confused.

Second problem. The next day an offer from one of the other insurers dropped through the door. Cool, good price and all there in writing - correct details, everything. I rang to accept.
Whilst doing the usual details check, they said that my address was wrong on their system - guess what - it didn't show my house name. No problem they said - corrected. When we came to the bit about other drivers they said - no other drivers. I told them that was incorrect, I'm a named driver. Not according to our system's you're not she said. To add you will mean a new quote which will likely go up and wait for it a £25 charge for changing the policy. What policy? I asked, I haven’t even taken one out yet! I then pointed out that the written offer from them included me at the price agreed. Well it's different on the computer they said so we can't stand by the written quote. I put the phone down.

The postscript to this rather lengthy post is that I emailed confused (as they ask you to do if you've a query) to inform them of the saga and request more detail re: the quote/estimate issue. That was a week ago - no reply as yet.

So this is what I'm thinking. If you put a simple one post request through confused maybe it works ok - I don't know. But if you put several through with different options, the whole system gets screwed. That coupled with the usual inflexible robotic muppetry from insurance call handlers and its tear the hair out time again folks.

My wife used the yellow pages and got better, cheaper cover anyway - now there's a moral.

skylight

I know what you mean! Trying to get insurance at the moment and its a nightmare.

Also www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is okay, but they too are only really estimates as are confused.

What really annoyed me was I put in an incorrect date for a SP30 into confused so went back and corrected it in a new quote. HOWEVER the confused site was informing the insurers that I now had 2 SP30's even though I was only entering one and only one was appearing on the confused details (how or why is not for me to understand!). I had to go to each insurer individually to rectify the "error".