Car insurance - HOW MUCH!?
09 Mar 2009 - Blog - By Leigh Geary |
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If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know about my one or two car accidents. They're mostly not my fault, but the insurers seem to think otherwise. ;) Now, when I crashed my car last I took the opportunity to buy a sensible Diesel motor instead of the rather thirsty petrol I had earlier. When I swapped I stayed with the same insurers because I'm paying monthly and I didn't think it would go up much. Indeed, when I had the accident and bought a new car it didn't seem to rise much, but I was nearing the end of my monthly payments for the year.
But then..
Then the renewal notice arrived. My £480 insurance had risen... to £839.19.
Ooooffff.. Now that's painful. I've been driving for many years and I've got full no claims (not that it makes any difference because most insurers are more concerned with how many accidents you've had). I decided that this was too much to pay, so I did the same thing I'd done last time - I went onto a price comparison site. There's loads of these and I won't mention them all here. They all have annoying adverts and promise to save you cash.
I tried one (confused.com) and it got my Fully Comprehensive insurance down to £588, but the level of cover offered wasn't the same. No legal protection, no courtesy car, nothing. I think it was "Tesco Cheapo" insurance that was coming out best but I didn't fancy it. The best one I could find was around £640 with the same level of cover but, after navigating the "all new easy to use" confused.com site (no it's not, it's still a pain in the balls to get a quote) I decided to try elsewhere.
Another two comparison sites got tried (moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com), both returned the same result. Tesco Value insurance. It seems that, when I put my first accident into the "Claims and Accidents over the last 5 years" field, everything went all expensive.
So, I tried Direct Line. They don't appear on price comparison sites, so they don't hand over any finders fees / commission, plus they only want Claims and Accidents in the last 3 years. AHA! I think I might be in business here!
After a bit more tapping and clicking I got an insurance quote of £498 ! Result ! Sure, it didn't have the free vehicle recovery, but with the money I'd saved I signed us both up to the RAC for a year. Even after all that it cost less than the Tesco Budget Cheapy insurance, which had nothing at all.
Bargain.
So, moral of the story. Comparison websites are good, but going direct is sometimes even better!
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