car insurance

phynbarr

Am I on the right forum for car insurance, if not apologies

Need to sort out car insurance by the end of the week and have 2 questions.

I find when I go into comparison sites I get a quote and then if I go in again the price goes up. It irritates me every year so - apart from being more decisive! - how od I avoid? I've tgried clearing caches etc.

The other things is, is there a good time of the month to get a car insurance quote since many will hold a quote for 30 / 60 days. Too late for me this year but maybe worth remembering for next time

and finally - any best deals out there at the moment?

TIA

InsideInsurance

Insurers vary prices frequently, though not normally multiple times in a day unless they've really messed up a pricing change. Likewise they are concerned about both (1) fraud, where people manipulate the information to get a lower quote rather than simply honestly answering the questions and (2) rate raiding - where competitors or their representatives do large numbers of quotes to try and work out their pricing strategy

Because of both the reasons above insurers may start loading premiums when they get the same "person" keep coming back to make small changes.

Really there isnt much that should be flexing so not sure why you need to keep coming back. If you were thinking of buying a new car or such and wanted to check the prices for a number of options then it would make more sense and the recommendation would be to do dummy quotes using slightly altered data (different name, neighbours address, change dob by a day etc) but you can only use the prices as a guideline as things like credit rating can be a factor in pricing and clearly a bogus name wont get a hit on the CRAs

As to deals? Dont really exist as the ratings vary so much anyway that even a 50% discount offer from Tesco's wouldnt get their price close to my last quote from Admiral on my car.

Once you know who are the cheapest couple of guys for you then go onto the cashback sites etc and see if any of them have offers that change the order.

DUTR

Why not screen grab, the initial estimates, then you can quote the reference when you contact the company/broker.

forgotmyname

As above, Save the reference from the cheapest quote.

I found the same. Keep playing with the quotes and the price increases. Simple solution get the reference from the cheapest one then have a play.

But if you change details that maybe seen as attempted fraud, Vehicle parked, Job title etc then expect to be quizzed later. Especially if you claim.

They track your PC from more than the cache though. Computers unique ID, Your IP address etc..

onomatopoeia99

Do they not email you the quotes? I haven't used a comparison site for motor insurance in years, so don't have recent experience, but I'm sure when I did the same for travel insurance they sent me an email.

B42Long

DUTR wrote: »

Why not screen grab, the initial estimates, then you can quote the reference when you contact the company/broker.

Today I visited a few comparison sites for car insurance-'Confused' offered RAC at £367.28 whist 'Go Compare' offered RAC at £299.96-as this was a keen price, I phoned them to check about no claims bonus protection. I was told that actually the price quoted should have been £312. & this was due to the fact that I had searched on a comparison site & the information had not come through to them properly (yes I had a reference code to give them). The 'agent' then made me go through all the details AGAIN & told me that I could pay £406.92, but if I liked I could pay this and get the difference (£106.96) back later........guess what I told her? No I did not feel happy-I'm not sure that this is even legal, but decided to pay another company £10 more to be on the safe side.

I feel that this may have far reaching implications.....:(

InsideInsurance

You are always instructed to check all the details when clicking through from the aggregators site to the actual broker/insurers

If they have mapped something you answered wrong then that is their fault and you have grounds for complaint. If they have additional questions/ options that you didnt give on the aggregator and you leave the defaults in place and these arent correct then you are at fault for not doing what you are instructed to do.

You also need to be careful to check all assumptions and that questions are the same etc.