Tool to save money on car insurance. I need your feedback. What do you think?

nicenic

So, I recently went through the yearly car insurance ritual. Except this year instead of just comparing quotes through MSM like I usually do I went through the time consuming process of comparing quotes on all the big four comparison sites, to see if I could squeeze out even more savings (proper money saving nerd stuff!). I filled out all the details exactly the same for each comparison site.
This was the result:

• My renewal quote from Churchill was £315.84 (previous yr was £300.16, I called to haggle but this was the best they could do)
• Confused. com £235.05
• Compare the market £219.55
• Go Compare £248.99
• Money Super Market £257.64 

Saving between most expensive and least expensive- £38.09, Saving on renewal was - £96.26
I must say I didn't expect such a difference. Don't forget this was the result putting in the exact same driver and car details and for the exact same level of cover. I appreciate it's not a fortune but over a lifetime of driving it could be thousands of pounds difference. 
This took me about 20mins (5 mins per site) to do and it's a very boring task. Which got me thinking, wouldn't it be great if you could just fill out one form and automatically get quotes from all four of the comparison sites. A sort of meta comparison or comparison of the comparisons. So this is the tool I am thinking of building to help money saving nerds like myself compare car insurance quotes from the big four without having to spend 20mins on it every time it comes up for renewal. I have a background in tech and am confident I can create the tool. However, before I spend time, money and effort on building it I wanted to get your feedback. Below are a few ideas of questions you could provide feedback on or you can just give general feedback. Please be honest, I would much rather get negative feedback that is honest than positive feedback that is not. If you are from MSE and reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts or even better, talk about how we can work together to perhaps feature this on the site as opposed to the current list of comparison sites in order of value. 

1. Would you use the tool outlined above?
2. Would you like to see it on MSE in the cheap car insurance section?
3. Do you currently compare all four sites manually?
4. Have you found savings by using more than one comparison site?
5. What is the main reason you currently do not use more than one comparison site?
6. How do you choose which comparison site to use?

Sandtree

1) Potentially
2) Wouldn't care
3) Rarely, more so when I more easily fitted into the regular insurance market
4) Yes
5) Dont have a car and home insurance is too painful to do so given the low value single item limit they use
6) Prejudice from decades of working in the insurance industry

The consumer aspect really isn't going to be your difficult part, other than the marketing budget required when individual clicks etc cost over £10 at times, but how are you going to get the aggregators to agree? What are you offering them? How deep are your pockets going to be to cover legal action if you follow the methods used by the aggregators in the earliest days? Do you have experience running a business regulated by the FCA?

The original aggregators picked up small companies/brands easily as it offered them cheap advertising only paid on success. The big companies the aggregators generally included without the insurers permission spending a reasonable amount to circumvent the security designed to stop screen scraping. The obvious hope was free business would be liked and then conversations can be had about formally engaging and commissions but they found that whilst this may with some others threatened legal action over use of their trademarks etc.

MovingForwards

1. No

2. Don't look.
3. No. Found the right one after comparing for a few years and seeing consistent results. Did the same when relocating.
4. See 3 above.
5. See 3 above.
6. See 3 above.

pramsay13

The comparison sites save your details so you only need to do it once per site, and only update if you change vehicle, address etc. 

forgotmyname

pramsay13 said:

The comparison sites save your details so you only need to do it once per site, and only update if you change vehicle, address etc. 

This. I get emails showing this years price and to login if there are changes to be made.

akw2420

You must have  a really poor attention span if you think that it's a problem to spend 20 mins finding cheaper insurance.
1. No.
2. Don't care.
3. Yes.
4. Of course.
5. See 3 .
6. See 3.
Remember that each site tailors their questions to get the most accurate quote and even then there are occasional inaccuracies when the link  transfers details from the comparison site to the actual site.
An insurer may ask ' have you had any accidents or whatever "' in the last three years whereas the comparison site may ask about the last five years to encompass all insurers and it occasionally throws up inconsistencies.
So after finding the cheapest prices via the comparison sites I then go on the individual insurer sites that were the cheapest and "usually" find that I can get it even cheaper then go on those same sites via cashback sites to make even more savings.( Where possible ).
Personally I think it's a non starter  but I wish you luck should you decide to pursue it.

rudekid48

You're forgetting something quite important - the moment the big 4 comparison sites see their services being hit regularly from the same IP/IP range/source etc they will block you.  What you are suggesting is not as straight forward as you describe e.g. how would you buy the policy?  All of the comparison sites have 'deep links' into the brands on their panel - you would need your own.  You would need to contact every brand on all of the sites to get their permission to display their brand & prices.  You would be setting yourself up as a Data Controller and would have to comply with all of the various DPA/GDPR requirements.  There are many other complications too.  It really isn't as simple as you think.  Much easier to just spend 20 minutes once a year

akw2420

I think he is just suggesting he could design 'a tool' that would just  fill in all four main sites at the same  time which I think wouldn't work and would be a bit pointless.
But once filled in and linked through you would just buy on  whichever site had the best quotes.
It all seems a bit airy fairy for the sake of 20 minutes once a year.
I actually quite enjoy trying to lower my premium year by year and happily spend a few  hours or so searching🙄.
 As you say , about the IP address , imagine four identical searches hitting all the insurers at exactly the same instant, they would think they were being  hit by some sort of computer virus and just shut it down?

mattyprice4004

So you're building a tool to compare comparison sites - what's to stop someone building a comparison site comparison site tool? 
You see where this is going...!  

Sandtree

rudekid48 said:
the moment the big 4 comparison sites see their services being hit regularly from the same IP/IP range/source etc they will block you. 

Ironically an issue the comparison sites themselves had to get around in the early days when they were screen scraping certain brands that didn't want to feature 

HyperSpace88

I am sorry to say, but you are being naive. You are making the same mistakes I did.  Is price the only factor in choosing insurance?.

Over the 25 years of motoring. I have been cheated by insurance companies.
What would save me a lot of time, if someone read through the policy document and made a comparison on who provides the best cover for the best money. Your proposal is a race to the bottom, rather then encourage insurance companies to provide the best cover.

When I was a young driver, I had my car stolen. Not only was I robed by the car thief, but I was also robbed by the car insurance company who paid less then what the car was worth. My car was worth £2,400 at the time, but they only paid out £1,800 (that was after a battle). This is on top of the excess.  I challeneged the insurance company to find me exactly the same car, as the one which was stolen. They refused, because they knew you could get nothing for £1,800.

When you buy insurance, you have this nice feeling that you a protected by loss, but it turns when your car is stolen, the next in line to rob you is your insurance company.

 

Wyy don't insurance companies have "agreed" car valuations. My ten year old car is not the same as someone else's ten year old car, that has been through 4 previous owners.

 

 

Some 14 years ago, an insured driver hit my car, the damage was minor. My memory is hazy.  I paid £900 car insurancefor a 12 month policy, but the accident happened 3 months into the policy. The car insurance company decided to write off the car. They claimed it was uneconomic to repair. It was a scam. Because on a "total loss", they get to cancel the policy and keep the remainer of the £900 insurance policy. They would not carry on the insurance cover for the remainder of the 9 months on a replacement car.  So not only did I loose my excess of £300, but I would have to buy a new insurance poliy, which would cost more due to the claim, but they also got to keep the car. I had no option, but to withdraw the claim. The biggest inconvinence, was when cancelling the policy, I could n't even drive my dad's car to work. As my car insurance allowed me to drive other people's car.    Some other insurance companies, will carry over the cover to a new car, so these price comparison web sites are unfair to the better insurance companies.

 

If your car engine blowsup and not repairable. How many companies will pause the insurance cover, until you get a new car?

 

How insurance companies provide legal cover? How many will deal with crash damaged car following an accident? How many provide windscreen cover? How much do they charge to change cover to a new vehicle.  Do they include car hire as standard?

 

How many of these insurance companies have customer complaints against them? How quickly do they settle claims?

 

The Defacqto rating is not a good indicator of quality of insurance, as there are plenty of loopholes to  get mugged.