Shopping around can pay! (Insurance Companies - Comparison)

Member Name: sue.51

Product:	Insurance Companies - Comparison
Date:	22/05/01 (258 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: On-line facilities make it easy to get quotes, Lots of choice around

Disadvantages: Uh?

When it comes to things like insurance, i am very lazy about shopping around.

I had settled with CGU and NU Direct to take care of all life's little worries, and dutifully filed away all my reneval notices in the relevant draw and continued paying my DD's until.......

Six months ago, I was stupid enough to hit someone in the local leisure centre car park, followed by a not so stupid, but much more dangerous crash on the motorway. In fairness to CGNU (a combination of CGU and Norwich Union), the claims process was straightforward and painless (I was new to this process having had a clean record for nearly all my driving life). I did however naively believe that my 7 years NCD was protected - wrong!

My claim came through a couple of weeks ago, and naturally I expected it to be substantially higher than the last one, well, how I got to work that morning still astounds me, my renewal premium was around 55% of the value of the car (£2.5K).

Yes - i'll get to the point now
I thought this premium was unavoidable, and was crying into my coffee, when a workmate suggested I try his insurance company, Bell Direct (part of admiral).

Prices:
£900 for a 1 year accelerator bonus premium -this is a 10 month premium which assuming no claims gives you 1 years NCD or £1035 for a full years premium if paid up front (apparently it doubled if paid monthly)

www.elephant.co.uk ((the on-line arm of Admiral) - £950
I saw mixed reviews on Dooyoo and Ciao, and decided to search further. Also, on my second visit to the site, it kept returning incorrect car details, which made me a little wary.


All the following offered a variety of payment methods, including up-front payment of a debit/credit card or two months up-front and the remainder over 10 months on Direct Debit (8% interest charge added)

Eagle Star on-line was around £1300
http://www.eaglestardirect.co.uk/

Direct Line on-
line around £1300
http://www.directline.com/welcome.htm

Budget Insurance on-line around £1,000 (came on e-mail as a spin off from another quote)

Peoples Choice offered quotes from three insurers ranging between £1,100 and £1400
https://www.peopleschoice.co.uk/pcis/

Tesco Finance on-line - The winner £900
http://www.tesco.com/finance/home.htm (variety of payment methods)

Tesco also offers home, travel, and life insurance, not to mention credit cards, ISA's, mortgage finder and loans.
If purchasing - they also take a note of your clubcard number - still waiting to see if you get additional club-card points.

The outright winner for me was Tesco in terms of both ease, payment methods.

I cannot vouch for their customer services department or claims service (and hope I don't have to), but in summary, am quite pleased with what I have seen so far.

Hopefully next year I won't have a problem, having started to rebuild my long established NCD (fingers crossed), but know that in future I will be searching around to ensure I get the best deal available.

Summary: