Can You Get Car Insurance Quotes - Cheap?
Looking for the cheapest possible car insurance policy? Can you really get very cheap insurance? Well there are certainly things you can do to find lower premiums, including:
Reserve your policy early
If you compare prices on price comparison sites you will almost certainly find lower quotations if you are planning to start a policy within a month, rather than within a day or two. These savings can be quite substantial, typically in excess of £70, according to very cheapestcarinsurance.co.UK; and they have the facts to prove this! This is because (a) people who leave their renewal until the last minute don't have a great deal of time left to shop around; and (b) insurers are more confidence that those who arrange their financial affairs well in advance are better organised people who are less likely to be involved in car accidents. Perhaps they are right.
Ask for a discount!
Believe it or not, this usually works. If you ring your current insurer, tell them your renewal premium is too high and you have got much lower quotes online, they will usually try to offer you a discount. I have personally been offered over £100 off the initial quotation in this way! Remember, they won't want to lose your business.
Remember, price comparison sites are there to make money
If you compare prices on the popular sites, you can get the lowest possible prices, can't you? Well, no. All these companies get commissions from the insurers on their panels when they either sell a policy or refer a potential buyer to the insurance companies' own websites. They will only show prices from those on their panel! There may well be much cheaper policies out there from smaller insurers or brokers who keep their prices lower by NOT paying these commissions, but you won't see these! Different comparers have different panels so you can often get better quotes by trying out several of them, rather than just one.
They all have different deals with insurance companies
Part of what you pay for your policy is paid out in commission to the website you compare prices on. Typically this is around £50. However this figure is negotiable and some sites may charge less than others to particular insurers, which means that their prices may be cheaper than others for identical policies. This is another good reason for trying multiple sites.
Are they completely unbiased?
Some of them are actually owned, wholly or partly, by insurance companies or have links to other major websites.
Confused.com, for instance, is owned by the Admiral group which also owns admiral.co.uk, bell.co.uk, elephant.co.uk and diamond.co.uk. They claim that they do not favour these companies and this is no doubt true stop however, if you are thinking of buying a policy from one of these companies it probably wouldn't hurt if you compare prices on confused.com's own website, rather than any other comparer!
Comparethemarket.com's owner is the Budget Group (BGL); BGL owns Budget and dialdirect.co.uk.
Money supermarket.com is independent but they own moneysavingexpert.com. There is no bias whatsoever, of course, shown by Money Saving Expert to it's parent company.
Which insurance company are you actually dealing with?
Unsure whether to buy policy from Esure, sheilaswheels. com or firstalternative.com? All are owned by the same company. Aviva owns quotemehappy. com. The Complete Cover Group owns 4youngdrivers.co.uk, insureyourmotor.com, Mulsanne, girlmotor.com. Saga owns the company that underwrites AA car insurance.
It gets worse!
Take a good look at the companies that offer quotations when you do a price comparison. You may get over 100 quotes but how many of the companies that are quoting are actually insurers? Answer : a small proportion of them because the vast majority are brokers! This means that when you buy through a price comparison service very often you will be paying for commissions to two companies, not just one!
So can you really find very cheap car insurance?
Well, you can get car insurance at a cheaper price by shopping around. Bearing in mind the commissions that come right off the top before anything at all is paid towards your policy, it is very debatable whether or not any car insurance can really be called 'cheap!'