Car insurance

molie

I’m sure like me you are aware that Avila own Direct line so there is no competition, they give you a horrendous quote so you go running to another or same company with a different name and think you’ve saved money, we are being played, but then we always have been.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82012344#Comment_82012344

The law requires them to treat old customers no worse than new customers for the same product by the same channel, so the question is how did you buy the policy last year? If it just auto-renewed then the year before etc? If you are one of those that phones up, haggles, then buys on the phone then thats the likely cause, you are a telephone customer who have for a very long time often paid more than those on their website or aggregators.

The law doesnt require them to quote to everyone on all channels so it's perfectly legitimate for them to not offer a quote via the aggregator to you. In the days before the reg changes some insurer would still quote but would resend your renewal price rather than a new customer price but I suspect that may not be compliant with the regs.

Another consideration is that insurers do price testing by randomly adjusting premiums for a small proportion of customers and monitoring conversion rates, it enables them to estimate how a future pricing change will impact sales. The challenge is it has to be "random" but you need to ensure the same customer gets the same outcome each time so it needs to be seeded from something. The challenge is always finding something that can't be tied back to an "ism", postcode sector may be an obvious option but with Southall being 76% asian if you were to load everyones premiums there by 20% there is going to be a clear argument of racism. Unfotunately lots of things can tie to it too like first letter of name etc. Reg may be considered a neutral option but purely speculation.

You can phone them and see if they will price match but then next year you are going to be seen as a telephone customer so again renewal pricing will be based on the telephone channel