I was exhausted but satisfied (Tesco Personal Finance)

Name: Andrew1911

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Tesco Personal Finance
Date:	06/09/01 (200 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheapest aound, Good site design, Excellent support

Disadvantages: Can crash

If your car insurance is due in the near future and you're awaiting the renewal quote, prepare to cry like a baby. They've gone up like a rocket. What with floods, more uninsured drivers, plagues, locusts rife throughout the land (and all the other excuses the insurance companies use), expect to see your premiums rise.

My case in point - on the month leading up to my 6th accident free year, I was expecting my premium (done through the Halifax) to rise a bit, but not by the mind-curdling amount of £170 ! From previously paying £420-ish which included a roadside recovery, legal assisstance and windscreen cover package I was quoted in an insanely cheerful letter the price of £590! Cue one disbeliving phone call to the very nice lady in the Halifax Call Centre (which is in my home town of Stockton on Tees) who was very sorry but that was the projected rate. Never mind that I had never, ever made a claim. Never mind that I had even been paying by Direct Debit which gives the Halifax a nice extra sum. I felt like I was being screwed with my trousers still on.

For the record. I'm 25 and drive a 1.7 diesel Astra. Not exactly an RS2000 Escort. I may be in Essex but I have my standards.........

This prompted a series of lunch breaks surfing the Internet for a better deal. I'd heard that Tesco's were pretty good and so they were up against the more traditional Direct Line, Eagle Star and also the newcomer of Elephant.co.uk. All of the above have very good websites.

Direct Line.com is the fastest to return you a quote (although the interface can crash / stall without warning pretty regularly) and all the process is very intuitive. They returned me the quote of £510 for the same services that I would get with the Halifax. Direct Line offers the option to save a quote online, giving you a reference number and password so that you can go in and amend details quickly - useful if youre looking for a new car and getting a numbe
r of quotes based on a range of cars.

Eagle Star.co.uk is very similar, with the addition of an interactive help feature (a pint drinking woman who lives at the top of the screen.) The process is a bit more involved than the Direct Line site and so the process takes a little longer. The same Save feature is available though. The response time of the site left a bit to be desired; although it didn't crash like the Direct Line one did. The quote returned here was £515.

The next stop was elephant.co.uk. I'd seen this advertise don the TV but thought it looked abit cheap and dodgy - mainly because the advert was so crap. However, I was suprised to see discreetlytucked away at the bottom that elephant.co.uk was the web-outpost of ......Reassured I plugged ahead with generating a quote. The elephant site is very comprehensive and asks a few too many questions that I didn't think were strictly necessary, especially since the other sites don't need them. Despite this, it too has a save option and offered the spanking price of £490 !

Finally Tescos online. Tucked away in the corner of their insurance was the link for car insurace. I fired it up and then thought.......this looks familiar! For the site was almost the same as the Direct Line site. This is because the insurance for Tescos is handled by Direct Line. The two sites do differ though, with slightly different questions, although I found the Tesco's site to be the easier to use. It also offers better option packages for breakdown cover and the help system is online (no need to leave the page) and very comprehensive. Best of all though was the price! I managed to get a quote for the marvellous price of £420 ! This was what I was paying last year. I signed up on the spot, choosing the Direct Debit option, which put an addition £30 on top, but for convienence's sake it's worth it.

Remarkably, the forms were on the doormat in two days time, well before the exp
iry date of the previous policy. They were clear and helpful, with booklets to keep in the car to help you run through the process of what to do if you need to call a helpline / make a claim. They do require you to send off the letter you recieve from your old insurers as proof of no-claims but thats standard.

Surfing the web for the best deal can be a long and frustrating experience, but occasionally it's worth the effort.

Well worth the effort.

Summary: