Warning about direct line renewal

marchmill

I recently got a home insurance renewal from Direct Line for over £800. I went online and quote a quote from them using the exact same information and the quote was under £300. I was told the individual person had nothing to do with the price, only claim and property information. After a complaint and the company looking into the issue it seems that they 'align' online quotes so you only see the rip off renewal price and not the price a new customer would pay. Direct Line effectively tried to rip me off hundreds of pounds for the exact identical insurance. Funny then that after complaining I got another online quote from them and the price was OVER £1400. I changed one letter in my name and the price was below £400. I must be on a 'suckers' list of customers who auto renew as I have for the last few years.
Loyalty does not pay
Avoid Direct Line

dunstonh

Funny then that after complaining I got another online quote from them and the price was OVER £1400. I changed one letter in my name and the price was below £400. I must be on a 'suckers' list of customers who auto renew as I have for the last few years.

It could well be anti-fraud measures kicking in. Doing mulitple quotes changing little things can increase your premium.

ALIBOBSY

I thought it was pretty well known that renewals are almost always a rip off. Just done my car and home insurance renewals.

The quoted renewals were £360 and £230, but using a number of search engines and the tips on here I paid £180 (£150 ish if the cashback comes through) and £80(plus 2 for 1 on films for the next year).
The car insurance also included roadside recovery as well.

Simply do a bit of legwork yourself and you're quids in.

Ali x

dunstonh

I thought it was pretty well known that renewals are almost always a rip off.

Not always. If you use an insurance that operates year 1/2 discounting then you will usually see a jump on renewals. However, there are those that do not operate that model and remain competitive every year. However, even those will one day become uncompetitve as its a bit like savings accounts. Ok when you are on the current version but when a new version comes out, the older one gets worse.

Aretnap

Assuming an insurer needs to collect an average of, say, £500 from each customer to cover the cost of claims and administration, and make a reasonable profit, there are essentially two pricing models it can use:

(1) Charge everybody £500 or
(2) Charge new customers £400 and renewing customers £600 (assuming their customer base is roughly 50:50 new customers/existing customers

Personally I rather prefer model (2) because I'd prefer to do twenty minutes work once a year and pay £400 rather than have to pay £500.

FutureGirl

Why would being 'loyal' have a anything to do with your renewal price? It's a business.

They give new customers a discount for taking out a new policy, and a discount for doing so online. If you just renew your policy, you aren't a new customer you're existing, therefore you won't get the new customer discount. It is quite simple. And in fact most insurers work this way, not just Direct Line.

Surely if you did comparisons you'd find insurance even cheaper for the same policy elsewhere.

silvercar

I have been with direct line for years, each year we have a little 'conversation' about the outrageous renewal quote and they drop it down to a level which makes it worth sticking with them. The last few years have been in the £400-600 range and other decent company quotes have meant saving less than £100. This year their quote was for £950, the conversation dropped it to £860 and another decent company quoted £333.

So something in their business model has changed! Or maybe they just don't like me.